BathEmpire.com homepage

This guest post was written by Rob Watson. Graham has allowed me to hijack his blog to throw in my perspective of retail on the Internet. I work for a company called Supplyant which offers marketing and e-commerce services.

I wanted to share a few recent insights from dealing with a client that runs a very successful eBay store.

Our client sells bathrooms products. Showers, shower enclosures, taps, towel radiators, etc. It’s all excellent quality stuff and I’d love to offer you all a discount, but I’m afraid that’s not my call.

Anyway, before I completely digress, the client approached us because he wanted to build a little space of his own on the Internet. To have his own brand, increase his reach and ultimately sell lots more showers!

Now, before this article starts to turn into a horrible-to-read testament to how fantastic we are (feel free to come to our own website to read that!), I’m going to get to the point. Despite their similarities, there are some huge differences between eBay and e-commerce. But I’ll get to that in a bit; first the similarities.

(Let me just point out that when I refer to e-commerce, I really mean selling products through your own website.)

Early spring 2009 we launched the BathEmpire website. To get things going, all advertising was done through Google’s AdWords program. And here I come to my first similarity:

Cost

eBay do an excellent job of marketing. They bring 100,000s of potential customers to their site everyday, so it’s only fair that you should be paying a fee for being there. Once you’ve been selling a while you can even reduce those costs as listing fees drop. The biggest cost though tends to be your pricing. eBay is rife for people trying to undercut you. You will find your margins being ripped to shreds to get a look in.

Compare that to going alone though. Is that any cheaper? Hell no! Advertising costs through Pay Per Click (PPC) programs, like AdWords, can really ramp up. Plus there is a ton of other marketing channels to explore. SEO, shopping comparison sites, social media, email marketing. They all require money and resource.

Competition

On the Internet your competition are never far away. But on eBay they are listed right next to you. With very little for the customer to go on, it’s not surprising the cheapest seller gets the business.

46,402 shower listings

With your own website it’s not much better. Sure, once people are on your site you have their undivided attention, but for how long? Your offer needs to be good, otherwise they will be back on Google quicker than you can say “how much did I pay for that click?”

Reputation

Get a bad customer rating on eBay and your business can be ruined. The perks to having a high level of customer satisfaction are so huge that should you lose that, you can be sure you will feel it.

This pain isn’t quite as immediate with your own e-commerce store, but you can be sure it will affect your ability to grow. Online shoppers are increasingly turning to sites like Review Centre before buying from a new site. When comparing two retailers, all it can take is a bad review for you to lose a customer.

OK, now to the first major difference.

Scale

eBay’s reach is huge. But it is finite. Unless you continue to sell more and more products how many more listings can you hope to gain? Our client is already highly visible in the bathroom category on eBay. He’s not afraid to increase his range to cover other bathroom furniture, but that involves greater costs.

With good marketing, PR, social media, etc., the growth of bathempire.com could be huge. Our client is already planning on opening a showroom in Coventry early next year. Would that really be possible with just an eBay presence?

Control

We just recruited a new employee who worked for a company which sold packaging through eBay. They enjoyed the perks of a high customer satisfaction ranking, but then they suffered with an issue with their supply. Some customers were let down by the service, their ranking dropped below the level needed for Trusted Store status and the business folded shortly afterwards.

The point is that when you are selling through eBay, it’s eBay that calls the shots.

With your own website you are in control. Sure, unhappy customers will definitely cause you pain, but it certainly won’t put you out of business.

Brand

So you are an eBay seller that offers great products, great prices and great service. You go out of your way to keep every customer happy. When that customer tells their friends about the great buying experience they just enjoyed, who do you think they credit? Who do they say they just brought from? eBay of course. All your hard work has been a massive boost to eBay’s brand.

How much better would that feel if they were to tell their friends about your store? Where your business gets the kudos. That would feel good, right?

Now, I’m not trying to knock eBay. It’s without doubt an incredible selling tool. But it has its limits and a great eBay business could easily become an amazing e-commerce business in it’s own right. It’s just time to start thinking bigger.

