Multi-channel

Shop Your Way

Launched in July 2009, Shop Your Way allows customers to place orders for clothing, beauty and homeware in stores, online, over the phone and – since April 2010 – using the mobile web. They can specify delivery to an address of their choice or collect their order free of charge from a nearby store. During the year we rolled out the service to 444 stores, including 151 Simply Food stores. Customer feedback continues to be very positive and we will extend Shop Your Way further in the coming year.

Website

More of our customers shopped online with us this year, resulting in an increase in site traffic of 18% on last year. We experienced particularly good growth in dresses, footwear and lingerie, with some 24% of our schoolwear and 45% of our furniture purchased online.

During the year we made a number of enhancements to our website to improve customer experience and encourage more shoppers to complete their transactions. As a result, conversion of traffic has increased throughout the year.

As traditional online retail matures, mobile is expected to be the principal growth area for internet shopping. In May 2010 we became the first high street retailer to launch a fully mobile-enabled website. Customers can now shop with M&S from any web-enabled mobile phone or device. To date the site has had 5.5 million visitors, generating over 59,000 orders and has been recognised with five industry awards including Most Effective Mobile Site at the EMMA Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2010. Increasing numbers of customers are making larger purchases such as beds and sofas from their mobile phones.

Reflecting the growing demand for an interactive shopping experience, we launched an improved ratings and reviews function in October. This attracted an average of 1,200 product reviews per week in the first five months. Reviews provide M&S and our customers with valuable information about our products, helping us to provide more of what our customers want and understand where we can improve. The new format asks for more detailed feedback about the fit, style, quality and value – as well as information on the reviewers themselves. The facility was extended in March to include furniture reviews and ratings.

We know customers who read reviews are more likely to make a purchase than customers who don’t. So in March we launched post-purchase emails to encourage customers to share their views on items they have bought. Emails are sent to customers two weeks after each purchase – five days on flowers – suggesting they post a review online. Subsequently weekly reviews have increased to 10,000.

Customers also use our website as a source of information, so this year we launched ‘Smart FAQs’. This easy to use ‘search engine’ provides customers with relevant answers in real time, as well as a dynamic ranking of the top ten frequently asked questions. The service has reduced the need to email or phone our service team for basic queries, such as opening hours and keeps customers happier and shopping on the site for longer.

Christmas helper Our dedicated Christmas microsite helped customers organise their festive celebrations and included a gift finder and party planner. Redesign of M&S TV player In March 2011, the M&S TV player under went a complete redesign to make it more engaging and interactive to customers. Content is now more accessible and easier to navigate..

M&S TV

M&S TV allows us to share our products, expertise and innovations with our customers in a lively and engaging way. Since launch in 2009 we have produced some 900 videos, which have had nearly seven million views and prompted over 900,000 ‘buy’ clicks. In August we relaunched the service, with a new series of weekly films fronted by Myleene Klass, featuring real customers from different age groups.

Most viewed M&S TV films Customers love to use M&S TV for behind the scenes access and since launch in March our summer TV ad has been viewed over 110,000 times.

Myleene’s Makeovers Myleene Klass fronts a new weekly show on M&S TV, providing customers with the latest fashion news and sneak previews of our new ranges.

Social media

The growth of social media has driven customer engagement with M&S. We now have over 265,000 Facebook fans and 21,000 Twitter followers, helping us gain further insight into customer shopping habits and keep them updated with our latest initiatives. This year our Facebook news posts received over 132 million views and over 105,000 people posted feedback. Increasingly, social media activity is translating into sales as customers become more comfortable shopping through new channels.

Building our multi-channel business

In November we set out clear plans to develop our multi-channel operations over the next three years. In the second half of the year we made good progress against these plans.

In February we appointed Laura Wade-Gery as Executive Director, Multi-channel E-commerce. Laura’s appointment significantly strengthens our management team and will help accelerate the growth of this business.

We also announced that we would exit our partnership with Amazon when our existing agreement ends in 2013/14. This will enable us to build and manage a new platform for marksandspencer.com and offer a more customised multi-channel experience for our customers.

In April we announced our first international transactional website, marksandspencer.fr. Due to launch in late 2011, our French language website will offer a full range of womenswear, lingerie, menswear, kidswear and homeware. The site will trade in euro and offer local delivery prices, providing opportunities to serve customers throughout France. We plan to set up further tailored websites for specific local markets from 2013.

As part of our plans we will continue to provide customers with new ways to shop with M&S. We are exploring several new technologies and since February have been trialling touch screen ordering points in six stores. We will expand this trial to 20 stores in September 2011.

Our multi-channel offer will be underpinned by an effective distribution network and in December we confirmed our plans for a dedicated national e-commerce distribution centre in Castle Donington, Leicestershire. The new 900,000 sq ft site will open in 2013 and will service all customer orders placed through Shop Your Way.

Looking ahead

We have clear plans to grow M&S into an international multi-channel retailer and have set a target to grow sales by £300m and £500m by 2013/14. Our investments in new warehousing and systems have given us a solid foundation on which to build our Multi-channel business, making the M&S brand more accessible to more customers – both in the UK and internationally.