It’s always an interesting time when people get in the festive mood, drinks flow, and wallets open. Even with talk of a recession, we’re seeing signs of a strong ecommerce christmas ahead of us.

eConsultancy recently published their own thoughts on the christmas season spending by predicting that nearly 50% of all customers planned to do the majority of their christmas spending the January sales and 39% will spend less this year. This seems to indicate to me that people will still be sending but looking to find some deals to save money at the same time.

As always, shopping online and comparing prices is the perfect way to do this and I think we’ll see a strong sales growth still for the online retailers this christmas.

Looking over at our friends across the pond, their CyberMonday data published on SFGate explained that more people had shopped compared with 2008 but they were all indeed spending a bit less.

So, just a sign of the times I guess, people looking for discounts, deals, voucher codes, cash back, and willing to spend less overall.

I’ve started doing some blogging again around the e-commerce sector and e-consultancy kindly asked if I wanted to be a guest blogger for them a few times a month. I’m always keen to have a whinge in front of more people so I gladly accepted.

My first post was on a passionate topic of mine around “customer service” and I entitled the post Customer service is more important than the cheapest price. It’s had nearly 10 retweets and 10 good solid discussion comments – very pleased with it.

If you haven’t read it yet – please check it out and write your thoughts. I strongly believe in customer service needing to improve at a vast range of retailers both on and offline and focus on that above pricing.

There have been some great responses to the seedcamp post I did a week or so ago, and the great thing is that is has got people thinking and debating the issue – which was 100% the idea.

I’m collating all the details and will do a follow up post on it all w/c 12th – so if you’ve got anything to add (from either side) before then – please do let me know..

Earlier this week I was invited on the panel by one of the sponsors Bill at AngelsDen, for the MashupEvent about good things to invest in going forward. I’m not entirely sure the evening focussed on this actual topic for long, but there were a few good snippets there.

There’s some fun video interviews done with myself and the rest of the panel:Video Interviews (2 mins each)

Yesterday I got kicked out of seedcamp 2009!

Aside from the embarrassment caused by the mismanagement of the situation, and the degrading scene created by being asked to leave in front of a room full of investors I consider friends & colleagues, I now find myself thinking about the entire Seedcamp concept.

Why was I asked to leave? Well apparently, I wasn’t an investor in the seedcamp main fund and thus not allowed to participate. What I hadn’t seemed to realise (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), is that this fourth day is where angel funds and VC’s pay upwards of £50,000 to attend (no kidding!), to get exclusive access to the company pitches and detailed business models and plans. Not only that, but these start-ups have at this point benefited from lots of mentoring advice from kind souls who attended the previous days to help. Now of course if I’d paid for an event and someone got in for free, I’d be annoyed to. It’s not that I’m objecting too, but rather a lot of confusion over what Seedcamp claims to be. The real question is how it can be trying to be both an open eco-system and a closed investment fund at the same time.

Firstly, don’t get me wrong, seedcamp gets some great investors and Saul and team have done more than most to promote the startup scene, and I have a lot of time and respect for them. It’s just that in this particular instance, I’m not sure the Seedcamp format is right or that it really knows what it wants to be. It pitches itself as “providing access to seed funding but also, more importantly, will expose startups to the collective experience of people who can help inspire Europe’s next generation of technology entrepreneurs.”. I believe healthy debate should be invited to see how things can be improved.

• The first day of Seedcamp sees 20 companies presenting their concepts / business in raw unedited format to anyone who wants to see it.


• What follows over the next two days is a series of sessions and help from mentors gathered from the great and good across the EU tech scene. The mentors give their valuable time (completely free) to provide advice, insight and every now and then a little bit of inspiration.


• The last day is the final presentations from the Seedcamp businesses where they pitch their full plan (hopefully having been significantly improved by the advice given) apparently only to Seedcamp fund investors, meaning the mentors and indeed all other attendees are prohibited from attending.


• The winners are then chosen and small amounts of cash invested.

This second to last point is where I believe the concept is flawed, and why there is a lack of transparency about the aims of the project. Why?

• Firstly, I don’t see why mentors are invited at all. They certainly don’t get thanked afterwards by the organisers (I wasn’t last year), and there is definitely an ungracious feeling of being shipped in and out like cattle to advise and help. If the argument is that seedcamp is doing the mentors a favour by giving them access to the startups- then I don’t buy it. I can achieve that quite easily myself with a phone call and a meeting at my office – thanks very much.


• Secondly, what’s with the closed investor day where VC’s pay large 5 figure sums to attend – is this also an investment in the main fund? Arguably, all the mentors have done is directly helped these investors by giving the start-ups valuable advice that then benefits their investment fund. If seedcamp is getting large sums of money for this then you could say that the mentors should be compensated too or not invited at all.


• Thirdly, if it really is purely an investment fund, then there is potential for large conflicts of interest. I did hear a few people say that GigLocator should have won one year but didn’t because one of the investors had a stake in Songkick. Whether this is true or not, it is a valid possibility.


