» Intelligent Positioning: News, articles & updates 2011

Independent Fashion Site Goes Live

Andrew Mabbott — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:01:18 +0000

Independent Boutique is an online store for women’s fashion and accessories, showcasing work from the best independent British designers. By selling together through a single platform, designers are able to reach a larger audience, while fashion-conscious shoppers get instant access to the rich talent and creativity the UK fashion industry has to offer through a single-branded environment.

Intelligent Positioning’s Web Development team leveraged their experience in building search-friendly e-commerce websites to create a fully-bespoke sales platform to meet the particular requirements of Independent Boutique. The projected presented a number of challenges including ensuring ease of use for sellers in managing their inventories and handling transactions, fully moderated product approval, searchable faceted navigation through the product catalogue and seamless integration with a WordPress blog.

Utilising artwork supplied by a graphic designer, Intelligent Positioning guided the project through to successful delivery. Services included:

Project management
Requirements gathering
Architecture development
Bespoke web application design and implementation
Payment gateway integration
Deployment and hosting
Training

Marks and Spencers online sales boost

Sam — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:36:21 +0000

Despite drops of in-store sales and, in our mind, a lot of scope for greater success in SEO attainable, Marks and Spencer’s online sales soared 20% in the latest quarter.

Marks & Spencer Group saw UK like-for-like sales drop 4.2% in the final quarter of the financial year, despite positive online sales growing by 20%.
Total UK sales were down 0.3% in the 12 weeks to 28 March 2009, with general merchandise dropping by 1.2%, which includes clothing (-1%) and home (-2.3%).

However, online sales were up by 20%, while international sales grew by 23% in the same period.

Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer Group, said, “While the outlook remains uncertain, we’re confident that we’re doing the right things for our customers and for our business.

“Online sales were up 20% with further growth in market share as we continue to broaden the product offer,” he added.

SEO Recommendations

There is so much that can be done for the M & S website, and for a company that craves consistency and continued growth it is surprising they don’t seem to look at it.
Until then good luck with continued online growth.

Woolworths Online Going Down

Jon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:18:31 +0000

Woolworths – Company Focus. Woolworths has obviously had a bad time of things lately.
With the company going into administration and the 1000s of employees facing unemployment just weeks before Christmas, it’s not been happy reading. Woolworths Decline.

However, one shining light for the Woolworths brand over the last 12 months has been their online presence. Whether or not they have been selling products through their website is another discussion, but their positioning in the search engines has been good –

and for certain keywords, it has been excellent.

But then this happened:

The Reason: Woolworths Website holding page throughout the site

This appears on every page linked to. So all the readable content has gone, all meta and all internal links. This blank page is all Google sees. Furthermore bounce rate is therefore 100% and we all know what that means.

Woolworths' keywords fell off a cliff in mid November in Google UK

Previously Woolies was in the top five SERPS for “Toys” “Outdoor Toys” “camp Rock” and many other children’s related purchases. At Christmas, these would be searched millions of times and the purchase rate is for many retailers better in December than for the rest of the year put together. So why did they take the site down?

As you will see above from our Keyword line tracker Woolworths.co.uk the effect of the maintenance page is stark. Woollies online has now taken the same hit as its fellow High Street Stores have – and fallen off a cliff.

Is there a way back?

The Woolies site was getting some very good positons, and closing it down like this, before the business has properly shut-up shop, seems premature. Furthermore, the site itself had a PageRank of 5, certainly a sellable asset to anyone in retail.

But what we can conlude from this is that links, by themselves, will not get you good results.

Online Sales Continue to go Upwards

Jon — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:26:47 +0000

We’ve reported on these pages before that Online sales are in rude health, and the most recent reports do nothing but support that claim.

U.K. shoppers spent 16% more online this year than last year, reports Capgemini U.K. Plc.

Online sales rose 26 percent in November compared with the previous month. Which Perhaps should be taken with a pinch of salt, as November should surely always be more productive than October.

But in addition to that accessory sales more than doubled and alcohol sales rose 53 percent in November – which is good news to the whole of e-commerce sites, as these are not the usual record making markets.

The IMRG Capgemini e-retail stated that every company in its sales index, recorded positive monthly and yearly growth across every sector in November. Online sales may grow at the same rate for the next 12 months, which is he antithesis to what we are hearing on the high street.

“What’s surprising is the year-on-year growth despite the slowdown,” said Mike Petevinos, head of retail consulting in the U.K.

“It shows online shopping is more resilient than the high street in a recession.”

But the most extraordinary comment came at the end, leaving us with the desire to know more..

“Online purchases in the U.K. may account for as much as 50 percent of all retail purchases within five years” Petevinos said.

Really? I would love to see it. At the moment how many people spend 50% of total retail expenditure online? This includes cups of coffee, the late present for mother’s day and so on? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

John Lewis sees Record Online Sales

Jon — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:05:26 +0000

It is not all doom and gloom in retail at the moment. The High Street may be daubed in big reduction offers mixed with a certain malaise, but online seems a happier, more relaxed and confident place to be.

John Lewis, one of the UK’s biggest department stores, reconfirmed this thought. Sales at John Lewis stores rose 20% last week, compared to the previous week, and online sales hit record levels.

John Lewis said that it had seen a “significant improvement” to sales over the week to December 6, with kidswear and toys, along with home furnishings and home entertainment, performing well.

The company said that the combination of the passing on of the VAT reduction and their price matching policy had contributed to the rise. John Lewis said that it had beaten last year’s record online sales week by half a million pounds.

The biggest online sales week starts with the second Monday of December, dubbed “Mega Monday” and ends around ten days before Christmas. Internet sales were driven by demand for gifts, Christmas decorations, furnishing accessories, home electronics and toys.

John Lewis director of selling operations Nat Wakely said: “This week’s much stronger sales have borne out our belief that John Lewis’ strong and innovative Christmas products, customer service and price matching will ensure our continued position as a market leader over the festive period.

He added: “The next two weeks are absolutely crucial for us and all high street retailers but we are confident that the upward sales trend will continue.”

Intelligent Postioning will be doing a report on John Lewis shortly, to see if there is scope for bettering these figures with quality SEO. Watch this space for more details.