eCommerce Expo: Heal’s rejects tech for tech’s sake

David Kohn, Director of E-commerce at Heal’s, has hit out at the current “obsession with putting tech into stores as if it’s going to magically improve the experience”.

Speaking at eCommerce Expo, which took place in London this week, he stated: “People can experience touchscreens at home or on the bus. We feel an over technical approach to the in-store environment isn’t what it’s there for.”

Kohn was joined on a discussion panel by Paul Kraftman, Chief Executive at Menkind and Rachael Jones, Former Head of E-commerce at Seedlip. This looked at how to build an effective customer journey across multiple touchpoints and was moderated by Nick Everitt, Director of Advisory EMEA at Edge by Ascential.

Kraftman observed that acquiring customers in-store should be simple and can be cost-effective. Menkind’s approach is to hand out scratch cards, where people can then go onto the company’s website and enter a competition to win a gift card or prize. According to Kraftman, 25% of shoppers do so. Over half of these then subscribe, and 65% of those original subscribers are still on the list.

“The gift card allows us to track ROI across the journey”, he added. “People don’t come to us knowing what they want to buy; it’s a place of discovery. The store works well for that but replicating this online is a big challenge we face.”

On customer journey optimisation, Jones commented: “It’s tricky. Not only with Direct to Consumer but how you work with retail partners.” On the brand’s launch with Waitrose, she said, “to be able to go to massive companies as a small brand with data showing that consumers really wanted to see the product in-store was effective. It was a huge project and because brand side we were so small, it largely took place between the buyer and sales team.”

“The real struggle is things like SEO”, Jones continued. “[We] spend a huge amount of money to improve it but [we’re] not going to see results for at least six months; it’s difficult with startups that need a return immediately.”