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On July 7th Marks and Spencer revealed that their online sales were down 8% v(compared to their typical 20% increases previously). What was conspicuously absent was any mention of the £150m investment in the site that they had been eager to boast about on launch in February.
M&S have a team of 50 software developers along with a graduate scheme and a specialist ‘digital lab’ dedicated to fostering a ‘start-up’ culture around the project, accompanied by management from the likes of Laura Wade-Gery – ex-head of Tesco.com and Tesco Direct. Together this seemed like a recipe for success, complimented by a generous budget that appeared to reflect M&S’s determined ambition to be taken more seriously by the modern world.
It’s difficult to pick apart where M&S might have faltered with the limited details and metrics they have made available, however it is possible to create a list of suggestions as to where they may have had problems. Should you want specific examples of broken links, error pages, incompatible browsers, unexplained changes to orders, and a whole host of other issues, simply check out the posts from customers to the M&S facebook page. From those communications alone, you could write a ‘how not to do e-commerce’ book!...
What a nightmare example of bad planning and poor execution of an ecommerce website. And a budget of £150 million!