Apple Pay looks to boost UK Digital Payments

Back in October 2014 Apple launched Apple Pay in the US as part of its iOS 8.1 update. The Cupertino giant then saw 1 million American activations in the first 3 days.

However over here in the UK we have been awaiting news of a similar launch. Many blogs have been written about getting Apple Pay in the UK and false hints & rumours that Belgium may be the first European country to get the new digital payment service haven't helped. But on 8th June at Apple's WWDC 2015 the silence was broken and the announcement was made that Apple Pay is to launch in the UK, making us just the second country to adopt the service... ahead of Canada and other candidates.

More surprising was the news that we'll get Apple Pay in a matter of weeks, as plans for a July 2015 launch are now underway. Meaning that key UK retailers such as Marks and Spencers and Waitrose will offer you contactless / NFC payments via your iPhone this Summer. Furthermore, TFL will also offer Apple Pay across its network.

However, if you can tap in & out on buses and tube trains around London from next month using both your iPhone and your NFC-enabled credit card... does this spell the beginning of the end for the Oyster Card system?

The UK Digital & eCommerce Talent Marketplace

Rupert Jupp, Director at Princedale Partners the digital headhunters & talent advisors, has sent me his first quarterly review of the UK's eCommerce and Multi-channel retail recruitment market... and it makes for an interesting read.

 

Rupert claims that the sector has already got off to a great start in 2013, with the appointment of senior digital roles in companies such as: Debenhams, Selfridges, Argos, SkyScanner, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Asos and Bodyshop. Jupp even starts his review with the bold claim "There can be few other sectors where the war for both experienced and young talent is so competitive."

 

So this year is looking positive for those in the UK digital marketplace. It also seems that business stakeholders are becoming increasingly aware of the objectives and goals for these senior digital hires. I hope so, although from my recent experiences... there is still a long way to go until we have compete understanding and appreciation of these roles.

 

BTW: Good luck to Rupert in his new venture, which can be found at www.PrincedalePartners.com

Retail website homepage weights – why are they so bloated?

I have been working on client eCommerce sites recently and noticed that some competitive ones were very slow to download. Assuming my Internet connection was the problem I looked to stop any other online services that might be running (e.g. Skype, downloads, etc.)… Only to find I didn’t have anything else downloading.

So I loaded-up Firebug (a brilliant and free debugging tool that plugs into Firefox) and checked the size of the homepages I was looking at.

Here’s what I found:

Site: http://www.johnlewis.com/
Total file size: 573k
Onload time*: 7.55s

Site: http://www.marksandspencer.com/
Total file size: 1.5Mb
Onload time*: 13.63s

Site: http://www.hsamuel.co.uk/
Total file size: 1.3Mb
Onload time*: 16.28s

Site: http://www.debenhams.com/
Total file size: 1.1Mb
Onload time*: 8.16s

Site: http://www.goldsmiths.co.uk/
Total file size: 1.1Mb
Onload time*: 7.44s

Site: http://www.bhs.co.uk/
Total file size: 720kb
Onload time*: 7.39s

Site: http://www.morrisons.co.uk/
Total file size: 1.1Mb
Onload time*: 7.22s

Site: http://asda.co.uk/
Total file size: 866k
Onload time*: 9.33s

Note: This isn’t an exactly scientific test, being conducted once on a PC with network traffic. But even as indicators of total file size and download time, they do start to paint a pretty interesting picture.

However these figures pale into mere insignificance when compared with the weight of the George Style Blog http://georgestyle.george.com/ set up to accompany their support of Graduate Fashion Week. This homepage tops the scales at a whopping 2.8Mb (or to put it another way, not just one but two entire old HD floppy drives from the past!).

You really have to ask why this sort of bloated homepage shenanigans is still going on in this age of web page optimisation…. and whether any of these UK retailers are aware that an increase in page delivery speed can significantly improve conversion.



*Onload time is approximately the time taken for the page to start to display. Other elements are still downloading and the entire page might take much longer to fully render.

UK eCommerce continues to get more usable

In the run up to Christmas, Online Usability agency Webcredible have released their latest report that evaluates the websites of 20 of the UK's leading high street retailers. The Online usability research shows that once again WHSmiths have retained the top spot, but this year have been joined there by Marks & Spencer.
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/white-papers/ecommerce-usability-2009.shtml

The report makes fascinating reading, not only with some great insight (e.g. how Waterstones provides contextual search within a specific product category - which I find particularly useful) but also that it still misses out some of the major online high street players (e.g. River Island).