Cover of 'The Retail Doctor's Guide to Growing Your Business'

This post is something of a first for Soult’s Retail View – a proper book review! Before I talk about the book - which is the The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business, by Bob Phibbs – it’s worth just mentioning how I got to hear about this new title in the first place. 

After years of LinkedIn feeling like a rather static and worthy business networking environment, the recent growth of its Groups feature has really brought the community to life. I’ve had my LinkedIn account for a while, and now belong to several worthwhile retail-related groups. The largest and busiest of these is the Retail Industry Professionals Group, a community with almost 55,000 members worldwide and many active discussion threads.

Currently, the most popular of these threads – with 100 comments, and rising – is one entitled “Who has a blog re: to retail out there?”, where, as you would expect, I flagged up Soult’s Retail View a few months ago. It was as a result of this post that I got a message from Bob Phibbs himself, suggesting that I review his new book.

Checking out The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business on Amazon, I was able to find out a little more about what I’d be letting myself in for. The book, essentially, is aimed at “the thousands of retailers frustrated by market challenges and looking for ways to take control of your business” – whether they are “a mom-and-pop, chain, franchise, or service business.” In particular, it sets out to help those retailers who are “looking for the advice of an expert consultant, but unable to spend the money” by providing “a step-by-step approach to evaluate your current business practices.”

With a copy of the 246-page book duly having arrived from the United States, I’ve been delving into it over the last couple of weeks. So, what did I make of it?

Well, even before I agreed to review the book, I did query whether it was being actively marketed in the UK – assured that it was, I felt qualified to critique it from a British perspective. Even so, the first thing to say is that the book is *very* American. The anecdotes are American, the style is American, and the language is American – and some of these may jar with UK readers.

The terms ‘clerking’ and ‘merch’, for example, were new to me, alongside the inevitable references to ‘lines’ rather than good old British ‘queues’. More generally, some might find The Retail Doctor’s tone a little preachy – he knows what he’s talking about, and the book makes sure that the reader doesn’t forget it, to the extent of making slightly comical use of a trademark symbol everytime ‘The Retail Doctor®’ is referred to. Coming across rather curiously to British eyes, this risks portraying the author as a corporate entity or brand, rather than as a real person.

So, there are a few negatives to get out of the way to start with – most of them entirely relating to The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business’s American feel and focus. However, as long as you can look beyond these niggles, it’s hard to dispute the book’s value as required reading for small retailers, whichever side of the Atlantic they may be on.

The book as a whole is pretty easy reading. I read it through from start to finish, which is probably the best way of doing it, though the clear division of topic areas between chapters – such as financials, hiring, selling and training – make it straightforward to also dip in and out.

One of the threads running throughout the book is the importance of understanding how personality types affect a business, with Phibbs introducing the four groups of Drivers, Analyticals, Expressives and Amiables.

Drivers and Analyticals are collectively known as ‘Thinkers’, with both displaying qualities of independence and decisiveness. However, while Drivers are confident and extrovert, Analyticals are more likely to be aloof and introvert.

Similarly, Expressives and Amiables, as ‘Feelers’, share the quality of being dependent. However, just as Expressives are talkers, extroverts and ideas driven, Amiables are introverted, indecisive peacemakers. A successful retail business, Bob argues, needs a combination of all four personalities, with the manager needing to make sure that their employees bring in whatever character attributes they themselves lack.

The Retail Doctor's website

Handily, the book gives the URL of The Retail Doctor’s Personality Quiz – part of a more extensive Retail Doctor website – and urges readers to take the test before proceeding any further. Happily, my test results suggest that I have a pretty balanced retail personality – 17% Driver, 29% Analytical, 21% Expressive and 33% Amiable. The website notes that no matter what type you are, you need to fully understand the other three, so that you can “become a chameleon when dealing with them as employees and customers.”

Progressing through the book, much of what The Retail Doctor says is common sense, yet it’s surprising how much of it needs to be restated – often quite forecefully. The book’s cover promises “no-nonsense” advice, and Bob certainly doesn’t mince his words.  

