The Sellerdeck survey shows that although online sales are growing faster than in the high street, the average shopping cart value has declined slightly from £87.09 in Q2 2009 to £72.35 in Q2 2010. This decrease means e-retailers had to work harder to achieve the increase in revenue with promotional offers, discounted lines or focusing on lower value items. On average an extra 262 orders were processed by each e-retailer during the quarter when compared to the same period the previous year.

Jez Hall, director of garden machinery supplier www.mowermagic.co.uk comments: “We have noticed a shift in customer purchasing behaviour for the second quarter of 2010, due to the economic climate. Our range of garden machinery is still selling well but we have experienced a significant increase in spare part sales as customers, make do and mend, rather than replace garden equipment. This trend has helped our bottom line as the margins we can achieve with spare parts can be higher than selling the larger ticket items such as lawn mowers.”

He adds, “Without wanting to put a dampener on this year’s long hot summer, the lack of rain does mean gardens are not flourishing. However with our sales revenues up 12% on the second quarter of 2009 figures, we are not complaining.”

Nick Kington, managing director at Sellerdeck says, “This is another impressive performance by online sellers in the SME market and in line with Sales Index figures reported by the IMRG in June. Despite the economic climate many Sellerdeck retailers are seeing very positive signs that consumer confidence and online spending in particular is on the increase.”

Chris Barling, CEO of Sellerdeck says: “The latest version of Sellerdeck Ecommerce introduces several new features that many of our merchants have requested. Retailers will benefit from real time stock control and additional marketing functionality to help increase sales, while their customers will see improvements to their shopping experience.”

Key new features in Sellerdeck v10 include:

• Real time stock control – This provides improved stock management for retailers and automatic, up-to-date visibility of stock levels for shoppers. For multi-channel retailers this also enables stock synchronisation between the website, offline ordering and the Sellerdeck EPOS till system.
• Customer feedback integration with Feefo (Feedback Forum) – Enables the merchant to display independent customer feedback on the website. This can help to increase conversions to sales , as well as enhance the site’s SEO.
• Streamlined checkout – Improves the shopper’s experience by reducing the number of checkout steps.
• ‘Recently viewed’ products – This new marketing feature shows the shopper a list of products that they have previously viewed on the website.

Commenting on the release of version 10, Richard Cooper, Marketing Director of Polished Bliss (www.polishedbliss.co.uk) said, ‘The new release of Sellerdeck improves what was already a great E-Commerce package. Sellerdeck has been core to our business since 2005. It has proven itself to be flexible, reliable and very user friendly and has helped increase revenue by 48% per annum for the last 3 years. The release of Sellerdeck v10, with its improved functionality, will contribute significantly to the continued growth of our business’.

Prices and Availability

Available now, Sellerdeck Catalog and Sellerdeck Business pricing remains unchanged at £499 and £899 respectively, for single-site, single user licenses. Sellerdeck Business Plus is £1399 plus £300 per additional networked user. Sellerdeck Designer is £350. Sellerdeck Enterprise is £4,000 for a 2-user system plus £500 per additional user. All prices exclude VAT.

Feefo aims to help web merchants operate their businesses better and has an excellent track record of obtaining customer feedback. Since it started in 2006, Feefo’s clients have received feedback on an average of 17% of all web orders — the highest in the industry. Feefo solicits a merchant’s customers for feedback, making them aware that the results cannot be edited by the store owner. This not only leads to more feedback, but it also addresses trust issues and increases sales.

Used with Sellerdeck’s award-winning E-Commerce products, integration and operation of Feefo is very simple for the merchant, with all aspects of integration and configuration available on a point and click basis. Merchants control the number of days’ delay before requests for feedback are sent; whether service or product feedback is sought; and limits on the number of emails sent to individuals. All aspects of the service comply with data protection and email legislation with full opt-out available.

Benefits from the service include:

• Enhanced search engine rankings
• Better conversion at the web site — typically in the order of 10%
• Improved understanding of customers and their requirements
• Reduced returns.

According to Sellerdeck CEO Chris Barling, “With trust issues firmly in the forefront of buyers’ thinking when they are contemplating a purchase from a smaller store, we feel that independent customer feedback is imperative. Our survey of the market identified Feefo as having the best business model at a price that is accessible to small and medium sized merchants. We are closely integrating the service so that it can be implemented with a few clicks. We are convinced that it will be a winning formula, and there is certainly a lot of interest in the subject from our customers.”

For Feefo, MD Andrew Mabbutt comments, “We are very pleased that Sellerdeck chose us as its customer feedback partner. From the beginning of the discussions, it was clear that Sellerdeck intended to offer a service that was both easy to use and reasonably priced, which fitted well with our policy of providing customers with the best solution available. The partnership will allow Sellerdeck’s customers to benefit by having affordable access to a world-class independent feedback solution.”

For full details see feefo-customer-feedback.

In this Sellerdeck survey of over 200 small and medium businesses selling online, on average the quantity of orders processed by each e-tailer increased 13% during the third quarter when compared to the same period the previous year.

Respondents reported their average shopping cart value increasing slightly by 4% during the period from £73.81 in the third quarter 2009 to £76.81 in 2010.

John Boyes, managing director of www.track-shack.com commented, “Our Q3 turnover has increased in excess of 20% when compared to last year’s figures which we put down to simply holding more stock of the products our customers want. In our niche market customers would traditionally wait ages between placing an order and receiving the goods. We have recently started “The People’s Engine” survey which provides an invaluable insight into future demand. This allows us to work with suppliers to develop new product and stock up on what our customers actually want.”

Rob Mobberley, director and CEO of www.performancemotorcare.com has seen revenues increase by 28% for the third quarter compared to the same period last year, with the order volume increasing 19% and average order value increasing by over 7%.  Rob said, “The focus for us is maintaining a high level of customer service to encourage repeat orders. We have used social media, including Twitter and Facebook to engage with our customers giving advice and guidance on our car care products and have also introduced customer reviews and feedback so website visitors can make more informed purchases.”

Nick Kington, managing director at Sellerdeck adds, “These growth figures indicate that online sellers in the SME sector are faring well against poor high street sales. With consumer confidence decreasing in September as reported by the Nationwide Building Society it is very encouraging to see e-tailers are still reporting double digit year on year growth. On the run up to Christmas online merchants are looking well placed to capitalise from consumers shopping around to get the best deals.”

Sellerdeck is pleased to announce the release of the latest Sellerdeck v10 update v10.0.2.

Sellerdeck v10.0.2 is an interim release containing a number of fixes for known issues and adds several enhancements to Sellerdeck Payments and Feefo customer feedback. For more information please see the release notes.

This is available for all Sellerdeck v10 customers to download from the Software Patches and Updates section of the Download Centre .

If you are not already using Sellerdeck v10 you can take a 30 day trial of this new release.