Personalisation is a method used by companies on their website which allows the web pages to be tailored to enhance a customer’s usage on the site. It specifically targets an individual customer based on the customer’s history on the site e.g. if you purchase a book from Amazon, the next time you visit the site, there will be a list of recommended purchases for you. Personalisation includes the use of cookies, collaborative filtering, and user profiling and data analysis from the companies’ side.

The image below demonstrates how a site such as Amazon uses a customer’s information to make online shopping more personal for the customer; it specifically says “recommended for you” and then it informs the user that the recommendations are based on items which are owned by the user and more.

Recommendations from Amazon.co.uk

Personally I am for personalisation as it can make shopping online more enjoyable for the consumer. It may recommend certain products which you have no interest in whatsoever, but based on purchase history on a website, and products which you view on a site; this is what the site bases its recommendations on. Even Facebook is now using recommendations or ‘suggestions’. It analyses your friend list and recommends other people you might want to add based on if you have any mutual friends with that person.

Friend & Fan Recommendations on Facebook

Even something as simple as registering with a site, and then logging on to it and the site saying “Welcome ….” with your name is a form of personalisation.

Some people will be against personalisation in fear of their privacy being insecure, however when you register with an online store, they usually ask you if you would like your data to be kept private, i.e. they will be the only site with access to it, or if you will allow third party sites to contact you – most of the time this question however is the ‘small print’ and people skip past it.

I have no problem with personalisation and believe it to be a good way to promote products and to target the right audience for specific products. The same way companies will send out advertisements in the mail, this is in a way similar, but without the junk mail – you can ignore it if you like, but it’s always there if you are interested in what else that particular site might have to offer you based on your history of purchases, and your browsing throughout their site.

Searching for keywords which related to Great Universal proven to be quite difficult as it is a catalogue like a lot of online shopping sites. By using different sites such as google.com and alexa.com I did a search on the site’s URL to bring up results which included popular keywords that people use to search for online shopping which redirects them to Great Universal. The first site which I used in this search was http://xinureturns.com/

Results from http://xinureturns.com/

This site only brought up results which included popular search engines who have redirected users to Great Universal.

I tried using Google Analytics for the site but it required me to insert a piece of code into the webpage itself, and being that I do not have access as an administrator to another person’s site this was impossible and I had to find other methods to complete this task.

Results from compete.com

Compete.com was another site which I used and it brought up 5 keywords which users have used to get to Great Universal. However to obtain more than the 5 keywords given, you had to have a pro account with the site.

A site which was quite good in helping me find keywords was alexa.com

Key Words from Alexa.com

This site brought up various keywords which are associated with Great Universal. These words were particular brands or products which the site sells in general.

The lat site which I used to complete this task was Google AdWords. This site brought up the best results so far.

Google AdWords for Great Universal

The 12 keywords therefore which I have chosen for this task are:

gus
catalogue
universal
home shopping
littlewoods
shop direct
high street fashion
gus home shopping
mens online shopping
women’s online shopping
man shoes store
uk shopping

Because most of these when entered into Google Search will bring up Great Universal or a related link.

E-Marketing

Using Google to search for Great Universal by using the name of the company ‘Great Universal’ brings up the site as the first result however, by only using select keywords has proven to be quite difficult. My first search was on “catalogue shopping uk” as Great Universal is an online catalogue, as well as a catalogue which can be delivered to your home. It did not bring up any results linking to the site, but did bring up Great Universal’s partner site littlewoods.com. Other suggestions that Google recommended that I search included Argos and jewellery.

If I type in ‘catalogues’ into the search engine, it brings up littlewoods at the top of the page and Great Universal is listed on the side as one of the sponsored links:

Great Universal Appearing on the Sponsored Links

Therefore it is apparent that Great Universal are paying to appear on the first page on Google under the sponsored links section and since Littlewoods is under the same management as Great Universal, Shop Direct, they are also having their site appear from paying to come up in the results from the search of a general key word, in this case ‘catalogues’.

Other sites which also come up include:

• ·www.simplybe.co.uk
• ·www.jdwilliams.co.uk
• ·www.24studio.co.uk
• ·www.very.co.uk

And search suggestions such as, home shopping, shopping catalogues, littlewoods, choice catalogue and more.

Competitors which come up in the list of paid for results include Women’s Catalogue Simply Be, Damart, Choice, Fifty Plus and Very.co.uk. These results are highlighted to attract the users’ attention away from what they were originally searching for.

Cloud computing is an up-and-coming technology which uses the internet and remote servers to maintain data. ‘Cloud’ is a metaphor for the Internet and usually cloud computing services provide businesses with applications over the internet which are accessed from the internet. Cloud computing has 3 levels: applications, platforms and infrastructures. Applications include everyday accessed applications such as gmail, yahoo, google, and wordpress. These companies host their service in the ‘cloud’ and internet users sign up for it. This kind of service is an end-user application. It is also Saas (Software as a Service). Platforms which are used is an application platform which is offered to developers. Developers can write an application and upload their code into the cloud; some examples of this is the google app engine.

