With 80% of UK homes on broadband, more and more people are choosing to shop online due to the increased convenience and security the internet offers.

According to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) £80 billion of consumer spending is either on or influenced by the internet. Within this £80 billion total, £30 billion of retail spending is online (10% of total retail sales), £20 billion of other consumer spending takes place online and a further £30 billion of offline retail sales are impacted by internet information, research or activity.

Retailers can no longer afford to ignore the internet and whether you are yet to embrace it or are keen to improve your current ecommerce offering, read on for some sound advice from the IAB.

A Beginners Guide to Ecommerce

These IAB best practice ecommerce guidelines serve as the perfect resource for retailers who are yet to fully embrace the internet as a sales and marketing tool. Aimed at both SMEs and larger brands, we have provided powerful case studies and aggregated research to provide advice on retail advertising online in an accessible format. These steps cover all areas of ecommerce activity, and can be summed up in ten simple steps:

• Understand your customer

• Build a good relationship with your customer

• Provide an excellent level of customer service

• Make your site easy to use

• Provide a safe and secure online shopping environment

• Ensure full integration between online and offline stores

• Provide value for money

• Deliver; have strong fulfilment and returns policies

• Utilise search advertising effectively so that potential customers can locate your site with ease

• Have relevantly placed rich media advertising to drive people to your online retail site

• Downloads Available

• Download the pdf file (1262k)
  Download our E-Commerce Best Practice Guidelines.

The online customer journey

Due to the internet revolution, what was once a simple route to the point of sale, is now a vast array of cross-media influenced purchase decisions, more convenient for the consumer yet infinitely more complicated for the retailer to manage. The IAB have produced a 'Buzz on the Online Customer Journey' to encourage retailers to take a walk in their customer's shoes and consider how to make the online path to a purchase as easy and safe as possible for them. To keep up with and fully understand the changing media landscape, download our Buzz below for some invaluable advice.

• Downloads Available

• The Buzz on ecommerce and the online customer journey downloadable document (3000k)
  Begin the customer journey

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliates act as a virtual commission only sales force & promoter for your brand. An advertiser can employ an affiliate network to build an affiliate campaign that, according to their marketing objectives, will put their brand in front of relevant audiences on carefully selected websites. Networks continue to add to their bank of affiliates (websites) in order to keep meeting the audience and sales targets as specified by the advertiser.