Web pages are personalized based on the characteristics such as interests and social category of an individual. Personalization implies that the changes are based on implicit data, such as items purchased or pages viewed. It is used to enhance the customer’s services and help them with the selection of products they may want to buy. Custom tailoring is usually done either by the user choosing from a menu of available alternatives or tracking the customer’s behaviour this can be the pages that they have accessed and how often they have accessed these pages. This allows the individual to decide what they want on the site. Personalization is also known as one-to-one marketing as it deals with each customer individually.

Web personalization models include rules-based filtering, based on “if this, then that” rules processing, and collaborative filtering, which serves relevant material to customers by combining their own personal preferences with the preferences of like-minded others. Collaborative filtering works well for books, music, video, etc. However, it does not work well for a number of categories such as apparel, jewelry, cosmetics, etc. Recently, another method, Prediction Based on Benefit is proposed for products with complex attributes such as apparel.

There are a number of advantages to web personalisation.

• It saves time as eliminates repetitive tasks and remembers transactional details. It can also recognise habits and shorten the path to engage in such habits.
• Personalisation provides better information to the employee about the customer, the employee is able to cut out information which is not relevant to the user, this saves a lot of time for employees as they can see everything without having to search for it.
• Personalization allows a company to tailor a specific product in accordance with individual standards, tastes and preferences.

Aswell as having its advantages there is also a downside to web personalisation.

• Lack of privacy – Alot of users would rather their searches were kept private.
• Lack of Relevance- people dont want a relationship with companies that have no relevance to them.
• impossible – sometimes people just arent able to take advantage of the offers.

The screen shot below shows how amazon uses the customers information to their advantage to market online shoping in a more personal way for its customers, it would show “Recommendations for you”, this informaiton is based on items that you have showed intrest it or things similar to what you have bought previously.

Google is the first of the search engines to introduce personalised results on a massive scale. Weighing a number of factors including but not limited to user history, bookmarks, community behaviour and site click-through rate and stickiness, Google is providing results that are specific to what they believe you are searching for. Currently this service is only available to those who are logged into their Google account.

I am for Web Personalization as i feel it’s a very useful tool, it is efficient and saves you time. I think it’s very helpful when searching for Christmas gifts as the recommendations may help them out a lot on what to buy.

On the first page of results, the keywords related to missselfridge.com include fashion shop, petit women’s clothing, along with descriptions of the different clothes offered, including leggings, shoes and jeans.

Even though Google search provided me with a large number of keywords I wanted to do more research using other online tools to help to get my 12 key phrases so I have to decided to use Google Insights to help me with this.  In Google Insight I typed in www.missselfridge.com to see what the web search interest would be for this sight. In 2004 until October 2005 there was no interest showed in this sight, then after October 2005 and started to rise and fall, until April 2009 it had its highest peak. Below is a screenshot of the web search interest for www.missselfridge.com.

The next tool I used to try to narrow my search was the Google Keyword Tool. I first entered www.missselfridge.com into the search area. The screen shot below shows the different keywords, grouped by different terms.

The final tool I used was www.webconfs.com. I typed into the search engine www.missselfridge.com to see what keywords would be brought up. It brought up a lot of key phrases some of them which were not relevant to my site, I feel that this tool was not as good as other tools I had used.

Now that I have completed my research for key phrases that describe my chosen e-commerce business I have chosen my top 12 these are:

• Clothing
• Womens clothing
• Fashion
• Girls clothing
• Shoes
• Going out clothes
• Miss selfridge sale
• Petit clothing
• Dresses
• Ladies Clothing
• Skirts
• Going out tops

In order to find out how easy search engines found a particular product from the site, I went onto the Miss Selfridge website and selected an item.  I then used the name of this item as my keywords in my search.  Google results brought the item up as its first hit, as did Ask.  Yahoo results showed Miss Selfridge as its second hit, although it didn’t bring you directly to the dress. When I typed in a basic description such as “Going out Dresses”, it brought up various different competitors such as Lipsy, Newlook and Dorothy Perkins. On Google Miss Selfridge was not one of the top hits; I found it further on down the page. Again with Yahoo Miss Selfridge was not the number one hit, it was the third one. I also tried this on Ask and Miss Selfridge could be found at the bottom of the second page.

The less I put into the search engine the harder it was to for me to find Miss Selfridge. It got very boring looking through the pages to find the site. If I was a customer searching for a clothing site, it would be hard for me to purchase clothes from the site without knowing the exact web address or a specific item to search for using search engines.

In relation to “paid for” results, when searching for Miss Selfridge as the only key words, there aren’t any sponsored links.  Although when I changed the search to going out dresses, there were eight sponsored links with Boohoo and Very being two of the top ones.  Boohoo could probably be one of Miss Selfridge’s biggest online competitors as they are an Internet based company.

