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 site availability

The person I felt most sorry for the other week was not myself (despite some pretty intensive dental treatment*), but the Head of Debenhams Website Operations or whatever the exact role is at the department store giant. You see for several hours their flagship site was down during the Sale period.

This issue has occurred again, despite assurances of site improvements in 2006, when there were site stability problems and also when there were similar issues in 2008.

(That holding page has certainly been getting more than its fair share of usage over the years)

So rather than put myself in the shoes of that person at Debenhams, who would probably have had a molar drilled instead, I took solace from a report from the AT Internet Institute that gave the good news that:

British e-commerce websites have an average availability rate higher than that of the French, German and Spanish

It is perhaps worth pointing out that http://www.debenhams.com/ were not one of the UK websites tested as part of this test!

*one that left me dribbling for a few hours and something called "an inert substance" packing out the inside one of my teeth for a few weeks

Debenhams: The first UK department store to sell on Amazon and eBay

At first, ot seems like a daft decision... To sell your original & new clothing on eBay or Amazon, when you already have a decent and fully featured eCommerce website.

Well that's what UK department store Debehams
(www.debenhams.co.uk) have done and on both sites at the same time!
However, taking a closer look at the detail, this might not be as silly a decision as it first looks.
Firstly Debenhams is not selling its entire product catalogue on either site. On Amazon it has only 1000 selected products available now (increasing to about 2000 by next week), including its more up-market 'Designers at Debenhams' range. On auction site eBay however it is replicating the products from its outlet web store.

The competiton will be keeping a close eye on whether this initiative works for the now-profitable department store....

in reference to: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/debenhams-opens-on-ebay-and-amazon-1806274.html (view on Google Sidewiki)