Ben Popplestone

An article I wrote recently for Direct Commerce.

For UK retailers operating both online and in ‘bricks and mortar’, the option of Click & Collect, offering customers the ability to purchase or reserve a product online and collect in-store, is rapidly becoming more important. It’s not a new proposition, and Argos led the way 10 years ago, with many smaller retailers also adopting a ‘heath robinson’ approach to present cross-channel options early on.

Click & Collect has grown over the last 10 years and Argos’s own C&C sales have grown at 60% per year, now representing 70% of online sales. Other retailers such as John Lewis are also seeing very high growth figures from C&C with an increasing proportion of online sales, and yet more retailers are continuing to join the party with Plumb Center and Game.co.uk introducing C&C in the last few months.

The growth over the last few years clearly proves that Click & Collect model is serving customers well, and as the expectation for retailers to offer this service, and to do it well, increases, it is easy to see why in 2011 this is becoming a prioritised consideration.
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2009 is already proving to be an important year for online retail sites. The figures show that whilst high street sales are suffering, online sales are still on the increase, and promising to buck the trend of the global recession. On the other hand, small businesses trading online in niche or competitive markets are feeling the pinch and may be pushed out of business. (more…)