It’s hard to argue, however, with the principle that “you have to take responsibility for the things that you can control” – whether that’s improving store performance, finding new customers or clearing unsold stock – or that “the only thing standing in the way of you succeeding is you.”

Similarly, as early as p.3, Bob is making clear that “you have to be profitable”, with profits meaning that “customers are rewarding you for your efforts in excess of what it costs you to run the business.” In contrast, he suggests, “if you are not making a profit, the market is punishing you for poor management, meagre product selection, inadequate location, or rotten employees.” Harsh, perhaps, but surely the essence of why businesses fail.

Much of what Phibbs advocates is about getting the retail basics right, and ensuring attention to detail. In his chapter on “the anatomy of a successful retail store”, he makes a good point about the best stores being like our homes – “neat, clean and well organised.”

In this context, I liked Bob’s statement that “no amount of promotions, events or buzz can change a store’s unwelcoming exterior, shoddy facility or bored employees.” Indeed, his anecdote of a coffee house with dirty counters, broken lighting, and staff who are more interested in talking to themselves than the serving the customer surely strikes a chord with anyone who has had a similarly underwhelming customer experience.

A point in the book about avoiding unwelcoming signs also resonates, with Bob claiming that signs such as ’No food or drink’ or ‘Children must be accompanied by an adult’ are rarely effective, but convey negative messages that “tell people to stay out” of the shop. He argues that retailers should “put out the red carpet” to grow their sales, not “the red flag.”

For similar reasons, Phibbs highlights ‘Do not touch’ signs as one of his top ‘Merchandising Don’ts’, suggesting that “you might as well put up a sign that says DO NOT BUY.” It brought to my mind all those beds that you see in department stores, too often accompanied with the warning ‘do not sit on the bed.’ 

An important chapter of the book is that which covers online marketing, giving effective advice on developing a website – something, Bob notes, that about 30% of attendees at his keynote speeches still don’t have. I particularly liked the illustration on p.182 of what Bob calls a “rotten title bar”, where instead of the name of the website and appropriate keywords it simply says ‘Home’. How many times have we all seen that, often on sites belonging to businesses that really should know better? 

The book’s newness also means that it’s bang up to date in offering tips on how to use social media effectively – including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, though not, ironically, LinkedIn.

The book ends with another line that really struck a chord, bringing to mind those retailers that grumble in the press every time they face the ‘threat’ of new competition. Bob’s closing gambit to those retailers is “whatever you do, don’t do a story in the local paper about how you can’t compete – because you can.”

Notwithstanding the book’s American focus and tone, this is clearly a lesson that can be applied in the UK as much as the US. Armed with Bob’s book, small retailers should be well equipped to harness the power that they do have over their own businesses – building on their strengths, tackling ther weaknesses, and working to create a customer experience that is distinctive, engaging, and that – above all – sells.

Screenshot of holding page (15 Feb 2010)

Google ‘Vergo Retail’, and the likelihood is that you’ll currently find Soult’s Retail View among the top few search results. Indeed, since this blog launched in July, five of the top ten searches that people have used to find the site have related to the Liverpool-based department store operator, with the Ipswich store proving particularly popular:

• hollister newcastle: 262
• vergo ipswich: 252
• vergo retail: 145
• vergo retail ipswich: 84
• wilkinsons logo: 81
• clas ohlson: 63
• co-op department store norwich: 48
• hollister eldon square: 47
• vergo department stores: 47
• woolworths closing down: 47.

I suspect that the main reason why this blog has consistently shown up so highly in Google has been for want of much competition: other than a dedicated site for its famous Lewis’s store in Liverpool, Vergo has lacked any online presence of its own to date.

However, given the evident interest from people searching for information about its stores, I’ve always thought that Vergo has been missing a trick, and wondered how long it would be before a company website appeared. Consequently, even though it may mean that my own Vergo-related traffic takes a hit, I was  pleased to see that a holding page is now in place at vergoretail.co.uk (and vergoretail.net) promising that “an exciting new website is under construction”.

