Retailers must leverage knowledge of their customers’ needs to optimise their ecommerce offers if they want to succeed in online retail.

Despite the relative maturity of ecommerce in the UK, retailers are leaving a lot of cash on the table every day because they don’t have the same level of commercial focus on it as they do on their store channels.

Sales demand is being lost as a result of not getting some of the basics right.

After two seconds, retailers lose a minimum of 10% conversions for every additional second it takes for their site to load. Despite this, most retail sites take between three and seven seconds to load.

How many retailers’ ecommerce teams walk the floor of the stores?

It’s still the best way to understand who the customer is, what they’re buying and what they don’t like, and leveraging this knowledge to improve sales online.

Everyone knows consumers are rapidly adopting mobile as the core engagement channel yet a number of leading retailers don’t have effective mobile propositions.

With anywhere between 25% and 60% of traffic coming through a mobile device, Superdrug, LK Bennett and B&Q, to name but a few, will be losing sales every day because they don’t have  mobile-optimised sites.

How many websites have you been on where there’s a huge volume of styles that are either fully out of stock or out of stock of core sizes? On Hobbs.co.uk not only was I confused by the international sizing system when I looked at a lovely pair of sandals for my wife, but three out of six sizes were out of stock.

Every week I speak to acquisition marketers who don’t know what the lifetime value of a customer is. So how do they know how much they should spend acquiring them in the first place?

My first question to potential recruits at Practicology is what is the first thing you do in the morning when you get into the office? (Switching on the kettle is not a good answer). If the response isn’t ‘look at the numbers’ and how we’re doing against our plan, they’re not right for us, nor are they for the retailer, because they’re not focused on driving sales. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

  • Martin Newman, founder and chief executive, Practicology