home | media info | archive | supplier guide | registration | jobfinder | events | about us | contact
No winners in mail dispute
|
EDITOR'S BLOG |
 |
|
Your comments are welcome, and may be added to the blog. Click 'Email us' after any relevant item. |
Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of |
|
No winners in mail dispute From Opinion column issue 53 – Autumn 2009 Almost all home shopping is delivered by parcels carriers or mail services. Carriers are the lifeblood of this entire retail sector. Some are even involved in two-man deliveries (Nightfreight, for instance). No wonder, then, that the Royal Mail workers’ strike action has sent shudders through the e-retail market. The concern is not so much over short-term delivery problems (worrying though these are), but rather over the potential loss of confidence among shoppers afraid to buy in case their goods will fail to arrive. Figures from IMRG, the online retail organisation, underline this. In a poll of members, an alarming 77 per cent said they believed a strike would discourage consumers from shopping online this Christmas. Its impact is not limited to Royal Mail’s own customers. As John Coghlan, chief executive of private express and mail carrier DX, commented when the dispute was looming: “The financial health of Royal Mail is important to us all. The size of the whole market is linked to Royal Mail. They are a major gorilla in the market.” Read whole of above item Email us about this item Or is it just me? From Editor's Rant column issue 53 – Autumn 2009 During a French lesson many years ago, we were told the word for an electric socket was “une prise”. So what was the word for plug, I asked. “La meme chose,” came the answer. I demurred, but found myself ridiculed by both the teacher and classmates. “Don’t be so pedantic,” they cried. I’m afraid it’s in my nature, and lately I was strongly reminded of it. My credit card is debited every month by various services, and during the month or six weeks leading up to its expiry they all contact me, urging me to register the replacement card’s details “as soon as possible” on their web sites. But what if they attempt to debit the card after I’ve updated the information, but before the new card comes into effect? Surely the charge will be rejected? Read whole of above item Email us about this item 26 January 2010 Response from Anonymous contributor: Credit cards – even worse than it seems The situation is much worse than the illogic which you rightly allude to. One of my debit cards had to be replaced early when it wore out, and shortly afterward it was replaced a second time after it was compromised by internet fraud. I lost access twice in quick succession to a whole range of services, and started getting stern letters from regular suppliers. Businesses I deal with frequently on the internet frustratingly cut off their handy “one-click” ordering facilities and required me to re-register my account details. One company I inadvertently owed money to set a debt collecting agency on to me. Interestingly, these renewals don’t restart the five-year lifespan of my debit card. So early in 2010 I face the prospect of being sent yet another new card and undertaking a third round of re-registrations. So what’s the benefit of debit cards for regular transactions? I never had this problem with a cheque book, of course. Not that I’ll be allowed to hang on to that for much longer.
We know a man who can From ‘Opinion column, issue 52 – Summer 2009 So e-retail growth has dipped below ten per cent for the first time since anyone can remember. Should we all run around wailing and gnashing our teeth? We hardly think so. As IMRG director Tina Spooner points out, e-retail growth is still ten times as high as high-street retail growth, and would be considered remarkably healthy in almost any other market sector. Let’s not get carried away. Read whole of above item Email us about this item One rule for us, another for you From ‘Editor's Rant’ column, issue 52 – Summer 2009 Question: what do the web sites of the very smallest companies and the very largest tend to have in common? Answer: they often seem to make it almost impossible to find contact details for the company behind them. Medium-sized companies, which were often guilty of this strange shyness in the past, seem generally to have seen the error of their ways, and these days usually provide a full street address on their web sites, complete with phone number and even an email address. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Delivery standards – why we need them From Opinion column, issue 51 – spring 2009 What is a satisfactory home delivery? It’s a more complex question than it sounds. Purists might say it’s when the item arrives at their front door on a nominated day at a pre-agreed time, and is handed to them personally by the delivery driver. Others might say it’s when the item is delivered to the nearest post office or convenience store for collection when they’re ready for it. Or left in a locker-box at the railway station they commute from. Or handed to a neighbour. Or slid under a piece of corrugated iron sheeting in the middle of the potato patch. In an ideal world, online retailers would cater for all these options. Then practically no home delivery would fail. The trouble is, up to now no one has codified all the widely differing approaches to the problem, or formalised them in any way. What is a safe place? What is a drop-box? How does the retailer or carrier recognise these things? Read whole of above item Email us about this item Who calls the shots? From Editor's Rant column, issue 51 – spring 2009 Do you have to go through a self-abasement ritual in order to persuade your web development department to make even the most trivial changes to the pages of your web site? Do you have to arm yourself with a stiff dose of Dutch courage before you even ask? Hopefully not; but to judge from many of the retail web sites we encounter, you’d think this was pretty commonplace. How else is it possible to explain the extraordinarily poor web site usability that is still so common on the internet? How to account for those form fields that request supplementary information about something you haven’t entered yet; for the scolding insistence that information like phone numbers be entered with no spaces in them (anyone who can’t deal with spaces shouldn’t be doing web design); for the forms that revert to default after you enter one wrong piece of information? Think about this. The Wright brothers pioneered powered flight in 1903, and little more than ten years later, fighter aircraft played modest but significant a role in the First World War. Read whole of above item Email us about this item Where’s the delivery information? Help! From Editor's Rant column, issue 50 – winter 2008-9 If you’re an online retailer and you’re sensible enough to offer information about delivery at the top of your home page, there’s one chance in three that you’ll make the mistake of hiding this behind a Help button. This is just one of many frustrating findings to emerge from Snow Valley’s latest Delivery Report (see story list for issue 50). It found that the second most popular name for a link to delivery information is “Customer service” (another obfuscation). Arguably this speaks volumes about the failure by a wide spectrum of online retailers to understand the importance of delivery. The term “help” implies that the user already has a problem. People click a Help button when they’re floundering, and you don’t enter a retail web site expecting to be floundering, do you? You expect to find what you want by yourself, and manage your interaction with the site on your own terms. |