Vergo's Robbs of Hexham store

Helpfully, the holding page also features a list of Vergo’s 20 stores across the UK, including the aforementioned Lewis’s, the two here in the North East (Robbs of Hexham, and Joplings of Sunderland), and the remainder acquired from the Plymouth & South West and East of England Co-operative Societies during 2009.

The iconic Joplings store in Sunderland

Following my earlier questioning, the site confirms that the former East of England Co-op stores have simply been rebranded as Vergo. The full-range department stores are called Vergo Ipswich, Vergo Norwich, etc., while the slightly smaller shops go under the names of Vergo Fashion, Home & More! or Vergo at Home. The Homemaker stores that were acquired in Devon and Cornwall currently retain that name, though presumably it will make sense for them to become Vergo at Home in due course.

In a post about web usability last year, I noted that while not all retailers will want or need an e-commerce site, there’s still great value in a website “providing basic information about the business” – details such as news, opening times, directions and contact numbers.

If the upcoming Vergo site does this – as the Lewis’s one does already – then it will surely perform a worthwhile function. At the same time, the site will also help to demonstrate the company’s continued investment in growing its business, and the development of Vergo as a national brand, rather than just a slightly disparate portfolio of acquisitions.

Shop Direct's Woolworths.co.uk

Just a quick post this evening, but I wanted to flag up a well-written and interesting article by Kiran Stacey in yesterday’s Financial Times, entitled “The fight to be Woolworths’ heir”.

The piece covers some of the same themes as my own blog posts about Wellworths, Alworths and Shop Direct’s Woolworths brand, but gives some new and interesting insights into the operation of each business through talking to Wellworths’ Claire Robertson, Alworths’ Andy Latham and Shop Direct’s Matthew Hardcastle.

Alworths fascia

Notably, the article tackles the issue of the three retailers’ similar names, and – contrary to what has been reported previously – suggests that Shop Direct is no more happy with Wellworths than it is with Alworths:

We’re not happy with what Alworths is doing. They are trading on the old Woolworths name and brand. Meanwhile, Wellworths is trying to be Woolworths in all but name, and we are not very happy with that situation either.

Certainly, it looks like the tension between Shop Direct and the other ‘new Woolies’ is not going to vanish anytime soon.

Alworths' website

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Alworths has launched its website at http://www.alworths.com/ in the past few days. The colour scheme is, arguably, a little on the psychedelic side, but the content and overall impression is very good, conveying a distinctive brand personality that is bright, friendly, fun, local, and family-oriented.

The ‘Rate your visit’ form and the opportunity to nominate an Alworths staff member for a ‘Star Service Award’ are also really nice touches. Similarly, though there are no clues as to where Alworths’ future stores will be, visitors to the site are invited to ‘nominate a location’, to help Alworths achieves its goal of opening “20+ stores” during 2010, and its ultimate expansion “towards a chain of 200 stores”.

I’ve been really impressed with Alworths’ marketing and PR efforts to date. The company seems to have been quite adept at celebrating the qualities that people most liked about Woolworths – such as the service, value and range – while avoiding the traps that ultimately contributed to Woolies’ demise, and creating a personality that is fresh and new.

I wish the business well, and look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months. Up here in the North East, perhaps I could nominate Chester-le-Street as somewhere that “a variety chain with stores at the heart of the High Street” would be likely to do well?

Monument Mall... in Lichfield

It’s always fun to find links between my current home of Tyneside and my previous one of Staffordshire – Tamworth playing Gateshead in the Blue Square Premier, for example – but the latest link is the most bizarre yet.

You may remember that, back in August, I remarked upon the outdated website for Newcastle’s Monument Mall shopping centre, and suggested that the two-year-old mall guide – promoting long-closed-down Boots, Benetton, JJB Sports and Virgin Megastore shops – hardly conveyed a good first impression to potential visitors to the mall, and was “truly terrible PR”.

