Kight launched a mobile site just a few months ago
James Kight, chief executive of Printerland.co.uk, explains to Suzie Larcombe why he decided that neither an app, nor a mobile version of his ecommerce site is good enough for his customers.
In this article we’ll share with you why James Kight, CEO of Printerland.co.uk, the UK’s largest reseller of printers and inks, decided to opt for a fully responsive website rather than different website solutions to operate across different platforms.
With a catalogue of over 20,000 products, 1,000 orders a day and an on-target £28 million turnover for this year, James Kight is clear about one thing: in his world, the customer is King. With his roots firmly in a bricks and mortar business, James has embraced technology to the hilt, but has never lost sight of what makes a great business great.
When I asked James what his three Top Tips for any ecommerce business owner looking to increase sales by investing in mobile commerce would be, his response was: “1. Listen to your customers; 2. Listen to your customers and 3. Listen to your customers.”
James, who has built his multi-million pound business on the foundation of first class customer service, great products and competitive pricing, is a diehard advocate of the notion that without the customer we’re nothing.
In James’ world, it doesn’t matter if we’re trading on a market stall or a mobile phone, without listening to what our customers want and satisfying those needs in the most effective and most appropriate way, we’re dead in the water.
Only a few months ago, James launched a mobile version of his ecommerce site, becoming one of the first in his sector to tap into the mobile consumer market. This was forward thinking stuff, but his attempt showed that this 2nd rate (his words, not mine) version of his ecommerce site was only converting 40% of the visitors that his main site was converting.
At this point, he decided radical action was required and he pulled together a team of 100 potential customers and got them to help develop his new £250,000 website upgrade. What James is seeking for his £250,000 investment is a first class buyer experience across the board, no matter what device his consumers are working on.
When I asked James: “What was the most revealing thing your potential customers came up with?” he said “That’s simple”. We had included “Free Delivery” in our sharpened up text, with the aim of converting more visitors, but we’d failed to point out when the product would arrive. By simply adding “Free Next Day Delivery”, our potential customers told us they’d be more likely to buy.
“Thanks to these little nuggets of wisdom, we fully expect our conversion rates to rise significantly. What this proved to me,” continued James “was that this project isn’t really about technology, it’s not really about laptops or mobile phones, it’s all about people. It’s about communicating, and most of all, it’s about applying the same values to the online buying experience as you would face-to-face”.
When it comes to Google, James is convinced that his decision to go responsive will stand him in good stead. Someone who isn’t phased by Pandas or Penguins, James reiterates that working online requires the same integrity as offline, and if you do your stuff right, it’ll all work out in the end.
Taking this a step further, he believes instinctively that his decision to opt for a site that is optimised to work across every platform will help his business in the natural search engine race as well as appealing to his consumers.
When it comes to his consumers, he doesn’t want them to have the hassle of downloading an app, or having to jump through hoops to secure their purchase with him. He wants them to have a top-notch, seamless buying experience.
This top-notch buying experience extends from the 200 to 300 face-to-face demonstrations that he and his team carry out in-house every month; to his insistence that phones are answered within three rings and no caller is ever passed from pillar to post to track down an expert, to processing online orders with military precision.
It strikes me that James makes running a business sound so easy that we could easily be fooled into thinking anyone could do it.
While I suspect that most of us possibly could, it also strikes me that when we start to operate online, we often forget that selling, no matter where, is all about products, prices and promotion but most of all, about people: the people doing the buying and the people doing the selling. And particularly the people doing the selling: they need to be great.
So when does James expect to get a return on his £250,000 website upgrade investment? He confidently tells me that his new site is scheduled to go live on Monday and he’s expecting a 10-day dip in conversions, but then a recovery that’ll see him with his money back in the bank in “no time”.
He only needs a 0.5% increase in conversion to get his full investment back by the turn of the year; and you know what, I suspect he’ll achieve his objective well before that.
Find out more at printerland.co.uk
Speak Your Mind