• Having a closed investor day also deprives the companies of an opportunity to present to the widest possible audience and hear the thoughts of other investors and entrepreneurs. Perhaps most significantly deprives Seedcamp the opportunity to broaden their impact. How? Simply put – if any if the businesses were good and didn’t win a small group of external / angel investors could step in with financing, advice or indeed both.

To to really dig deep into the core of this issue, we need to understand who Seedcamp aims to benefit. That is, if its aim is to help the companies – it should be completely open and everyone has a chance to help out, invest, and have full access in a competitive way (perhaps with a first right of refusal given to Seedcamp). If on the other hand its primary purpose is to help Seedcamp investors refine the propositions and get some investment opportunities – then they should remain a completely closed event and Seedcamp should pay any advisors or let them invest at the same time. In either case, it should be much more transparent about what it is trying to do.

At the moment it appears to be firmly stuck in the middle!

You’ve got to love these surveys that get published that demonstrate, with stats, that your initial hypothesis all those years ago is now starting to manifest. The trick is all about the timing and riding the wave, launching to market at exactly the right point. Imagine you’re a surfer – catch the wave (trend) and go for it!

The spot in question came via InternetRetailing.net who spotted the survey from LinkShare (no they’re not getting a link as I can’t see where they published the survey!), whose findings indicated that 81% of people are now doing research online before buying a product!. That’s a phenomenal amount of individuals who want validation before making any purchase.

92% of people said they have more confidence in the information online than they do in high-street store assistants. Not unexpected considering the average person giving advice has always had to read the brochure in front of me when I asked about anything more than what was on the label. It also mentions that more people expect to shop online generally as they tighten their purse strings and seek out the best deal for that heavily researched products.

So how are people currently doing this online? Good question damn it!

• 75% price comparison engines
• 69% user review sites
• 66% professional review sites
• 55% loyalty / voucher sites

Of course, most people probably start with Google in the first place.

People like Bazaarvoice are leading the way in implementing user reviews on merchants’ own websites, which adds to the massive pile of general user review and expert review sites out there on the web. Add the wealth of conversation taking place in twitter, facebook, and friendfeed around what products to buy – and you’ve got an immensely fragmented marketplace for this behaviour.

Now if only Crowdstorm can do what it set out to do… is it time to ride the wave yet?

Hurray!

CrowdstormRatedFiveStars_WebuserMagazine_2008

Some great data coming in from Comscore about how the online retail space has fared in the US over the past few months and what they expect might happen in the first half of 2009.

Click on the images to see them full-size

First up, online ecommerce has slowed down in terms of growth to 7% in 2008 from 17% in 2007. Note it’s still growing!

Secondly, this is actually due to a category skew whereby consumer electronics, video games and consoles, and sports and fitness categories have continued to increase in sales. Perhaps more people staying in and/or doing active things near them.

Thirdly, early 2009 has seen some growth pickup again after a drop in Q4 of 2008 – possibly predicting a bounce, but personally it shows this is mostly sentiment rather than 100% actuals.

Lastly, eCommerce is still taking market share away from high street stores and that’s always a good thing

According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, one of the most neglected trends out there is around information-based shopping and purchasing – giving rise to the Info Shopper.

They are suspicious of advertising and search online for virtually everything to get the information they need. 92% of the people surveyed said that they have more confidence in the information they found this way then being spoon fed it. Even for products like vacuum cleaner, 58% of people said they would research it online first and are asking questions such as “how much does this hold before empyting it?” or “is this light enough for someone small to carry it up the stairs?” 70% say they consult reviews and ratings before making any buying decisions.

Looking at this data, you can see that brands and websites need to think of different ways to get people the information and the confidence they need to make their own buying decisions. The WSJ goes on to say that information aggregation sites will become increasingly more important and especially so for helping weave the story and fit into the customer buying decision process.

This is a huge shift going on… think where it could lead!

I’ve just been reading an article in AdAge about how Sephora is simplifying the product review process by letting people read reviews on their mobile phones. In some retailers in the US, they are actively encouraging people to look at products in the store then actively read the reviews about them on their phones. Our old friends BazaarVoice are powering the platform.

So, I completely agree that product reviews from people like you and expert reviews and advice are increasingly more important in making a buying decision, but I’m not convinced this behaviour can be adapted easily for a mobile phone setting. For a start, they have to get our their basic handset and browse to a “mobile” site to enter the product name / code, then filter through the crap results to hopefully find what they wanted, then click it and read some tiny reviews on a small screen – all in a matter of hours!

I’ve seen this try and work before back in 2002, and yes, times have advanced but people couldn’t be bothered then so what makes us think can they be bothered now? Even scanning the barcode of an item is probably not as straightforward as it seems. The only light on the horizon for mobile phone reviews might be through the smart phones like the iphone – but honestly answer me this:

Are there really any downsides to writing down the name of the product you like on a piece of paper then researching and buying it online back at a computer?