Monument Mall

Needless to say, when I revisited http://www.monumentmall.info/ today, I was not quite sure whether I would find an updated site, or the same content as before. What I certainly hadn’t expected to find was… the website for the Three Spires Shopping Centre in Lichfield (which can more usually be found at http://www.threespireslichfield.com/). The screenshot above shows the Monument Mall URL with the Three Spires website.

Both Monument Mall and Three Spires are owned by St Martins Property Investments Ltd, but it looks like someone needs to make a New Year’s Resolution to get their domain forwarding fixed… before any shoppers turn up at Monument Mall expecting to find TJ Hughes and M&S Simply Food.

UPDATE, 28 January 2010: Aha! It appears that there is a brand new Monument Mall website at http://www.newcastle-shopping.co.uk/. Even so, it would surely make sense for the old URL to point there rather than (still) to Lichfield…

Millets store

Today’s retail news has arguably been dominated by Marks and Spencer revealing better than expected results, and Blacks Leisure (owner of Millets, as well as its eponymous chain) announcing plans to shut 89 stores that “have not traded profitably for many years” (in which case, you may wonder why the company has persevered with those branches as long as it has – Woolworths’ demise surely demonstrates the potential for ropey stores to bring the profitable ones crashing down with them).

While established names link M&S and Blacks display mixed fortunes in their quest for future success, one of today’s other (less prominent but no less interesting) retail stories relates to a brand new presence on the high street – GIVe, the latest venture from fashion guru George Davies of Next, George at Asda and Per Una fame.

Following months of anticipation, GIVe’s Regent Street flagship has opened today, with 21 other shops – five standalone stores and 16 department store concessions – following tomorrow. Alongside London, the standalone GIVe stores are in all the top shopping centre locations that you would expect – Bluewater, Cribbs Causeway, Kingston-upon-Thames, Liverpool One, Meadowhall – with Glasgow and Harrogate following soon.

Unusually, the concessions are all located within independent department stores, including all 11 Beales sites – a refreshing change from the usual House of Frasers and Debenhams. This decision, reportedly, is linked to Davies’ wish to offer a free minor alterations service within all his GIVe shops, as well as his desire for a less corporate, more boutiquey feel – hence the sense in tying up with department stores that already provide this type of personal, customer-focused service.

Several observations can be made about the store portfolio. Most obvious, from a North East viewpoint, is the absence as yet of any GIVe stores in our region. Perhaps we shouldn’t worry – after all, there’s no GIVe store to date in Manchester, Leeds or Edinburgh either. However, compared to other major regional shopping centres, such as Bluewater and Cribbs Causeway, I do wonder sometimes about MetroCentre’s ability to attract and retain the top names – take for example the oft-cited departure of Gap and its replacement with Peacocks.

Don’t get me wrong - Peacocks is a great shop – but it’s ubiquity means that it’s not really a special shop. For me, a special shop can still be part of a retail chain, but it needs to be one that has few enough stores to make each one a real destination – shops like the John Lewis’s, Fenwicks, Selfridges, Apple Stores and Lego Stores of this world. Other than the Berghaus flagship, it’s difficult to think of stores in MetroCentre that would fit this definition. Is it a function of the existing retail mix? The fact that the 22-year-old MetroCentre, with the exception of the Red Mall extension, looks rather cheap and dated compared to its newer competitors? Or something else? 

Certainly, Apple Store’s important decision to open up in Newcastle’s Eldon Square extension (blogged about here), alongside a growing roster of big-name fashion retailers, may help give Eldon Square the edge as the most likely location for GIVe’s North East debut. Alternatively, Rutherfords in Morpeth (mentioned here) or Robbs in Hexham would be obvious candidates, were GIVe to go down the concessions route.

Another observation about GIVe’s store portfolio is quite what a coup – and potential boost – this is for Beales, whose recent performance has been patchy to say the least. Assuming that GIVe is a success, Beales is sure to reap some benefit in terms of both footfall and trade. If nothing else, it will help to make its sometimes tired-looking stores more of a retail destination again.

