Curated by Stuart Fogarty stuart@admaticallycom for AFAO'Meara Advertising, Streamabout The Video Agency and Admatic Ireland.
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After all the talk, interesting to see Amazon's announcement this weekend that it will launch a Sunday delivery service. Starting in 7 areas in the UK but becoming the norm, it's about getting deliveries to people who might miss them (or not be around to get them) during the week. It will be a permanent feature in London from the get go. They've already tested them in December and they are free to members of Amazon's 'Prime' Service. This is nothing whatsoever to do with digital. Simply, it's just better business that happens to come from a digital business. If people want Sunday deliveries (and clearly Amazon's test show they do), then give it to them. There is no reason why existing traditional retail couldn't have done it and yet because they haven't, they'll now scramble to keep up. Online sales already account for about £1 in every £5 spent. Better customer service through Sunday delivery, will grow that. Traditional retailers have been dealt another blow. Hard to think of an excuse for them though. This is just, Better Business.
'Cyber Monday', as it's known, was the biggest shopping day in history and largely because online shopping has matured. It's now the intuitive choice. ECommerce is estimated by as reputable a journal as Forbes, to be +21% year on year. Whopping. And the average value of a transaction was 129 us dollars (!) which surprised me. So people buy big ticket items online. The key story (and we're getting a bit tired of saying it) is the surge in mobile shopping accounting for +17% of the spend and that's up over 50% year on year. Tablets seem to have had the most significant impact with IPads and Kindles showing well. Apple's IOS was also a star with nearly a quarter of all online sales through these devices so there's a lesson here for retailers.....push your messages out on mobile!! Of course too, mobile Apps will have helped to steer IOS shoppers into better bargains and better locations, so that's one reason for this growth. Cyber Monday thrashed all previous records. So online shopping is where it's at and will continue to impact negatively on pure 'bricks and mortar' retailers. Department Stores will be most hit and then beauty shopping as these two sectors are showing the biggest online activity growth. Consequently, retailers, need to follow Banks and Book Stores and Music Stores and others, and to start 2014 saying they're going to focus entirely on their online shop and not on their bricks and mortars. Because that's where the fish are swimming. In time, retail will only exist, online.
Rumours abound, strong rumours, of Google opening its own high-street retail stores, starting in the US main cities this year. As Apple know, having shops, can bring customers into contact with your brand in a real personal, helpful way. Especially when you're a Google and largely only known for Search. It's interesting too, a company moving from Web into retail stores - kind of like Amazon opening book stores - but this could be a plan just in time for Google Glass (or "Google Goggles" as most of us know them). In retail you can touch, see, hold, demo the product and for something so new, it could be a great sales channel for glasses. Or indeed, a new world of wearable computing which is ahead of us. They're likely too to come at the end of the year, "coincidentally" in time for the launch of Google Glass. They could also sell Chrome computing and of course, Nexus smartphones and tablets moving perceptions of Google from software to hardware. Google also owns the Motorola handset business. Indeed following in the footsteps of both Apple and Microsoft who have their own retail operations, this would bring the Google brand into a new arena and reaching out to new consumers. High street, high profile retail, is a great Ad for a brand. Google already has a "sort of a" retail presence in the 'Best Buy' stores. It may not be just about money short-term, but building a real brand long-term. Shops are one good way to do that.
In case you haven't heard, one of the biggest online retail days is Black Friday, driven by the Thanksgiving holidays in the US. The biggest is probably 'Cyber Monday', the Monday just coming up. This year, online selling/buying has been up dramatically with most reporting an increase of about +23% and well over a billion usd. Without a doubt, the biggest day ever. Over 57 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday probably trying to avoid that "shopping experience" you can see in the video above. Thanksgiving day itself was up +32% online. Black Friday gets huge prominence in the offline world as a big traditional shopping day so the growth of online may be people wanting to avoid the crowds. Or just simply, the ongoing dominance of online at a retail level - everything points to this becoming the preferred channel for all products and even growing at a grocery level. Black Friday ordinary retail high street shopping was DOWN this year by about -2%. It seems that Amazon have done best, followed by Wal Mart, Best Buy, target and Apple. Amazon just keeps posting higher year-on-year growth rates. Top growing categories were Digital Content and Subscriptions,followed by packaged goods, video games and consoles and general electronics. But the highest shopped segment was Apparel, in other words clothes, accounting for 25% of all dollars spent. And they said you could never sell clothes online. Never. Ha! This annual surge is certainly one to which all online retailers should take notice and try to capture some of the activity through special offers or discounts. Remember it's a global world now and retailers need to take heed of things that happen internationally rather than just their local calender. One thing is for sure. Online retail is going to dominate shopping, no doubt about it. And if you're in retail, you need to be online. Very few of the leading Department stores in fact are and so there's opportunity after opportunity for new start-ups to take that business. It's just waiting to be done.