Diagram of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing and E-Commerce

It is possible, within the next 5 years 90% of businesses will be using some format of cloud computing to provide services to consumers. Most online services are already using some form of IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. Many e-commerce businesses which are using licensed carts on their site are paying for hosting services (which falls under IaaS) and this is a part of cloud computing.

This simply means then that more online businesses will be moving their infrastructure, development and software to cloud computing. Cloud Computing is basically another way to describe what e-commerce businesses have already been doing.

Advantages of moving an e-commerce business to the cloud includes:

Speed – building applications is 5 times faster

Cost – shares a proven development platform; applications can be built for 20 per cent of usual e-commerce costs

Customer Focus – it’s easier to do business with customers

Pay-as-you-go – the cloud minimizes upfront investments with a pay-as-you-go approach. Thousands of new users can be added with no added investment.

Security – due to the centralization of data, security improves when developed with the right platform

Potential Problems with the cloud:

Partners – reluctance to trust a partner with important aspects of the business

Unknown Territory – many businesses may not adopt the cloud structure until it is wide spread while those who choose to go ahead of the competition and take it on earlier may benefit from it more.

From the research that I have done it is apparent that Cloud Computing is eventually going to be taking over most e-commerce businesses as it provides more benefits than problems.

When an order is placed however, it has to go through various places in the companies supply chain which includes, pricing a product, checking stock, shipping status, and the financial side of things i.e. credit checking a customer. This process does not take long from the customer’s side, but on the companies side it can be a difficult process if things are not in order.

Great Universal requires physical warehouses to quickly fulfil orders once they are placed by the customer. As quite a large UK company (and part of Shop Direct), there are various warehouses around the UK: (the blue dots on the image below shows the various warehouses owned by Shop Direct in the UK)

Great Universal Locations

Several of their warehouses are third party sites, which means that they would have to maintain a close relationship with this company to ensure a continuous flow of a good working relationship.

It is a virtual organisation, meaning it only uses information and communications technology to run their business, which allows it to operate without any defined physical boundaries. However being  virtual organisation also means that it has to rely on ‘pull’ operations. This reliance on pull means that they would find it difficult at times in trying to forecast how much stock they would require, and it is even more so difficult for them to meet deadlines when orders are placed at holiday periods as they have to deliver to the customer’s door.

The threat of substitute products

Many companies that are associated with Great Universal such as Next, Littlewoods, also sell similar products in the same way i.e. over the Internet or via a catalogue and a phone order. Many people may also prefer simply going into a store in their city centre rather than places orders and waiting for delivery of their items. Because of this Great Universal has to have something unique which will attract their customers to make them want to shop with them and make purchases online or over the phone – ways that they may do this includes promotional material sent out in the post or email advertising a sale or a new product which may only be available through them. Currently, in my own opinion Great Universal’s one main competitor or substitute may be E-Bay as items sell much cheaper.

The threat of the new entry of new competitors

Every day more and more people are investing in online businesses. However, seeing that Great Universal is the kind of site which sells a wide range of items such as clothing, jewelry, electronics, gifts, furniture etc it would be difficult for one new company in particular to take any customers away from Great Universal. Many of the companies however that are similar to Great Universal already work along side them.

The intensity of competitive rivalry

Great Universal would only be in competition with other catalogue stores such as Next or Littlewoods. Unlike Next, Great Universal offer their customers an online shopping credit limit, which they can they pay off monthly given their credit rating is approved. E-Bay would be a rival in particular, not from an auction point of view, but rather the prices which customers can get items on E-Bay for a much cheaper price however they also attract two completely different types of customer. Great Universal sells brand name brand new items, while E-Bay instead features independent sellers, which cannot always be trusted!

The bargaining power of customers

Anyone who enjoys shopping online would enjoy browsing through Great Universal’s website. Their site is divided into different sections – this allows customers to find what they are looking for quickly! With this in mind, Great Universal draws their customers to the site with promotional material such as sale catalogues (which may be posted to the customers home or sent via e-mail) or limited sale items and being that the customer will then assume these items in particular will not be available for long they will instantly log online to see what is available for them. In my own experience, Great Universal is very Customer Friendly especially when dealing with customer complaints and returns.

The bargaining power of suppliers

Great Universal receives most of their products from outside suppliers particularly when it comes to clothing and electronics. This can be tricky mostly when it comes to the electronics as technology firms are in high demand and prices continue to increase. However, Great Universal do have a wide range of electronics available on their site and have more recently just launched customers the opportunity to sign up for a phone contract with Vodafone meaning that Great Universal has come to a deal with Vodafone itself to allow them to feature this kind of promotion on their site.