GIVe homepage

 Inevitably, a blog post like this would not be complete without me passing comment on GIVe’s online presence. I’m hardly qualified to comment on the women’s fashions themselves, but the good quality photographs are really effective, and I like how the clothes can be browsed by colour as well as garment type. The ‘style with’ tips – suggesting belts or bags to go with your top – also seem like a canny move. If nothing else, Davies’ ability to launch a high street retail chain and fully operational online store on the same day is pretty impressive. Recognising the synergies between bricks and clicks, the site – unlike others I could mention - also gets brownie points for featuring a list of GIVe store locations, complete with opening times, contact details, and the name of the store manager.

Any obvious website downsides? None especially, other than the predominant black and white look making the GIVe site resemble any number of other fashion retailers’ – House of Fraser or the aforementioned Tucci, to name just two. As always, if you’ve surfed the GIVe website – or indeed visited one of the high street stores – feel free to share your own reactions to the GIVe experience.

Reopened Tucci store in Newcastle

Whatever the rationale for the change of heart (and there’s some discussion/speculation about that here), it’s clearly a positive move in that it brings one of Grainger Street’s longest retail frontages back into use – while Tucci has been closed, it has really looked very blank indeed.

Even with Tucci’s return, however, the retail fortunes of the Grainger Street and Market Street area are looking a little fragile. On the other side of the road, three prominent units stand empty next door to each other – the former Karen Millen and Kookai stores (the latter empty since early 2006), and another unit that, apart from being occupied for a couple of months each year by The Xmas Box, has not had a tenant since being refurbished as part of the Grainger Town Project several years ago. Nearby, the former Millets and Coast units have been empty since earlier this year, while the former Thomas Cook site, next to Greggs, must have been vacant for the best part of a decade.

Vacant stores in Grainger Street

It’s hard to know how far this is a Newcastle city centre problem. After all, many of these voids reflect the wider fortunes of the retailers concerned – such as Kookai’s administration; Baugur’s woes in the wake of the Icelandic banking collapse; or Blacks Leisure Group’s exit from the boardwear market, and the consequent rationalisation of its portfolio. However, with the news that Oasis and All Saints are to open in Eldon Square South – raising question marks over their existing Market Street stores in the old Binns block – the area’s never entirely convincing aspiration to be the ‘Bond Street of the North’ is looking decidedly shaky.

Incidentally, Tucci’s reappearance in Grainger Street prompted me to take a look at the retailer’s website and online store. Its predominance of black is perhaps a little cliched, and some of the pages I looked at had missing image files; generally, however, the site’s not too bad, benefiting from a sensible layout and a useful zoom function that allows visitors to view detailed photographs of the available products.

One glaring omission, though – and something that could well be added to my post about expectations of retail websites – is the absence of a list of physical store locations and opening times. The ‘about us’ page only mentions job vacancies, while the ‘contact us’ page makes reference to ‘high street stores’ but fails to say where they are. A visit to the sitemap confirms that no list of stores appears to be provided.

The Newcastle Tucci store may therefore have reopened, but anyone browsing the Tucci website would be none the wiser – an oversight that should surely be addressed.

Image by Zoran

I was quite chuffed, this morning, to have a short article on web usability published in The Journal. Much of what I wrote is, or at least should be, common sense: essentially, the need to understand what information your customers are looking for, and to give it to them in a way that is clear and engaging. Though the examples I used in the article related to tourism websites, the same principles apply across the board, including to retailers.

To be fair, many of those retailers with ecommerce sites have become increasingly adept at offering an easy and stress-free user experience. On the pure etail side, for example, Play.com’s clean, uncluttered interface makes it a pleasure to use – sometimes, it has to be said, more so than the increasingly complex Amazon.co.uk. Similarly, in more niche markets, many of the sites submitted to my Home Interiors Directory and Garden & Landscape Directory manage to combine a user-friendly online shop with a quirky and distinctive tone of voice.

