6pm.com is the sister site to Zappos.com, one of US’s biggest and best online retailers. The 6pm site focuses on end of line clearance and bargain items at up to 70% off retail. Unfortunately for them (fortunate for their customers) for 6 hours every item on their site cost no more than $49.95. With any kind of incident that involves online transactions for a large number of people, how the brand deals with a mistake is critical.

Recently The Outnet ran a $1 sale to celebrate it’s 1st birthday, unfortunately they under-estimated the popularity and the site constantly fell over during the course of the promotion. They came out, apologised and offered free shipping for a whole month to say sorry, but while their customers were having problems the Twitter-sphere was full of brand negativity.

So how did 6pm.com respond to such an error? I’ll give you two options:

Option 1) Send every customer that bought an item at a discounted price an email, apologising and blaming a clause in their T&C’s for their legally sound reason for cancelling the customers order.

Option 2) Honour every single order made, at an approximate cost of $1.6 million dollars.

Yep, they went for Option 2 and the reason I am writing about it on my blog is two fold. Firstly to make such a significant decision so quickly shows a well run, finely tuned organisation. Secondly, they handled it perfectly – open, honest and most importantly the decision they made was the best one for their customers. Read the full blog announcement over at 6pm.com – http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/inside-zappos/2010/05/21/6pm-com-pricing-mistake

Even the Zappos CEO, tweeted a tongue in cheek remark when announcing it:

For businesses that are used to focusing on their PPC ROI and website conversion ratio, it’s often easy to take the normally reliable distribution of customers orders for granted. The recent strikes have resulted in a change of focus for pro-active, customer focused businesses from online to offline. Over the last week time has been spent:

• Researching, contacting and negotiating with alternative couriers.
• The implementation of a new third party courier into daily workflow and IT infrastructure (online & offline).
• Adding and updating online content to keep customers informed and reduce the impact on their conversion rate.
• The cost of upgrading customers orders to the least effected postal service Royal Mail offer (whilst negotiating with couriers) to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction.
• Dealing with the increase in customer communication via phone, email and live chat that delayed deliveries causes.

Large volume mail order businesses are in the envious position of having the resources to be able to switch couriers and take a fairly small hit on their bottom line, but for a small-scale e-commerce venture that relies on Royal Mail the strikes have had a serious impact:

Quantitative estimates of the number of items delayed (30 – 65 million items!) gives only a partial impression of the real impact on businesses around the UK that rely on post as a key part of their business. The unknown factor in all of this is customer perception, will people simply not even consider firing up Google and searching for the item they need to purchase. Instead heading for the safe harbour of the local high street, knowing that it maybe more expensive, but that potential delivery problems are not a factor in their buying decision.

One thing is certain, ‘bricks and mortar’ shops on the high street will have benefited from all of this.

So in my time of I need I turned to the ever-reliable Google for the latest information and it was after a number of searches that the weakness of Google for breaking news was exposed. Saving the day came Twitter! Yes there was alot of noise on there from people, like me, despairing over the lack of information available, but eventually the O2 and Carphone Warehouse twitter streams started to post information. O2 broke first with estimated pricing, but then around 9pm left a message saying they were finished for the day. Carphone Warehouse then picked up and exceeded O2′s early strong position with Twitter user ‘@guyatcarphone‘ posting useful links and responding to peoples enquiries.

Around 11pm the retailers websites kicked into life with the bare essential information, tariffs appeared on O2′s site, then Carphone Warehouse again outdid them with a simple, but effective iPhone 3G S pre-registration system.

All in all, an interesting launch to follow online and Carphone Warehouse clearly went the extra mile in providing the personal touch for the UK early adopters amongst us.

At a recent event the Google Keynote highlighted that Google Trends data led them to believe that September 15th was the date that Christmas 2007 started online. That seems to have been beaten this year with Internet Retailing reporting that MyVoucherCodes.co.uk saw 47% of it’s traffic over the weekend of the 13th-14th September coming from Christmas Gifting related terms.

As a response to this surge in gifting related terms MyVoucherCodes.co.uk have put live their Christmas Deals and Discounts page, which even at this time is well populated with promotional offers from a wide range of retailers. So, if you’re not in the middle of preparing the go live for Christmas 2008 online, it’s probably worth starting soon!

1. Website Independent Gift/Wish Lists

One of those moments when you think – ‘Damn wish I’d thought of that’. The system has been developed by US retailer Best Buy, but in Web 2.0 tradition they’ve turned it into an seperate online service named – Giftag. Take a look at the Giftag site, where there are short videos of how it all works.

2. Consumer Reviews Everywhere and Anywhere

A new US service called TurnTo that allows you to see what your friends think of products and brands whilst on participating online retail sites.

TurnTo turns your customers into trusted references for their friends regarding your site and the things you sell. Nothing is more persuasive than advice from friends your visitors know and trust.

The big challenge her is to get the TurnTo brand established and build up a good size userbase for it be worthwhile using. Maybe a tight integration with an existing network like Facebook could give this idea a kick-start?

3. Transactional Banner Adverts

Not the first time I’ve heard about these (NMA had some coverage on a scheme trialled by Boots 6 months ago), but with Christmas just around the corner the idea of a customer being able to complete an order on someone else’s website within a transactional banner advert does sound like an interesting development.

I’m on the look out for an individual or company that’s experienced with the relatively new e-commerce platform Magento. Our current e-commerce solution has done extremely well, but it’s time to move to a more substantial e-commerce solution. If you can help, email me – info [@] simonlilly.co.uk