A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic; a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider. Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing.

A cloud can be private or public.A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service like Amazon Web Services provides virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider’s application program interface to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage. In the enterprise, cloud computing allows a company to pay for only as much capacity as is needed, and bring more online as soon as required. Because this pay-for-what-you-use model resembles the way electricity, fuel and water are consumed, it’s sometimes referred to as utility computing.

Platform-as-a-service in the cloud is defined as a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider’s infrastructure. Developers create applications on the provider’s platform over the Internet. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer’s computer. Force.com,and GoogleApps are examples of PaaS. Developers need to know that currently, there are not standards for interoperability or data portability in the cloud. Some providers will not allow software created by their customers to be moved off the provider’s platform.

In the software-as-a-service cloud model, the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal. SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.

The idea of cloud computing will have many advantages to e-commerce.  For starters if a customer had to go through the hassle of buying software and hardware to purchase one single item, they probably wouldn’t bother.  But because the companies have their own servers, or pay for these services it is better to let them worry about this.  It makes the shopping experience a lot quicker and easier. Another advantage would be that because it is a portable service, users are able to access the information and make purchases wherever they may be as long as they have Internet access. A third advantage would be that it will store any amount of data on web space that can be accessed at any time and any place.  For e-commerce it means users can select the items they want but save them so they can relook at the items at a later date.  It gives both users and the company access to reliable and fast services.  Although the downside to this is that if the servers fail they won’t be able to access their stored data. 

Disadvantages would be that the users are dependent on someone else.  Therefore if their servers go down then they will lose custom.  Their customers will therefore change who they shop off if the service isn’t reliable. The second disadvantage to e-commerce would be that a lot of risk is added in terms of the company especially in manufacturing the products.  Because the service is available online, there is little control of bankruptcy and natural problems. Another disadvantage would be that how can customers be certain that their data which they store using “cloud computing” is actually secure.  Sufficient security measures would need to in place so customers can be satisfied know their data is safe.  This is especially important with e-commerce because if customers are supplying their credit card details in order to make purchases they need to be sure their details aren’t being passed on.

The first concepts are push and pull supply models. A “push” strategy tries to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing other distribution channels. A “pull” selling strategy is one that requires high spending on advertising and consumer promotion to build up consumer demand for a product. If the strategy is successful, consumers will ask their retailers for the product, the retailers will ask the wholesalers, and the wholesalers will ask the producers. With Miss Selfridge I would say that their transactions are more pull supply chain management as they don’t act on customers who aren’t interested in the company.  Also they focus on maintaining a good brand name with customers they have.

Vertical integration, disintegration and virtual integration are the next concepts I am going to look at.  Vertical integration characteristics are when the majority of manufacture is in house and they have distant relationships with their suppliers.  Vertical disintegration characteristics are; a move to outsourcing manufactures and has a network of suppliers.  Finally virtual integration characteristics are total reliance on third parties and they have a close link with their suppliers.  With Miss Selfridge it is hard to define which concept they fall into although I think it would be more virtual integration as they guarantee next day delivery for UK customers therefore must have a close relationship with suppliers to insure this.

Value networks are when the majority of supply chain activities are undertaken and controlled outside the organisation by third parties.  This could be used in the case of Miss Selfridge as they may contract out their manufacture and also distribution to outside companies.

• The threat of substitute products and services
• The threat of  entry of new competitors
• The intensity of competitive rivalry
• The bargaining power of customers and buyers
• The bargaining power of suppliers

The threat of substitute products and services

This means that the existence of similar products can encourage customers to switch to alternatives. There are many different forms of substitution, with the popular being actual or possible substitution of one product for another, a new process may render a product unnecessary and also ‘doing without’ can also be thought of as a substitute.  The threat of a substitute tends to limit the potential market and profit.  It also puts an upper limit on prices.  Miss Selfridge could overcome this by finding ways to decrease prices without reducing the quality of goods that it provides. Miss Selfridge could also try to identify customers needs and attract new customers. 

The treat of entry of new customers

This “force” is very similar to the first “force” as new competitors entering the market means Missselfridge.com customers may go and shop on these other online stores which could result in a loss of profit. Miss Selfridge is a well established brand both on the high street and online so I don’t think that it would lose its custom.  For a new company breaking into the market they will have to create a good brand image for themselves in order for them to compete with the leading stores.

The intensity of competitive rivalry

The competition for online stores is much higher than what it would be in the high street as customers have a lot more access to stores online from all around the world. Miss Selfridge has a number of competitors, on the high street their main competitors would be River Island and Topshop. I think that they also would rivals that are online stores only; I think ASOS would be a competitor. It would be easier for online companies to hold more stock in a warehouse than what a shop could hold, this would mean that the online store would have a wider variety of clothes to offer and would be able to keep up with rivals.

