Top UK e-commerce website - JD Sports

JD Sports has been ranked as the top performing ecommerce website in terms of usability in the UK.The eRetail Benchmark study from eDigitalResearch highlighted the retailer's informative product pages, checkout process and various points of customer contact as standout traits.

Other websites that performed well in the overall usability rankings included Marks & Spencer (M&S), Amazon, John Lewis and Figleaves.

The top websites for search and navigation were M&S and New Look respectively, while Amazon, Ocado and ASOS were praised for their speed of response when interacting with customers via email.

According to eDigitalResearch co-founder and director Michelle Fuller, the study indicates that investing in customer contact can result in significant increases in satisfaction among online shoppers.

When customers shop online, the very least they expect is a simple, straightforward and easy-to-use experience, from clear navigation to detailed product information, good customer service and accurate delivery information.

Reliance Big TV Enhances usability of their website

Reliance Big TV, the leading direct-to-home (DTH) service provider in the country has enhanced their official website. The new site comes with a completely fresh and international look with free-flowing white spaces and fluid interactions. The new navigation interface adopted is simplistic and intuitive with the objective of increasing the average time spent on site. With a warm conversational tone, the content is aimed to provide enough info to category explorers to turn them into BIG TV customers while converting existing BIG TV customers into complete loyalists & advocates.
Sources state, the clear agenda for the site revamp was to use it as an effective marketing tool to garner new customers as well as to promote VAS to existing customers. The site achieves this by clearly directing 'seekers' vs. 'users' into separate sections. Interested customers can now order a new BIG TV connection online.

3G Auction

At the end of the 34th day and 183 rounds of bidding, the government had a bonanza in its hands, nearly double its initial estimate of Rs 35,000 crore from the sale.At an average of nearly Rs 1,300 crore per circle, Vodafone Essar emerged as the most ‘premium’ buyer among the seven firms that won the auction. Seven of its nine victories belonged to the top ten most expensive circles. Vodafone Essar will pay Rs 11,618 crore —- the second highest amount in the auction.
In a surprise move, Bharti Airtel seemed to have concentrated primarily on the top five circles, including Delhi, Mumbai and the three southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Among the notable absences in its wins were lucrative states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab.
There was no taker for a pan-India licence as operators cherry-picked circles.
Bharti will pay Rs 12,295 crore, about 3.5 times the starting price for all-India 3G spectrum and around 25% less than the Rs 16,751 crore that would have fetched a pan-India licence.
Reliance Communications, Aircel and Idea Cellular picked up 11-13 circles each, mostly from the second and third rungs. Chennai-based S Tel picked up 3 small circles for a total of around Rs 337 crore.

Expanding Mobile Web

Taptu, the search and discovery engine that indexes touch screen content, reveals in its second quarterly report that the Mobile Touch Web has grown 35 percent since last quarter, which represents a 232 percent annual growth rate. This puts its growth rate ahead of the App Store, currently showing an annual growth of 144 percent, but behind the Android Market growing at an annual rate of 403 percent, albeit from a smaller base.

The report, which covers January 2010-April 2010, also shows Mobile Touch Web sites rose to 440,100 from 326,600 in January. At this current run rate, the report predicts that the Mobile Touch Web will increase to 1.1 million sites by the end of the year, nearly twice Taptu’s original forecast, and nearly a full year ahead of our January prediction, fueled in part by the continued consumer love affair with touch screen phones, and even more importantly the rising sales of mid-range touch-enabled devices.

Key Findings From Taptu’s Quarterly Report Analyzing the Growth of the Mobile Touch Web:

1. The number of touch friendly websites is dramatically higher than just 4 months ago. At the end of 2010, we found 326,600 touch friendly websites. In April 2010, that number has increased to 440,100 sites. This represents a 35 percent increase in the quarter and an annual growth rate of 232 percent.

2. App Store numbers are up too, showing a comparative annual growth rate of 144 percent up to 185,000 apps. The largest growth has been in the Android Market, now showing 35,947 apps and an annual growth rate of 403 percent.
The iPhone is a strong platform, but it only accounts for 10 percent of the worldwide market of touch screen devices. If a company simply employs an iPhone application as their sole mobile strategy, they are only pursuing 10 percent of the market.

3. mCommerce/ Shopping & Services continue to dominate the Mobile Touch Web representing over 22 per cent of the 440,100 sites compared to the App Store where equivalent services represent fewer than 4 per cent.