Gerry Harvey, here are some online retailing tips

Poor Gerry Harvey.

Only two months ago Gerry told SmartCompany he was not spending any more money on his website because it was a waste of time. Many readers happily told Gerry that attitude was costing him money. They described in detail how they were purchasing online and urged Gerry to do more than stick his catalogues online.

Many of our readers who hold Gerry in high esteem, gave him great customer feedback about how they engage with online. But the next time reporter Patrick Stafford rang Gerry, he was highly annoyed, mentioned the story, and hung up.  

Now a new report by Deloitte is sure to make Gerry feel even more of a dinosaur.

The report, called Navigating Multi Channel Retailing in Australia, says Australian companies are lagging the US and much of Europe in developing a retail multi-channel approach.

The report says that much of Australian retailers’ activity has focused on small trials that have fallen into one or more of the traps below:

• Website in search of a strategy – selling whatever you can online with no consistent offer.
• Online as a silo – online presence alone,  not integrated into any other channel such as stores or call centres, resulting in consumer annoyances and lost opportunities to engage further.
• Messy marketing – confusing or contradictory marketing and branding across online, in-store and traditional marketing collateral.
• Inconsistent fulfilment – difficulty in closing deals online.
• Lack of consumer insight – failure to collate, analyse and respond to customer data.

The result?  There is a lot of money going overseas, particularly in key sectors such as health, beauty, electronics and specialist apparel. Even after international delivery and exchange rates are taken into account, overseas competitors’ prices remain attractive to Australian-based consumers, and this poses a new and unexpected threat to our retail sector.

And it’s just going to get worse. According to the report, many US-based retailers are now investing aggressively to position themselves for the eventual turn-around of the business cycle, and this includes expansion globally through the on-line channel.

So Gerry, here are some tips for developing your strategy:

• Manage multi-channel retail as a “whole of business” initiative.
• Understand your customers by asking them who they are trading with, why and how they wish you engage with them.
• Remember multi-channel should be an extension of your current strategy.
• Build a multi-channel retail capability model for all functions.
• Understand why your customers shop online and ensure your revenue line in your business case is actually founded on how your customers engage.
• Plan accordingly, and minimise investment in temporary solutions by ensuring your processes and systems are there for the long term.