SALMON ENHANCE HALFORDS MULTI CHANNEL STRATEGY WITH “RESERVE AND COLLECT”
Halfords employs in excess of 10,000 staff and sells over 10,000 different product lines, ranging from car parts and cycles through to the latest in-car technology, alloy wheels, child seats, roof boxes and outdoor leisure and camping equipment.
Salmon have been helping Halfords implement their multichannel strategy since 2005; responsible for designing, developing, integrating and supporting the solutions they have built.
Halfords were looking at ways to continue to exceed customers’ expectations through its multichannel offering, drive profitability and growth, and differentiate the Halfords brand even further.
Jon Asbury, Channel Development Manager for Halfords said, “It is very important for us to be able to predict customers’ expectations, building our customers loyalty and enticing new online shoppers. To do this we knew we had to organise the business around the customer and deliver a consistent brand experience no matter how our customers choose to shop with us.”
“Reserve and Collect” allows a customer to reserve online and collect from a store of choice within one hour of placing a transaction.
Salmon developed the schematics and functional dynamic pages using CSS, XHTML and J2EE, and integrated the site with a number of partners complementary technology to transform the customer experience.
Integration points include MultiMap to ascertain the distance in miles from the search location to the stores listed and a facility to provide driving instructions to the store. QAS was integrated for address management and data integrity, Scene7 for dynamic imaging and a link to an innovative website called Mythings.com offers a free service where customers can organise their possessions online.
Halfords “Reserve and Collect” continues to be a resounding success, with them surpassing their one-millionth “Reserve and Collect” milestone, demonstrating just how popular the service has been with customers and driving 90% growth in multichannel revenue in the year to 3 April 2009.
As a result of its success, Halfords.Ie has also recently launched the “Reserve and Collect” service with the initial sales in Ireland both encouraging and growing.