Member Article

What you missed: eCommerce Expo London

In this industry we’re all looking for the secret sauce. It seems like every week there’s another tool, tactic or gimmick that online retailers simply must adopt to be successful. In reality, of course, a great retailer brings together a number of tools and strategies to achieve success.

And what’s the best way to keep up to date with the latest and greatest thinking in online retail? Well, along with reading this blog, large industry events can be fantastic places to get a feel for different vendors and, crucially, a chance to meet the people behind the companies and what they’re thinking.

In my opinion one of the best events is eCommerce Expo, which took place in London earlier this month. Trusted Shops was there spreading the word about the importance of trust in online retail but I also wanted to share a couple of other insights from the show for those who weren’t lucky enough to be there.

Reviewing reviews

One topic that came up time and again was reviews. It’s an established fact that reviews are incredibly important for stores – from both the sales side and the customer engagement side. What is less clear for retailers is how to pick a reviews provider and how this fits in with a wider marketing campaign. There’s also plenty of talk about how to make the reviews process authentic – no one believes a company could get 5,000 five star reviews.

Which leads to the next big topic from the Expo.

Integrating integration

It’s not enough to have a great reviews tool or a great social media strategy or even the perfectly optimised site. Every part of the strategy, and tools used to implement it, must work together and support each other. This idea of integration was a key theme at the Expo and is the trick behind selecting a provider for any service. Along with all the standard criteria such as cost, application and usability – retailers have to ensure it fits in with the other tools and tactics they would like to implement.

For example, Google reviews on its own is fine but it’s likely to be pretty ineffectual when compared with a robust independent reviews tool that integrates directly with Google but is also part of a wider strategy combining buyer protection, a mediation service, social media activity and trading standards compliance.

These factors combined will give each review far greater authority and authenticity than it would have had otherwise.

What’s next

These were the points that jumped out at me, but it’s a never-ending discussion and this week we’ll be exhibiting at the Internet Retailing Conference where there’ll be even more of the latest ecommerce insights. If you’re in London drop by and say hello – we’ll be at stand 43.

How important are reviews and integration for your store? Let us know on Twitter (@TrustedShopsUK) or Facebook.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Phillip Smith .