Since 1994, UK distributor Interactive Ideas has held a goal of helping technology companies bring new products to market. Part of this involves helping retail to make the most of the market too, and now the firm is ramping its efforts up by launching a series of best practice guides – aimed at enabling retailers to build sales online.
It’s created a website at www.onlineretaildistributor.co.uk where retailers can sign up to the guides, which are free to download. The first one, available from this month, is called ‘Content is the Sales King’ and examines exactly how online content can be best used to push sales, through intelligent copy, advertising and video. The other guides in the series will be available on the first of each month after that.
Interactive Idea’s marketing manager Andrew Miles tells PCR: “We would recommend any company that is looking to grow their online sales in the UK to sign up for access to our best practice guides. Companies will benefit through gaining insight to a sometimes seemingly complex market through guides produced from a combination of our own experience and industry recommendations.”
Interactive Ideas believes that while most firms understand how important online is, many don’t know how best to exploit it. Marketing director Michael Breeze comments: “Everyone now recognises the power of online retail, but many customers still don’t have the skills or resources to fully embrace the potential. Through the launch of these best practice guides we aim to highlight the difference our specialist service dedicated to online retail can have on sales.”
Future guides will look at logistics in an online world, social activities, and using already available data to help with decision making. Interactive Ideas has grown by 30 per cent in each of the last four years and is on track to achieve this again. So it’s in a good position to be able to give advice to retailers. And let’s face it – it’s doing it for selfish reasons too. Happy retailers mean happy distributors, after all.
PCR wondered how the firm had done it – by focusing on new customers or new vendors, for example? Breeze explains: “It’s a mixture of both, really. A lot of it is through the skills we’ve built up and the relationships we’ve created. We keep on top of new technology, keep ahead of the curve and what’s going to be the next big thing and want to help our customers to take advantage of that.”
It’s keeping up its end of the bargain by continuing to look for new brands – at Distree, for example. Miles notes: “We’ll be looking for products that do something slightly different from most mass market ones – products that you can actually have a conversation around.” Breeze adds: “We don’t limit ourselves by areas. We tend to look at where the technology is going. We sell products for gaming, consumer electronics, edutainment – we go where the demand is.
“What’s interesting, is that we’ve noticed that you don’t get a middle ground so much anymore – you get the cheaper range, and the premium products. The middle ground products just aren’t different enough. Brands have to stand out. Especially with the economic situation at the moment, you have to really convince people to spend their money.”
Which takes us back to Interactive Idea’s best practice guides for retailers who want to grab market share online. If you want to convince people to spend money, you have to work at it. So why not take all the advice you can get?
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