The bargaining power of customers and buyers

Since online shopping has become increasingly popular, customers have a wider choice about where they shop, therefore will find it easier to find the cheapest clothes website to purchase their clothes from.  This therefore means that retail websites may be forced to lower their prices as customers have greater knowledge of the market. 

The bargaining power of suppliers

 I feel that some of Miss Selfridge’s products are quite dear for what they are. In order for them to offer their customers cheaper products, they will need to find a way to reduce their costs.  One way they could do this would be to do a bit of research on suppliers and find one that is cheaper but also provides a good quality. They could also bargain with their own suppliers to see if they could get a cheaper price, an because there are a larger number of suppliers for Miss Selfridge to choose from their current supplier might lower their prices so that Miss Selfridge stays with them.

Q.7

After reading Miss Selfridges terms and conditions I feel that they are reasonable. I feel that they have made their terms and conditions easy to understand. There are a number of terms and conditions on the following, Your delivery, Delivery guides and costs, Price and payment options, Returns, Product information, Privacy policy statement and how to contact information.

Once you place an order on from site they email the customer to acknowledge that they have received your order. When the order as been made the customer cannot make any changes to their order. Once the order has been dispatched the customer then receives another email and will then be charged for their purchase.

When returning your items the company states that they will refund any items that the customer is not happy with, the only items that they will not give a refund on is pierced jewellery, underwear and swimwear if the hygiene seal has been removed, unless they are of unsatisfactory quality or unfit for purpose. I would agree with them here as this is for hygiene purposes. When returning items you only have 14 days whereas River Island who I think would be their main competitor allow you 28 days for a refund. I think that having a longer return time would be better. Refunds will be repaid in the original method of payment. I feel this is reasonable, as this would happen in the high street stores as well.

I think that miss Selfridges terms and conditions are very reasonable and similar to their competitions, the only thing that could be improved would be the period in which you have to return your items as a lot of the competition offer 28 days.

 Q.8

When you register on the site, the first thing that Miss Selfridge states is “Your details will only be used by us and won’t be passed onto any unconnected third party for marketing purposes.” This is good to know as some people may be quite wary when registering online in case their private information can be seen. When registering with the company they require personal details from the customers such as, name, telephone number, home address, email address age and payment details. They ask for these details so that you are entered into draws of for newsletter sign ups, but customers have the opportunity to opt out from being contacted for the company for reasons other than about their purchases. They also ask you for a password, this is so only you are able to go on and track your order progress.

Miss Selfridges state in their privacy policy “Miss Selfridge Retail Limited is a registered data controller under the Data Protection Act 1998. We comply with the standards, procedures and requirements laid down in the Act to ensure that the personal information you give us is kept secure and processed fairly and lawfully. We will not pass your information on to other Arcadia Group companies or other third parties for marketing purposes unless you have agreed for us to do so.”  They state that they will not be held liable for any loss of customer information when placing orders with missselfridge.com. I feel that Miss Selfridge should be doing as much as they can to prevent this situation from happening, and if it does ever happen they should take responsibility for it as is happening when the customer is on their site. If customers read this then it may put them of shopping on this site, I know it would put me of.

Encryption is a secure process for keeping your sensitive and confidential information private. It is a process by which bits of data are scrambled and a specific password-key is needed to unscramble the data. The Encryption process makes the data unreadable unless or until decrypted. I feel that Miss Selfridge are trying to prevent data encryption as you customer has to enter a password that only they know to access their account, but I feel that they could do more.

Q.9

Cookies are small files which are stored on a user’s computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website to the next.

Miss Selfridge website uses Cookies to keep a record of the customer’s current session of shopping.  The company states in their Privacy Policy that Cookies enable the user to proceed to checkout at any time and to personalise the user’s online experience. If the customer’s web browser does not accept Cookies then they will not be able to use this website.

I was given a number of sites to look at that would be useful to gather information on the website that I have chosen. The first site that I look used was www.alexa.com this site brought me a lot of useful information on Miss Selfridge.

On average per week 0.0043% of users visit Miss Selfridges site, these are not just people from the UK this is a global figure. Miss Selfridge is now a worldwide company. The majority of people of people who use this site are from the UK with 73.2% and 4.5% of Americans visit this site as well. The image below shows the figures from other countries that use this website.

missselfridge.com users come from theses countires:

• 73.2% United Kingdom
• 4.5% United States
• 3.7% France
• 3.5% Germany
• 1.7% Denmark
• ·1.6% Italy
• ·1.0% Croatia
• ·1.0% Ireland
• ·0.9% Turkey
• ·0.6% China
• ·0.6% Norway
• ·0.6% Singapore
• ·0.5% Sweden
• ·6.7% OTHER

Alexa.com also provides the traffic rank on the site.  For Miss Selfridge its weekly traffic ranking average on a combined measure of page views and users is 23,347.

Miss Selfridges would have a number of competitors that include, Topshop, River Island, Dorothy Perkins and Oasis to name a few. I would say that their main competitor would be River Island. 

Q.5

When ordering online at Miss Selfridges the customer must first go on to the site which is www.missselfridge.com. Before the customer is able to do this they must have access to a computer and the Internet. Once the customer gets onto the site they are then able to browse through all the pages of clothes to choose the items they wish to purchase.

When the customer sees an item that they wish to purchase, they clicks on the item they wish to buy and it brings them to a new page which shows the item  and allows them to pick the size and quantity they require.  They then need to click the “add to shopping bag” button and if required “continue shopping” button.  If they do not want to continue shopping they have the option to “go to checkout”; where the list of items they wish to purchase are displayed.  They then can edit their shopping basket by removing some items, or selected additional items that are shown at the bottom of the screen. 

 Before the customer can check out they must have an account with Miss Selfridge. If they do not they need to start an account, once this is completed they are then required to enter their credit card details so that the item can be paid for. If they do not have a card then it is impossible to pay online.When the order is complete, it is sent electronically to the warehouse and is processed for delivery. Whilst waiting for their order to arrive, the customer can log onto their account to check where their order is and when it will arrive to them.

 Q6.

If Miss Selfridge decided to use a new channel to market their e-business I think mobile devices would be most beneficial, as now-a-days most people use their phones which has access to the Internet. They could make purchases and be able to check when their order is arriving.  Another method they could use would be using Text Messaging.  Customers, when registering with MissSelfridge.com could supply them with their mobile number, and in return Miss Selfridge could send messages when orders have been dispatched, if there is going to be a delay in the order or even just a confirmation of order.  Some customers may be weary of giving their mobile number for such a reason.

On the main homepage the images change showing different clothing styles, this is a good idea as it allows people to see what sort of clothes that this site sells. The homepage has different links along the top and the left hand side of the page that allow you to navigate your way around the site and look at the different items of clothing from the comfort of their own home.

When customers see and item of clothing that they like they have the option to add them to their shopping basket, then when they have finished they can have a final look in their basket to make sure they want to buy what they have chosen. The user is also given a personal login that they create for their own account that they can use anytime they wish.

When trying to find out specific quantitative information on the size of Miss Selfridge and the turn over it produces I found it hard. I tried many different searches and they all turned up the same results, Arcadia. This is a group that owns a number of stores, which include Miss Selfridge.

Arcadia said like-for-like sales were down 2.8% over the 52 week period. Total sales were down 0.6% to £1.8 billion. However Arcadia’s Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge chains generated record turnover and profits. Arcadia employ around 43,000 staff. Miss Selfridge has 152 high street stores world wide and an online shopping site and has been running for 43 years. Even though it has been running for this long it seems to be one of the smallest chains in terms of profit within the Arcadia group. 

Miss Selfridge markets its business in a various different ways, one of which is online. It first began as the young fashion section of Selfridges department store in London in 1966. By 1967 Miss Selfridge had concessions throughout the country within John Lewis department stores, and by 1969 there were some independent branches on the high street. When Miss Selfriges first opened the internet was not heard of, but as the years went on and the internet became more popular Miss Selfridge began their website. The website allowed customers to purchase goods online, it also allowed them to purchase items that were not in the stores and enables customers to buy form outsite the UK. In July 1999 Arcadia Group, bought over Miss Selfridges and relaunched its web site with a host of new features.Prominent changes include the addition of a Style Diaries blog, which provides fashion advice and showcases Miss Selfridge lines sported by celebrities such as Fearne Cotton and Sugababes.

It has been estimated that the number of Internet users in the UK reached 36.8 million in 2007, and will pass 38 million in 2008—equivalent to 62.6% of the entire population. Although Internet access has risen, Northern Ireland still remains the region with least access with it rising from 50% in 2006 to 56% in 2008.

Although there is a large population of people using the Internet there is still 43% that doesn’t. These could be either the elderly who don’t want to use the Internet or are not able to, or families who do not have a computer and cannot afford to pay the costs of running the Internet.

From doing my research it was clear that more men use the internet than woman, with a difference of 9%. The most popular age group for internet usage is 93%, and this percentage drops as far as 31% in the 65+ group. I also found that 69% of people who use the internet use it every day or almost every day, again the age group 16-24 had the highest percentage.

Researchers’ eMarketer claims “though the mobile Web market has been slow to take off, the number of mobile UK Web users is increasingly significant and will play a stronger role in future years.” This is now being proved true as the use of mobile internet is growing . Some 7.3m people accessed the net via their mobile phones, during the second and third quarters of 2008.

 This is an increase of 25% compared to a growth of just 3% for the PC-based net audience – now more than 35m. It also found that the mobile net audience was younger and searched for different things.