Blooming with a new tech strategy

According to NetFlorist MD Ryan Bacher, given NetFlorist's annual growth rate of over 40%, the new system will be able to manage the additional demands, amortising the company's investment within months rather than years.

From an IT point of view, NetFlorist says it took a strategic decision to "bet the farm" on Microsoft Commerce Server technology, which it believes will become a major standard for Internet transactions in the future.

Fundamental shift

More importantly, though, Bacher says the move was "a fundamental shift" in online retail, in which "e-tailers" are going to have to make key decisions about the way they do business and interact with an increasingly sophisticated online shopping public.

"It's a far cry from the days when online retailers gobbled investors' money with no returns. Today, Internet retailers are offering a diverse and safe shopping environment, with many reaping healthy profits," Bacher comments.

"We're going to see more and more acceptance of online purchasing in the next few years. And with 80% of NetFlorist's business coming from the Internet, it was vital to stay ahead of the game. Last Valentine's Day for example, the NetFlorist site carried over 100 gigs of traffic and over 250 concurrent customers - volumes that the original platform was not designed to deal with - hence the necessity to redevelop on the new technology."

Increased speed

NetFlorist's new site incorporates crucial functionality such as increased speed - indicated by customers in research as one of the biggest barriers to using the Net for online purchasing.

Another key strategic decision by NetFlorist has been to redesign its home page from scratch, doing away with old-fashioned tab navigation and providing a far more product-driven shopping experience that assumes a greater level of sophistication in online users.

"There's a general paranoia among online retailers that shoppers are novices, and they need to put everything on their home pages," explains Bacher. "It's like walking into Makro and seeing the service department first. We want our shoppers to see our products - and if they need more information, they are only a click away from it in any case."

At the same time, Bacher says, SA Internet users are becoming more sophisticated in using multiple shopping channels to research and buy products.

"Powerful new search services are driving greater spending activity, and improved personalisation technology is allowing retailers to think more like their customers. Mobile phones and new wireless devices all support e-commerce, and we have to cater to this market," states Bacher.

Points of differentiation

Bacher says online retailers are looking for ways of bringing them closer to new and existing customers, and finding points of differentiation in a steadily maturing online marketplace. These include target marketing through social networks and broadband selling tools, as well as the introduction of powerful new and exciting brands in the medium term- all of which will require intense technology and analytical skills.

The next step in online retail will be to give shoppers far more of a virtual shopping experience, asserts Bacher: pick the product up and turn it around, for instance. Or see how a particular bouquet would look in a certain type of room.

"South African e-tailing has still not yet fully taken off. But when that wave hits, we want NetFlorist to be right at the crest of it," says Bacher.