HOW WE OPTIMISED HALFORDS WEBSITE FOR SMARTPHONES AND DOUBLED CONVERSION.
Halfords is the UK’s leading specialist retailer for automotive parts and accessories, cycling and leisure. Salmon have been helping Halfords implement their multichannel strategy since 2005; responsible for designing, developing, integrating and supporting the various solutions that optimise the Halfords shopping experience across store, web and mobile.
Halfords wanted to cater for the rapid growth in visitors using mobile devices. They had seen a rise of 300% year on year, on year, representing 7% of their total site traffic and 5% of orders. They also wanted to enhance their multichannel proposition and shopping experience.
Salmon took into consideration customer experience, site design and mobile centric features to deliver the solution, ensuring it was intuitive and easy to use.
Mobile visitors to Halfords.com are automatically directed to the new mobile optimised site where they can search for products, read customer reviews, make product comparisons, locate their nearest store that stocks the product, reserve and collect the product or pay via their mobile for their goods selecting either Home/Work delivery. This made Halfords one of the first retailers in the UK to offer such a variety of delivery options via a smartphone.
Halfords was one of the first mass UK retailers to offer PayPal as a mobile payment method. Customers can choose to pay by credit/debit card or PayPal, the same payment methods supported on Halfords.com. This involved complex integration by Salmon between the mobile optimised site, DataCash and PayPal to offer 3-D secure.
To build the new channel Salmon leveraged Halfords customer interaction platform built on IBM WebSphere Commerce technology. For business efficiency the mobile site reuses existing complex integration with Halfords back office systems which Salmon developed when the website launched; and thereafter reused “Reserve and Collect” and “Text and Reserve” functionality. This leveraged the following integration points:
Itim Zygon Product Information Management System – for identifying vehicles from their registration plate and recommending the right product for each car.
SAP – to provide product and pricing information. MultiMap to establish the stores nearest to the customer.
BT Expedite Store 6 – to check store stock availability and ultimately accept customer reservations.
Since the launch of the mobile site, sales via smartphones have increased to 8% of Halfords.com total sales.
Since the launch of the site Halfords have seen: