Kiddicare.com is a major innovator in the ecommerce space amassing different awards. They see multi-channel as old hat and opt for an omni-channel approach: Customers don’t differentiate based on their device. The only difference between devices is the hour of usage: Mobile has a peak in the morning: Customers tend to not fire up their PC in the morning anymore but instead check their mobile phones.
Omni-Channel in an eBusiness World – Simon Harrow from Kiddicare
Simon speaking at the Endeca eBusiness Forum 2011

It took Kiddicare.com only 7 weeks from concept to launch of the mobile site. 4 minutes after the launch the first order came in. ROI was another 7 weeks after launch, the growth rate is so phenomenal that year over year comparisons are irrelevant. Today 6% of revenue comes via mobile, it’s expected to grow to 20% by 2012.

The mobile user interface is conceived very differently from the web site. The check out button has to be reachable with your thumb…
The near future…
- RFID will continue to enrich the physical shopping experience by tying digital content to store retail
- Social commerce will become a force. Not necessarily by the way of ‹Facebook Stores› but through increased social interactions: video, reviews, sharing. Kiddicare’s Facebook store is not doing commercially well, but it is still important concerning the web community. It allows customers to vent, but it also allows Kiddicare to guide customers through the purchasing process. Emails and phones decreased by 30% after the community platform was launched. The community forum advises regarding questions around pregnancy. peer-to-peer recommendation and word of mouth is a great opportunity for Kiddicare. Another example of integrating social media would be a handbag app that takes a picture in the shop and posts it to Facebook. Friends then rate whether they like it or not.
- A business change case to facilitate growth. Attribution is important but a holistic view on the business gaining the sale, through which ever channel, is critical. Reporting has to be adapted to the new opportunities.
Development of a ‹design agnostic› methodology. The concept of ‹pages› will no longer exist – instead a collection of assets arranged to suit the device will prevail
Kiddicare moves so fast they don’t do any usability tests. They improve on the go. Agility is very important, you should get the fundamental functionality online quickly (time-to-market) and then improve the details from there. It’s very important to know the underlying technology, its features and its limitations.
Social functionality includes pulling content from Facebook walls and providing it as indexed information to the website.