 | THE WORLD OF THE INTERNET | | | | | Some Observations About eCommerce | Posted by Andrew Spencer on 01/05/2012 @ 07:00 |
I visited an exhibition at Earls Court this week - Internet World - to catch up on what is happening in the world of the Internet; in eCommerce, marketing, hosting, mobile Internet and social media of course. The event has been running 20 years or almost as long as the World Wide Web itself (the very first website was launched in August 1991 by Tim Berners Lee) ...
 trade shows give me a great opportunity to see the latest developments in the industry
In general terms, the event this year was very interesting to me. I wanted to catch up on what was happening generally and I had a specific agenda to capture information about certain aspects of website development, deployment and operation. There was a lot that I am very familiar with, having masterminded major web development and deployments for 15 years, but there were new trends, thinking and products there.
This time I am focusing on the eCommerce element of the show. I noticed that there were three areas of eCommerce where I think things are moving along:
There was a lot of the same around; products and services that have been around a long time, especially in the hosting arena. I did notice that there was less about postcode addressing; I saw only one company there specialising in postcode addressing - Postcode Anywhere - and there was one notable absentee, QAS. Maybe this aspect of web development is so mainstream now that there is no need to shout about it.
With payment systems there were three of the big boys exhibiting, sponsoring etc: Sage Pay, Verifone and World Pay. There were, however, some newer companies there and their offering was a bit different.
One company - Ogone - operates right across North Western Europe and is headquartered in Belgium. They offer the option to deploy a bewildering range of payment methods, though if your customer base is UK centred this is maybe not of great interest as we are so card oriented. Their pricing model is per transaction and attractive.
One thing stood out for me about this system. Normally a website has to transfer the customer at time of payment to the payments system's own server and then implement pass back (sometimes tricky). With this system there is no need to do that as you can implement payment fields on your own pages that pass the data to Ogone. The data does not pass through your own servers and is certainly not stored there and customers are not transferred out and back. Very neat and secure.
Another payment system of note is Ukash, an e-money system that is developed and operated by Smart Voucher Ltd. It is essentially a cash payment option for eCommerce sites. Customers pre-purchase the vouchers to use online. Apparently Ukash operates in over 55 countries and is accepted for example by Skype, Facebook and Ladbrokes (so is acceptable in the online gaming world where credit cards cannot be used). It is aimed at those reluctant to use cards to purchase online, stated as over 38% of consumers in the UK. A good point was made by a stand staffer that this method of payment appeals mostly to the older consumer, as this sector is where reluctance to using cards online is greatest.
Amongst a host of user tracking, web analytics solutions on offer one stood out as being particularly comprehensive and also a bit unusual, at least in my experience. This solution is etracker from Germany (though with offices in the UK). It has all the usual web analytics tools for logging traffic but uniquely as far as I know you can track visitor motion, ie the software tracks mouse movement. In effect you get to track what the visitor is looking at, where they focus, click and scroll, where they hesitate and what they miss. Very powerful!
I did query how invasive this was of visitors' privacy and was assured that it did not compromise privacy, had a low system overhead, complied with all the latest privacy legislation and left no trace on the visitors' machine on exit. Hmmm, not entirely sure about this but if I was operating an eCommerce site right now I would be sorely tempted to implement this functionality.
As far as customer service is concerned, live chat with customer service agents finally seems to be coming of age. The first call centre I visited that used live chat as a serious adjunct to self-service eCommerce was at least 10 years ago, but it remains rare. Where you do encounter it - and one notable example I can think of is Apple support - and it is operated well, it is a very good thing indeed. It can speed up the purchase decision dramatically and certainly improves conversion rates. Most vendors were quoting a 25-35% uplift in conversion.
The new thing for me at this show is how live chat and indeed the AI driven automated chatbots are being marketed. No longer bespoke and/or highly expensive implementations, most of the vendors are offering relatively low cost Software As A Service - "hire a chatbot" is one example - and in the case of one the software to implement live chat is straight out of a shrink wrapped box.
All in all, this eCommerce aspect of the show was informative and demonstrated the increasing commoditisation of eCommerce development and operation.
Until next time ... 
ANDREW SPENCER
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 | During Andrews extensive business career he has worked in a wide cross section of companies, specialising in the creation of contact centres and business systems, software development, telecommunications and project management. Andrews key skills are:
Business planning and strategy
Matching technology to business needs
Project management
Software development and implementation
Designing and implementing business systems
His work has included sourcing and implementing a new integrated telecoms system for National Energy Services, designing and project managing a new IT and telephony structure for the Greyhound Racing Association, and directing technology development for Wembley plc.
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