If a customer wishes to return items, the company’s terms and conditions state that they have 14 days to do so from receipt of the items. It is also free to return items.

The site has a FAQ section as well which allows customers to search for help by keyword or by category.

The only minor difference between GreatUniversal and its competitors is that GreatUniversal seems to be the only company which I have personally come across so far which offers next day free returns. This is a bonus factor in my opinion, as if you order something which you do not like or does not fit or is not suitable, you can simply fill out the packaging slip and re-wrap the item and arrange a return via the phone or online.
Q.8 When registering on the site, the connection to the site is encrypted. You can tell something like this if there is a padlock logo at the bottom of the screen while you are on the site entering private data. Having an encrypted connection to the site means that data is encrypted before being transmitted over the Internet. Encryption makes it difficult for unwanted people to view information which is currently travelling between computers or networks. This means it is highly unlikely that anyone will interfere with a customer’s online shopping experience, or someone who is registering and entering credit card details.

Q.9 GreatUniversal.com does use cookies. The site uses cookies so that it can monitor and improve the site – it may gather certain information about the user when they are using the site, this information might include details of the domain name and IP address, operating system and browser.

A cookie is an element of data that a web site can send to a browser which can then be stored on the computer. They allow data to be stored to see who has viewed pages and advertisements on websites and in turn allows the web master to make the site more user friendly e.g. it can allow the user to save their password so they don’t have to enter it every time they visit the site. GreatUniversal.com uses cookies so that they can give their customers a better experience when they return to the site.

Great Univesal – been online since 30 March 1998. 1,545 Traffic Rank in Great Britiain. 95% of it’s users are from the UK. 0.8% are from Germany. 0.5% from Taiwan. And 2.8% from Other.

Statistics for Great Universal

In comparison with other sites, great universal has the least ranked traffic. Using attentionmeter.com, I compared great universal with next, argos and new look and got the following results:

Comparison to similar sites/companies

This chart shows that the most popular site out of the four is Argos, while the least popular is Great Universal.

Great Universal gets on average 9,951 hits per day, according to statbrain.com. StatBrain also provides information such as how many links are on the web linking to the site in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. It also lets the user know that the server for the company is located within Europe. Other sites provide information such as development tools used on the site (which is Apache webserver and jQuery), and where the site domain was purchased from (Network Solutions, Llc.) This information is provided from quarkbase.com

Q5.

When purchasing something from GreatUniversal.com the customer goes through various stages of checkout. Firstly, the customer has to decide what it is they want to purchase. This can be done by enterting a catalogue number, a keyword or by simply browsing through the site. Once the user has decided what it is they want, they can simply add it to their shopping basket after choosing how they wish to pay – however to use the weekly payment options the user has to be registerted to the site and have an account:

Add to Basket

Once the item has been added to the basket, a pop-up appears telling the user it has been added, and do they wish to continue shopping or go to their basket. For this example, the user will go straight to their basket so they can complete check-out.

Go to Check-out

This page confirms what the user has in their basket, and then gives them the link so they can complete the check-out. After they click to complete check-out, they are prompted to sign in either with their e-mail address or their account number. Once they have logged in, they are again brought to a page where they can confirm their order before they complete check-out:

Confirm and Pay

Once the user has checked everything, they can then click ‘pay by card’. As they have to be registered to use the site, their address is stored on the site and they only have to enter their card details if they have not already got a card saved on the site to use.

Once they complete their order, a confirmation window is then brought up letting the user know their order is being processed. They will also receive an e-mail from the site confirming this. If the payment goes through, the user can then track their order in the ‘my account’ tab of the website. However, if the payment does not successfully go through, the user is sent out a letter by the post telling them what went wrong with their order and asking them to contact the company to discuss it. Again, if it is successful, it is sent out by a delivery company, and has to be signed for if it is electrical. The company also offers a free returns feature by the same company.

Q6

Great Universal already advertises their business thoroughly through sending out promotional items in the mail to their current customers. Great Universal’s site is quite big in that it has a wide selection for its customers to choose from; therefore unless the customer knows what it is they are after, I do not think mobile access to the site would do the site itself justice. Therefore, it would have more potential if accessed from digital television. Before the company itself were to advertise going in this direction however they would have to consider their number of current sales – if they were doing poorly perhaps they could invest more money into advertising their site and ways in which it can be accessed – however if it has steady progress and its sales are growing rather than falling, they could still invest in this new channel to further increase sales. Choices which might need to be made when considering this option include their monthly sales, their current situation within the market and their competitors as well if they have the money to go in this direction

Home Page of GreatUniversal.com

1

Great Universal is a shopping website. It sells:

• Clothes – men’s, women’s and children’s
• Electronics – PC’s, Laptops, TV’s, Hi-fi systems, Mobile phones etc
• Furniture
• Sports equipment
• Jewellery
• Toys, and more

Customers can order online or over the phone. The site is user friendly, and each section of the site has a sub section which splits up the site so the user can quickly find what it is they are looking for. The layout of the site is simple, with the customers shopping cart easily accessible at the top right hand corner, which also had links to the customer’s account (if they have one), along with links to register, login, or track a previous order.

