The Etail Power List of this year’s most influential retailers in ecommerce has been announced. Here is a round-up of the biggest etail news events and projects of 2014.

Etailers have pushed boundaries with innovative multichannel solutions

John Lewis online director Mark Lewis believes that retail will change more in the next three to five years than within the last generation. If the past year is anything to go by, he’s not wrong.

New technology, international opportunity and changing shopping habits have led ecommerce specialists to innovate at pace.

The growth of online retail cannot be ignored – industry body IMRG forecasts that sales through the channel will surge 17% over 2014.

That means that ecommerce has been a top capex priority for the year, which has resulted in much improvement and innovation.

The importance of online has also created a new breed of highly sought after, digital-savvy leaders. Ecommerce bosses are starting to become the prime candidates to lead multichannel leaders.

John Walden’s digital background undoubtedly played a significant part in his appointment as Argos owner Home Retail Group’s chief executive this year, while Tesco multichannel director Robin Terrell has been handed responsibility for the UK business on an interim basis in the wake of the accounting scandal.

M&S multichannel boss Laura Wade-Gery added retail to her responsibilities to “ensure one view of the customer”. The new wave of customer directors creeping into the industry could be a further stepping stone for multichannel and ecommerce directors to reach the helm of retail businesses.

Delivering the goods

Fulfilment remained a key battleground for retailers as consumers continue to embrace convenient ways to pick up their online orders. UK retailers surpassed themselves to make delivery as speedy and easy as possible, and tuned to where their customer is.

Click-and-collect’s draw shows no signs of abating and John Lewis managing director Andy Street believes orders picked up using this method will surpass home delivery this Christmas.

Next boss Lord Wolfson says that already 50% of its online orders are picked up in store.

But shoppers aren’t necessarily always near a retailer’s store so ever more inventive solutions are being devised.

Locker collection

This was the year of the locker – in tube stations, in petrol stations, in local libraries.

Amazon started the trend back in 2011 when it launched collection lockers partly as a reaction to the number of workplaces stopping personal deliveries. But retailers across the board have now adopted lockers to make their store wherever the customer is.

Local schools, libraries and business parks are just some of the locations being explored, but it is transport hubs that have really appealed to retailers.

Tesco, Asda, Waitrose and Ocado have all launched locker collection on the tube, while railway pick-up hub Doddle has teamed up with retailers such as New Look and Asos. However, other retailers have opted to do it themselves.

John Lewis opened a ‘click-and-commute’ store in St Pancras station in October for shoppers to pick up online orders on their way to and from work.

French Connection also opened a pop-up shop click-and-collect store at Old Street station, London, in the run-up to Christmas.

Meanwhile, House of Fraser, which created the first click-and-collect only store back in 2011, developed the concept by introducing it into a Caffè Nero coffee shop.

Etailers have pushed boundaries with innovative multichannel solutions

Etailers have pushed boundaries with innovative multichannel solutions

And of course, speedy delivery has become the norm. Cut-off times for next-day arrival are getting later and later, and both Next and House of Fraser offer it to customers ordering up to midnight the day before.

Customers are now coming to expect such service and if retailers do not offer market-beating fulfilment options they will shop elsewhere, as Debenhams chief executive Michael Sharp found out last Christmas. The department store chief said weaknesses in its multichannel offer, which included raising its threshold for free delivery and not offering a next-day service, meant shoppers went to its rivals.

Debenhams’ rival House of Fraser has striven to make home delivery more convenient and has made waiting around at home for parcels a thing of the past. The retailer is now offering early morning and evening delivery.

Innovation in fulfilment shows no sign of abating and is poised to be a hotbed in the year ahead too, when maybe Amazon’s delivery drones could make their debut.

Casting the net overseas

UK retailers looked beyond the borders this year, as international expansion remained high on the agenda.

Ao.com said guten tag to Germany, Boden looked Down Under, Boohoo launched in Spain, Italy and Germany, and John Lewis unveiled its French site, to name but a few.

However, international operations were the undoing of one of Britain’s best exports, Asos, this year. Currency movements in major markets hit sales and profits and it was forced to discount in unaffected countries to get rid of excess stock.

The problems highlighted the need for a local offer in each country in which an etailer trades, including localised pricing. Asos is now making this a reality and many would have taken heed following its woes.

It was not just exchange rates that caused retailers grief this year. Laura Wade-Gery launched Marks & Spencer’s long-awaited website to much fanfare.

However, its Net-A-Porter-style, editorial-laden site was a dramatic change and its customers were slow to take to it. Online sales plunged 8.1% in the first quarter and highlighted the need to test extensively with the customer.

Customer insights

There was lots of new technology for retailers to exploit this year as beacons were trialled by retailers including Waitrose, House of Fraser and Oasis.

The technology, which uses a Bluetooth connection to send radio waves to mobile devices, has been integrated in mannequins in-store to send offers and information about the products, including links to buy the items online.

It’s early days for the technology but beacons have the potential to provide retailers with a level of insight of how the customers shops in store.

They could also herald a new era in omnichannel retail because the technology could identify when a shopper who has visited a website on their device enters a store.

Beacons are not the only technology that retailers are getting excited about. Oculus Rift, the Internet of Things and ApplePay also open up new opportunities for retailers and should make sure that 2015 is as fast-paced as this year.

2014: the year of the retail IPO

For some time Asos and Ocado were the only pure-play stock investors could buy into. However, that all changed this year because 2014 was the year of the retail IPO.

Ao.com kicked things off with its £1.2bn listing in February. Some might have balked at the lofty valuation for a relatively unknown firm but investors queued up for the stock in the belief that online would become the dominant channel in white goods.

Young fashion etailer Boohoo was next up, floating with a £560m price tag in March followed by Australian flash Sales site MySale’s £340m listing in June.

Although, online sector leader Asos’ share price crash will undoubtedly knock investor confidence, there is the potential for further etail listings in the near future as furniture specialist Made.com mulls an IPO.