M&S released its latest trading update this morning and blamed the poor sales mainly on the website moving to a new platform.
Let’s just remind ourselves that they spent £150m on the new website.
“Marks and Spencer has reported a big drop in online sales after its move to a new website platform hit trading. Sales at M&S.com were down 8.1% in the 13 weeks to 28 June, with M&S chief Marc Bolland admitting the new site had an impact on sales.
Mr Bolland blamed teething problems with the website for the fall in sales. The latest results mark the 12th quarter in a row that sales at M&S’s homeware and clothing division have fallen” Source: BBC
Other sites also reported the news this morning:
“General merchandise sales were impacted by the ‘settling in’ of a new .com website, with online sales falling 8.1%. The business is now focused on optimising the website commercially.”
Shouldn’t optimising be done during and continuously after a launch? Which incumbent agency does this?
What’s interesting is the auto-suggests provided by Google:
By looking at what Google is suggesting the developers and the agency should’ve had a fair idea on what the sentiment was like for the new website right?
What about the in-house marketing team?
Google related searches also suggests problems:
It seems as though these problems were being encountered way back in March. Read this forum on Money Saving Expert website.
Also some comments this morning via journalists and influential retail analysts:
The figures from M&S are lacklustre. The online numbers are extremely worrying. I don’t buy that the website is ‘settling in’!
— Neil Saunders (@NeilRetail) July 8, 2014
And some responses:
@NeilRetail the website is horrible. Haven’t bought from M&S since they changed it — cv (@madvixen1983) July 8, 2014
And some people now giving feedback:
@bbc5live @marksandspencer re M&S it’s the website. Useability is rubbish, and so I give up trying to use it. Previous website worked fine.
— Fi Be (@Mistyff999) July 8, 2014
So where has it all gone wrong?
Since publishing this post this morning I have had some positive comments, especially by Dan Barker:
@priteshpatel9 I did a few user tests on it when it first relaunched – lots of 'it looks nice' comments, but struggle with actually using.
— dan barker (@danbarker) July 8, 2014
@priteshpatel9 i do think they're partly now pinning the blame all on the site where the issue is not really *all* about the site though.
— dan barker (@danbarker) July 8, 2014
@priteshpatel9 interesting. I don't think there's one answer, it was simply a poorly managed migration from all aspects.
— Andreas Nicolaides (@Dre_Nico) July 8, 2014
Is it the usability? Is it the magazine type design putting people off? Was it the user experience? Too difficult to navigate and checkout?
Can these factors really cause a 8.1% drop in sales? Could it have been a lot worse?
Somebody at some point (e-commerce manager, analytics folk) will have noticed the fall in sales/revenue from the site since launch.
Wonder what changes had been made to improve conversion rates?
I’ll pass this one over the UX and UI experts who will probably follow this one up with a few posts on Econsultancy maybe?