Several days ago I came across an announcement of Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards October 2015 Winners. It features the businesses that are leaders in customer satisfaction based on extensive survey of 50,000 consumers.
I visited the link above and decided to have a look who are the winner in Retail category. You can find the list below or visit Roy Morgan website to see these businesses. Since I am eCommerce consultant I always wonder what platform the leaders of the market use, so I visited the websites of all winners in Retail category and checked the technologies their websites are based on. The findings are presented below.
eCommerce platforms used by Customer Satisfaction Award Winners (Oct 2015)
| Category | Winner | Platform | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Store of the Month | Supercheap Auto | Custom Asp.Net | |
| Coffee Shop of the Month | Muffin Break | Wordpress | No eCommerce |
| Clothing Store of the Month | Rockmans | Custom Asp.Net | |
| Department Store of the Month | Myer | IBM Websphere Commerce | |
| Discount Department Store of the Month | Harris Scarfe | Hybris | |
| Discount Variety Store of the Month | The Reject Shop | Hybris | No eCommerce |
| Furniture/Electrical Store of the Month | Betta Home Living | Magento Enterprise | |
| Hardware Store of the Month | Home Timber & Hardware | Custom PHP | No eCommerce |
| Chemist/Pharmacy of the Month | Soul Pattinson | Custom PHP | No eCommerce |
| Quick Service Restaurant of the Month | Pizza Capers | Wordpress and Ruby on Rail | |
| Liquor Store of the Month | 1st Choice | Sitecore/Ascentium Commerce Server | |
| Shoe Store of the Month | The Athlete's Foot | Magento Enterprise | |
| Sports Store of the Month | Rebel Sport | Custom Asp.Net | |
| Supermarket of the Month | Foodland | Adobe Dreamweaver | No eCommerce |
As you see there are:
- 2 stores using Magento Enterprise (platform where Magenable specialises),
- 2 websites use Hybris (where one doesn’t have online store)
- IBM Websphere and Ascentium Commerce Server (used to be Microsoft Commerce) – one store each.
eCommerce isn’t important? 35% of customer satisfaction leaders don’t have online stores
What have surprised my however is that five out of fourteen businesses (35%) do not have any online store at all. At the best they have a catalogue published online. It is quite an interesting finding for year 2015. I admit that there may be a case when retailers really have good reasons don’t have online store, but I always thought that such cases are quite rare. Even more interesting that we have here not just some retailers, but businesses that managed to get highest rank for customer satisfaction, so apparently have satisfied customers. Are their customers not missing online ordering capability?
Let’s have a closer look to these retailers and try to understand why.
- Coffee Shop of the Month, Muffin Break. This is probably a case when online purchases are rare indeed. If a consumer needs hot coffee she just comes in and buys it. There may be a case to place order online and pick-up in store at specific time to avoid waiting, but probably it is unnecessary complication and there is no real demand for it.
- Discount Variety Store of the Month, The Reject Shop. The possible reasons here may be: high delivery costs relative to average transaction volume, limitations from suppliers (e.g. only in-store sale). That are valid problems, but they can be solved with proper thinking and planning. Interesting that Reject Shop uses Hybris, which is eCommerce platform, so probably it has plans to start selling something online.
- Hardware Store of the Month, Home Timber & Hardware. Technically you can buy something at Home Timber & Hardware, there is a possibility to order gift cards, but that’s it. For other product you can just see suppliers and browse online version of catalogue. I am not sure what is the reason not having online store here – just following example of the market leader (Bunnings) or concern about product complexity and need to visit the store for customer. In my opinion Home Timber & Hardware should have online store, there are number of use cases when people be happy to buy online.
- Chemist/Pharmacy of the Month, Soul Pattinson. I admit that there may be complications to sell drugs online, but there are plenty of chemists in Australia who found the way to organise it, so honestly I don’t understand why Soul Pattinson is missing this opportunity.
- Supermarket of the Month, Foodland. This case is even clearer than previous, I don’t know any really good reason why grocery store shouldn’t have eCommerce. According IBIS it online grocery is a $2B market with 15.3% Y2Y growth rate. There are excuses (no question it is quite complex to build eCommerce for grocery store), but big business is complex in general, it doesn’t mean that if something is complex you shouldn’t do it with strong business case.
Hence in my opinion only one out of four retailers has good reasons don’t sell products online, others just under-serving their customers and missing business opportunity, revenue and profit. If you have a different opinion – feel free to share it in the comment box below.
