ARGOS MULTICHANNEL COMMERCE, INTEGRATION AND SUPPORT
There are 734 Argos stores across the UK and Ireland, with multichannel sales now representing 53% of the retailer’s total £4billion sales.
The Argos website – www.argos.co.uk – is the UK’s second most visited retail website, with around 43,000 lines available, customers can use the highly-successful ‘Check & Reserve’ service to reserve online and collect same day from a store of their choice.
In 2002 our task was to redesign www.argos.co.uk to improve both usability and performance and increase the site’s overall popularity.
Argos wanted its entire 12,000-product catalogue to be as visible and accessible as possible from the home page.
In 2002 we began the initial website redesign with analysis. We looked at how users browsed and searched on the site, the trolley procedure and the overall value the customer received. With the new navigation the average number of product search clicks halved from six to three. We did this through improved product search with new categorisation, wider search parameters and a more powerful and relevant search engine.
From Click and Collect to Check and Reserve
Our first changes to the Click and Collect functionality simplified the customer experience. Customers could check stock availability and then decide whether to click and reserve or choose delivery. They now also had the option to choose different delivery methods for different products in their basket.
Ongoing Support and Development
Since go-live of the new site in 2003, we have provided application support and worked on numerous projects and programmes. We continue to work with Argos today as they work on their five-year repositioning plan to become a digital retail leader.
Argos continue to grow its multichannel sales penetration from 27% in 2003/4 to 53% pf total sales in 2013/14.
Internet sales have grown from 2% in 2003/4 to 44% of Argos’ total sales in 2013/14. Of these, almost 75% were collected in store. Check and Reserve gives competitive advantage and is crucial for peak trading periods and fast selling items.
Mobile commerce continues to see a rapid rise in customer usage and now accounts for 18% of Argos’ total sales.