Among those retailers that straddle both bricks and clicks, JohnLewis.com is particularly effective at conveying those brand values of space, quality and attention to detail that are similarly prominent within its stores. In contrast, I tend to find the Ikea website confusing to use, and normally end up heading to the physical store at MetroCentre instead.

Generally, though, I often find that it’s those retailers with simpler sites – providing basic information about the business, rather than e-commerce functionality – that would benefit most from an online revamp. So, using the example of department stores, how about some candidates for those retailers that I think are most or least effective at managing their basic online presence?

Fenwick website

One retailer whose website has always disappointed me is Newcastle-based chain Fenwick. Though the site’s content has been beefed up of late, and now provides core information about the company and its stores, its imagery and overall appearance is somehow cold and aloof; certainly, there’s no sense of the retail theatre that you get when paying a visit to its Newcastle flagship.

Williams & Griffin website

In contrast, the website for Williams & Griffin – a department store that Fenwick acquired in 2008 - conveys a much warmer and more engaging feel through its purple palette and use of colour photographs. Coverage of individual departments within the store is also more comprehensive than on its parent company’s site. Instead, Willie Gee’s main oversight is failing to tell us, anywhere on its home page or ‘about us’ section, where the store actually is. Thankfully, the ‘contact us’ page reveals that we can find Williams & Griffin in Colchester.

Bentalls website

Over to another Fenwick acquisition – this time Bentalls, in Kingston-upon-Thames and Bracknell – and yet another different set of brand imagery. The layout and content of the site is functional, but the overall look is cheaper and less slick than you might expect for a quality department store brand. Generic smiling women stock photos, an unreadable scrolling ticker, and – worst of all – an @btconnect.com email address (should you fancy the advertised cookery classes) all convey a less than professional image. Equally, the ‘copyright 2006′ tag and lack of any news stories give the impression of a site that is not lovingly maintained.

Beales website

If the Bentalls site conveys an image that seems at odds with its brand, Beales’ problem is that its site struggles to convey much of a personality at all. The home page is dominated – overwhelmed, even – by an enormous offers banner, yet the site gives only a limited feel for what it’s like to shop at a Beales store. Even the ‘about us’ page links to a ‘corporate statement’, its talk about ‘entry price points’, ‘trading policy’ and ‘assortments’ squarely aimed at shareholders rather than customers. Shoppers are unlikely to be wooed by the revelation that “value, at all levels of the market, plays an increasingly important part for our customers [sic] shopping basket”.

Encouragingly, we are promised a ‘new website’, ‘coming soon’ in autumn 2009; there’s even a countdown timer, helpfully informing us that the ’time until launch’ is ’34 days, 2 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds’. That’s undoubtedly good news, but it’s always a risky ploy to make such a big deal of an upcoming website revamp – not only are you building customers’ expectations about what they can expect in 34 days’ time (which is fine, assuming that the new site meets or exceeds those expectations), but you’re also effectively saying to shoppers that “we realise our current site isn’t very good”.

Lewis's website

One site that is too new to require a Beales-style makeover is that for the iconic Liverpool-based department store Lewis’s.  The Lewis’s site is largely effective, speaking with a distinctly local voice that successfully conveys the retailer’s independence and uniqueness. The site also celebrates the store’s heritage – with historic photos, and visitors invited to ‘submit their memories’ – at the same time as providing plenty of information about current and planned developments. If you were to pick fault, you might argue that the site sometimes has too much going on – for example, it might benefit from a little more white space, and less content disappearing off ‘below the fold’.

Rutherford & Co website

After so many niggles, we should probably end on a more positive note. One site that I particularly like is that for Rutherford & Co, an independent, family-owned department (or ‘lifestyle’) store based in Morpeth, in Northumberland. Where the Fenwick site fails to do the physical store justice, Rutherford & Co has packed its site with beautiful photographs that effectively convey the rich and quirky instore experience. “Welcome to the sumptuous world of Rutherfords”, the site’s home page declares, and – for once – it really does deliver on its promise.

