The Launching of Taste

Building a completely new retail concept from scratch can be a daunting task. It takes courage, fortitude and a great deal of professional capability to achieve.

That is exactly what the principals of Taste are doing – with the help of a team of dedicated professionals and qualified designers.

Located in Sydney, Taste is launching with 3 concept stores in the suburbs of Concord, Willoughby and Brookvale as well a comprehensive online offering. The stores will be delivering an exceptional array of European products and homewares for kitchen, bedroom and bathroom renovations.

Having been responsible for project managing the internet developments for this project, I feel extremely privileged to be part of such an incredible undertaking. When you visit the stores you are blown away by the quality of design and products that are available and the beautiful manner in which they are displayed. I feel that my design team have also been able to reflect this quality and detail in the site's design and content.

Taste is offering a full range of design services for amazing German manufactured kitchens and bathrooms, as well bedroom and other home renovation needs. You can also buy all your homeware needs for the kitchen – including cookware, cutlery, dinner settings and accessories – as well appliances, lighting, flooring, manchester, living room and dining room furniture.

The site has been launched initially without the ability to purchase products, to allow the stores an initial period of settling in and allow customers the opportunity to browse what Taste has on offer. Shortly we will be switching on the ecommerce component and visitors to the site from anywhere in Australia will be able to take advantage of the incredible range and amazing prices that Taste is offering.

Mobile Shopping Exploding

We all like the idea that mobile phones are beginning to develop greater capabilities. This is being seen dramatically in the use of apps and the availability of information at our fingertips, wherever we are.

A dramatic development being witnessed in the US is how smartphones are now becoming a shopping companion – both to make actual purchases and also to help us research product information, locate stores and do comparison shopping.

A report released earlier this month by Foresee Results highlights new research which shows consumers are using their mobile phones more than ever for retail purposes. The study of nearly 10,000 visitors to the biggest e-tail sites in the US (as determined by revenue) showed that:

• 33% of respondents have used their phone to access a retailer website and an additional 26% indicated they plan to access retailer websites or mobile apps by phone in the future.
• 11% of shoppers reported having made a purchase from their phone – compared with only 2% at the same time the previous year.
• 56% of shoppers used their phone to compare price information, 46% to compare different products, 35% to look at product specifications and 27% to view product reviews.
• While in a physical store, more than two-thirds (69%) of mobile shoppers used their phones to visit the store's own website, while nearly half (46%) also used their phones to access a competitor's website.

While this highlights a significant shift to mobile for shoppers, overall they still rate the satisfaction with retailer's website higher than that of their mobile sites. This is likely to be more an indication of the maturity of the internet retail sites over the mobile or app experiences.

One final statistic worth noting was that "shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience say they are 30% more likely to buy from that retailer online and 30% more likely to buy offline, as well as being far more likely to return to the main website, recommend it, and be loyal to the brand."

For more detail on the report, visit Foresee Results.

Click of Approval

S 23 Jan 2011
It's always enjoyable to read an article which starts to reflect the true perspective of a situation. With all the discussion about online shopping lately, there's been an overdrive about online taking away bricks-and-mortar business.

While this is undoubtedly true to a degree, it does not mean the end of in-store shopping, simply the expansion of the ways we have to shop. Online and physical stores will continue to live side-by-side, although the full dynamics of their relationship is still being established.

This article by Kate Waterhouse nicely puts the good and the uncomfortable of online shopping versus in-store. Essentially the case for online is the convenience and 24/7 availability, while the case against is the lack of individual service compared with what you get in-store and the problems if something goes wrong with your order.

In the end, each channel will find the balance of value in individual's lives.

Read the full article...