Etailers Challenged to Design for Different Customers, at UPA

For those of you who were unable to make it to the UK UPA's June meeting, Kevin Fitzsimons of Rubus' presentation entitled "Back to the Future" was an absorbing look at how online retailers and web developers could benefit from learning from history.

Central to his presentation was the fact that retail has always changed, and retailers are very much aware of how their customers behave, how they have behaved in the past and, to a lesser extent, how they may behave in the future.

Kevin drew on experiences of traditional retailers such as Clarks, Harrods, Selfridges and also with online stores such as Dabs.com and Polo.com to highlight the differences between those who are aware of their target market and those that are not.

He highlighted that, as a result of the novelty of the online space, a lot of what is obvious to traditional retailers has not been considered by online retailers or designers. Therefore, he argued, there is very little merchandising and very little tailoring of the online space to individual customer groups. He contrasted the difference between the men's a women's departments in Harrods from 1902 with the fact that the men's and the women's sections of the Debenham's site are virtually identical.

Kevin also said that in the stampede to get an online presence between 1998 and 2000 a lot of dodgy projects were given the go-ahead. In addition, many of the web sites were designed by people with no knowledge of the retail industry. This was made worse by traditional retailers feeling that nothing they knew was relevant to this new way of shopping. However, this is being disproved as the online marketplace matures.

Due to the low turn out and the high standard of the presentation the UPA will be scheduling Kevin's talk again at a future date - look out for details of it on the UPA website.

The next London UPA meeting will be on Web accessibility and given by Julie Howell of the RNIB.

Associated Link: UPA meeting schedule

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