Thank you to Zoran for making available the image used at the top of this post.

Wellworths store in Dorchester. Photograph by Nigel Mykura

I was interested to read on This is Money a few days ago that Claire Robertson of Wellworths fame is apparently in talks with “unnamed venture capitalists” (are they ever not unnamed?) over funding for expansion. The article claims that the Dorchester-based enterprise is hoping to open up three more former Woolies stores before the end of 2009.

This is good news if it’s true – towns across the south of England seem to have been clamouring for their very own Wellies – but like any new business, Wellworths will need to be careful not to grow too quickly and beyond its means. After all, the rapid expansion and equally rapid demise of DVD retailer Silverscreen is a reminder of what can go wrong.

In the meantime, one useful thing that Wellworths could and should do is to give itself a proper online presence. The company cannily made sure that it registered the domain names wellworths.com and wellworths.co.uk before anybody else could, but these currently point only to a holding page. Given the public and media interest in the business, this seems like a wasted opportunity.

Wellworths.co.uk holding page

Of course it would be unrealistic for Wellies to actually trade online, but it would be great to have a simple but decent quality website that provides details of what the store sells and what it’s opening hours are. It would also be a good move to have a blog or news section, giving Claire and her staff an opportunity to update on new developments and promotions instore.

Wellworths’ launch was a masterclass in effective use of PR, but it’s important not to let things slip as the business develops – the interest and goodwill is still there, so why not capitalise on it?

Incidentally, the main topic of the article mentioning Wellworths’ reported expansion is the departure of Shop Direct’s group trading director, David Inglis. Shop Direct, of course, has recently relaunched Littlewoods Direct as Very, and is also behind the recent high profile relaunch of Woolworths as an Internet-only retailer. The article, perhaps unfairly, tries to make some link between Inglis leaving and “speculation that the [Woolworths.co.uk] business was in difficulty” – as far as I’m aware there’s no evidence that the new Woolworths operation is struggling, but it will of course be fascinating to see how it fares over the coming months.

With Wellies on the high street and the new Woolies online, it’s easy to forget about another proposed reincarnation – former Woolworths commercial director Tony Page’s plan to “relaunch the company in all but name” with a potentially 200-strong chain of as-yet-unnamed variety stores. Page’s plans seem to have gone a little quiet of late, but his latest Twitter post, from 13 July, suggests that they are still ongoing – “lots of empty property to fill, and jobs to create”, he writes, with the promise that “We’re working hard on it”. Let’s wait and see if Page is as good as his word.

Thank you to Nigel Mykura for the use of the photograph of Wellworths, which is © Copyright Nigel Mykura and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Licence.

B&Q store. Photograph by David Wright

I was interested to read Retail Week’s comment piece today on the introduction of self-serve checkouts to B&Q, and to note the author’s scepticism over whether such a system really works in the context of a DIY store.

As I commented on the article, self-service checkouts were also in place at B&Q Scotswood (in Newcastle) when I shopped there a week ago. Having never used such a service before, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed and ease of use.

There are a couple of provisos, though. First, I was only buying a couple of small items that could be easily carried, so I can’t really comment on how a self-serve checkout might work when making a larger or bulkier purchase.

Second, the usefulness of self service terminals is obviously influenced by the efficiency – or otherwise - of the regular checkouts. Given that B&Q Scotswood routinely has only one or two checkouts open, even at the height of the weekend, I was rather pleased to have the opportunity to circumvent the long queues. In other circumstances, I would probably still prefer to be served by a real person.

Beyond B&Q, it does appear that self-serve checkouts are becoming more and more commonplace these days – just recently, for example, I noticed that rather a lot had been installed in the revamped Sainsbury’s at Team Valley.

As always, it would be interesting to hear your experiences. Have you made use of self-serve checkouts, either in B&Q or elsewhere, and if so what did you think? Is it really quicker and easier than waiting in a regular checkout queue?

Thank you to David Wright for the use of the photograph used in this post, which is © Copyright David Wright and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Licence.