March 24 2008
Internet Retailing Conference 2008 - themes announced
The Internet Retailing conference is now in its third successful year, and is being held on 7 October 2008 at the Novotel Hammersmith.
The conference website is now live detailing the conference themes and other information (not forgetting of course the early bird discounts available until 1 June 2008).
Internet Retailing 2008 Conference Website
As in previous years, following continued positive feedback, we've maintained the dense "three-track" formula that provides three parallel tracks around a very focused exhibition space and workshops. By keeping proceedings to a single day you can be sure that you'll be able to meet key colleagues and peers (rather than juggling visits over several days) while also minimising time away from the office. The three streams are synchronised so that you can swap easily between them and the full DVD of proceedings (available to all delegates) ensures that you needn't worry about missing must-see presentations.
The three themes for 2008 are:
1) Rich customer experience:
rich internet
applications, rich media, enhanced presentation, the launch of new
visual technologies… were predicted by our experts at
InternetRetailing 2007 – and the new year’s launches and system
releases are proving them correct.
Customer expectations are at an all-time high and they have the
computing power, broadband access and spending commitment to make this
rich experience their new benchmark. We know, however, that in order to
deliver this refined interface there’s a vast amount of preparation,
maintenance and management required, and this stream will cover the
gamut of specifying, testing and implementing new interfaces; the
practicalities of product preparation and data management; and the
newer areas of Customer Experience planning – all the while focusing
upon the measurable ROI of this activity.
2) Fast Track to success: second mover advantage on the web:
never before has there been so much established, tried-and-testing
information about how to make the basics of an ecommerce programme
“just work”. Furthermore, much of this knowledge is now packaged,
embedded in software and available for immediate implementation. This
stream will trace the customer and retailer journeys offering insights
into the capabilities available “out of the box”.
This will be an invaluable scoping day for new entrants to the
ecommerce channel, as well as a feature check for established retailers
to understand how quickly a competitor can deploy a competitive
offering, even after a late market entry. This stream will balance
retailer case studies with the ‘out of the box’ capabilities and
established best practice approaches, while drawing out the areas for
differentiation and of remaining difficulty.
3) Cross-channel – beyond multichannel: now that
every retailer has a web channel the challenge is no longer to be
“multi-channel” (separate, parallel channels with limited overlap) and
to be truly “cross-channel” – serving the customer with ease and
fluency across all channels simultaneously, seamlessly and with no loss
of capability.
From click-to-collect and
instore returns to contact centre order lines via pan-channel stock
visibility, this stream will consider the opportunities, issues and
challenges to retailers in becoming cross channel: stores, catalogues,
phone sales, web and everything in between.
As in previous years the conference will be free of sales-pitches masquerading as presentations. The emphasis is upon retail insights for retailers, by retailers. Even conference sponsors will be co-presenting case studies with their retail clients - no turgid sales flannel! Our feedback each year has shown that the delegates appreciate this focus and business-like approach and we're pleased to continue this distinctive aspect of the conference.
Emma Herrod, Editor of Internet Retailing, is programming the conference agenda and speakers and so suggestions and proposals should go directly to Emma.