The first impression of the website is that it is intended to persuade its viewers to look further through the sites pages, and to potentially make a purchase. It contains headlines such as “Buy Now, Pay September 2010” giving the customer the impression that they can buy whatever they like today, and not worry about having to pay for it for a year.

Great Universal is a part of the Shop Direct Group, which also works with the likes of Littlewoods and Woolworths.  Like Littlewoods, Great Universal has the same website layout.

2

The business behind the website is the Shop Direct Group. Shop Direct is said to have around 5 million active customers across the UK. This is said to be because people are now becoming more confident to shop online, whereas before they were weary of inputting their bank/credit card details online.

The company, Shop Direct Group, have five locations across Manchester. The site in Little Hulton is central in the company’s warehousing and returns network. It has 200 staff and operates 7 days a week and processes over 4 million items a year. While the site in Shaw employs between 750 and 1250 staff depending on the season; last year Shaw had processed approximately 39 million customer orders. Another site in Chadderton also processes customer returns and employs over 1000 staff. In Middleton, there are over 200 staff, which processes large items such as furniture.

More recently, the group has increased its awareness and sales due to an £18million investment in nation wide multi-channel advertising using TV, Press and online mediums. It will continue to use these methods during 2010.

“Financial highlights:

 Group sales up 7.4% to £1.7bn on a comparable 52 week basis

 EBITDA up 182% to £96m (07/08 £34m adjusted)*

 Online sales up 31%, accounting for 49% of total Group sales (07/08 38% of sales)

 On track to meet 70% online sales target by the end of financial year 2010/11”

Shop Direct employs about 10,500 people. It has 5 million active customers across the UK. It is the UK’s largest online and home shopping retailer with sales of circa £1.7billion. It is the largest online clothing retailer in the UK. The 2^nd largest furniture retailer in the UK. The 3^rd largest sportswear retailer in the UK. The 4^th largest electrical retailer in the UK. They also over their customers a range of credit, insurance and warranty products.

3

GreatUniversal.com being part of a large online company of sales is the only channel to market for the business as a whole. No public shops within a city sell all the items which are available online at a site such as Great Universal therefore it is a great convenience to a customer to be able to logon to a site such as Great Universal, and browse through its many different items and order these things from the comfort from their own home, with an added bonus of free delivery and free returns. It is fair to say, that other website’s that sell items such as clothing such as Next.co.uk can also be compared to Great Universal as they also sell some electronic items, but not as wide a range as Great Universal. As earlier stated, Great Universal is a part of a large company, Shop Direct, who also manages Littlewoods for example. This company in general has a very large base of customers, 5million across the UK. Personally, as a customer of Great Universal, I believe that this company will only continue to grow and profit from its online sales as it regularly promotes online sales via the post to its registered customers.

Year     % Population
2005 59.8%
2007 63.8%
2009 79.8%

The number of people who are going online seems to increase by 10% every 2 years. People use the Internet for different reasons e.g. communicating with family/friends, buying/selling items, online banking, downloading music, searching for information etc.

A survey which has been carried out by ‘National Statistics’ tells us that ‘an estimated 13.9 million households in Great Britain could access the Internet from home between January and April 2006.’ This is 57 per cent of the British population. Northern Ireland was then also included in the survey which brought numbers up to 14.3 million homes with Internet access.

Research also shows that teenagers and young adults within the age range of 16- 24 are more likely to use the Internet; as the age range increases the less likely a person is to have any interest in using the Internet. 77% of people between the age of 16-24 are more likely to access the Internet everyday or almost everyday.

Research shows, that in 2006 the Internet usage in the UK was mostly used for searching for information about goods or services, and this activity was carried out more by males. Females scored higher in using e-mail more often. While in 2008, this activity had now changed to sending and receiving e-mails by most age groups and sexes.

More households now use a broadband connection to go online in comparison to the previous dial-up connection. The table below outlines this:

This shows, more people connecting via broadband, less people connecting via dial-up, and those who previously had no internet connection has decreased. This year, it has been recorded that 63% of households now have a broadband connection.

Communication is also one of the main reasons most people access the Internet. People use the internet to chat via instant messenger, or they maintain a web blog, post to message boards or make video calls by use of a webcam. Instant messaging proved to be the most popular activity out of all communication solutions available online, to both men and women, while maintaining a personal web blog was the least popular.