Andrew McFayden - Marketing and Sales Insights Consultant

You may be wondering how to calculate your sales and marketing ROI. If you are not a sales manager or unfamiliar in setting sales targets this might be of value to you, especially if you are used to marketing metrics and ROI only?

Why it's important to try to get it right in retail today:

In a given tough trading retail “bricks and mortar” environment in Australia, I was very surprised that one of the leading department stores in Australia, David Jones had failed to deliver in my first online shopping experience with them and in store experience last weekend. 

When my old vacuum cleaner decided to fail over the weekend, I started my buying journey online for a new one. After an online comparison between David Jones, Myer, JB HiFi, Harvey Norman and Good Guys, the best offer was listed on the David Jones website after a less known online retail brand stated they had availability and a competitive price. David Jones had advertised $674 from $899 plus a $60 Gift Voucher for all orders over $250 on full price purchases.

During the online search and research based on post code had listed Bourke St, Malvern Central and Southland stores all having and displaying stock availability for in store pickup, click & collect or delivery.

Here is how my customer experience unfolded over the afternoon which took over an hour to get this resolved and complete a purchase engaging multiple channels to attempt to purchase one product.

Perhaps on this occasion I was just an unlucky consumer, however it raised a number questions in my mind about how important a well integrated customer experience strategy is to acquire new customer business revenue growth and ensure a solid customer retention strategy around customer lifetime value can meet business objectives.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE FAIL #1 - PHYSICAL IN STORE CHANNEL

Based on this information and convenience, I decided to drive to the Malvern Central store to pick a unit.

In store, I went to the vacuum cleaner section looking for any signage of the special offer or a demonstration unit to look at. Customer service said they were having issues with stock representation and none of the special offer was in store.

 Also the gift voucher of $60 was based on FULL Purchase price and not off the special price, however a previous customer had managed to order it via the special offer and also received the $60 gift voucher in addition.

The customer service staff advised the best way was to order this online to take advantage of the special offer and also gift voucher deal. 

I was thinking back to how the approach to website design used to be much simpler over 10 years ago, and before the constant disruption in technology platforms were accelerated since Web 2.0. I don't proclaim to be a creative award winning web designer, however one of common themes our clients and businesses interviewed have shared with us which keeps coming up is how businesses can spend so much time and money on web design creative elements. It seems to occur largely in marketing silos without a solid holistic commercial view and digital strategy, particularly for smaller to medium sized businesses.

The desired outcomes for your website development can deliver measurable and tangible ROI to increase their sales revenue and profits. So how can you achieve this? The challenge is that the connection or linkage between business strategy, digital strategy, creative design, commercial and marketing aligned outcomes seems to be commonly amiss.