Barty’s Weblog

The NZ Herald have reported this week that The Warehouse is “re-entering” the online market shortly.

“We’re watching what’s been bought online in New Zealand outside of the Trade Me arena – it’s growing and we think The Warehouse needs to be in that space.”

According to the article, The Warehouse will be releasing its new site shortly and it will feature a catalog of just 7000 products… and shoppers won’t be able to buy online for another 12-18 months.

Tim Morris, of Coriolis Research, said…

“Internet retailing in New Zealand is behind where it is in other countries, and that’s got nothing to do, I think, with the innate willingness of New Zealanders to buy things online. I think where it falls over is in the execution.”

I agree with the comments Tim Morris makes. Internet retailing in NZ is behind the rest of the world and this article highlights why the big boys struggle on the internet — smaller teams can execute better and faster.

If this is an indication of how fast The Warehouse can execute… then we certainly won’t be shaking in our boots any time soon.

We love bucking trends, but its generally not something we set out to do. It’s easier to ride the current after all, than to try to swim upstream.

But sometimes its just happens. Anyway, back to the point… GPstores music sales have more than doubled since the start of the year. For some reason, we’re selling more and more music CDs online.

The other interesting phenomenon is the type of music we’re selling.

We’ve been doing really well with music that’s non-mainstream. This was highlighted last month when pre-orders for Indestructible Special Edition by Disturbed out sold the new Coldplay album by around ten to one. To top it off, the new Disturbed album sold its pants off without us even promoting it.

This suggests a couple of things. People know that mainstream music will be everywhere and therefore they don’t need to pre-order it… or perhaps people who buy music from GPstore are mostly gamers. Its probably a mixture of both effects, but this has certainly changed our view of what music we’ll be pushing…

In the future we’ll happily swim with the current… and promote the stuff our beloved customers actually want to buy from us!

Lets face it. The Trademe design is ugly… no really. Well okay, it’s not really ugly. It is pretty good these days, but it’s not exactly a work of art.

A lot worse could be said about craigslist and many other successful web sites.

Its funny how we can become so obsessed with creating great looking web sites, when a lot of successful sites are on the verge of being ugly (actually the same could be said for many successful people… such as our recent prime ministers: Muldoon, Lange, Palmer, Moore, Bolger, Shipley, Clark… spot the common link?).

So if web sites like Trademe and craigslist don’t have pretty designs and prime ministers don’t have pretty faces, then just how important is the “look” of a web site?

Over the years we’ve pondered this question over more glasses of wine than Dan Carter has French Francs.

In my opinion, a good graphic design will get visitors in the door. While being ugly… well not so much! The good news is that if your design is good enough to get users beyond your front page, then it should be mission accomplished. Your design is doing its job. So why over do it?

A great design on its own isn’t going to make a web site successful. Once people are using the site, the other factors (such as usability, content, and customer proposition) become far more important.

The key is to get people in the door… and then provide the substance they are looking for, so the web site actually works for the users.

I’d suggest our recent prime ministers are the pudding — good looks don’t count for much in the real world either?

Even when trying to avoid the news it can be hard to do so — there’s talk of a recession, talk of tough times, rising oil prices, rising food prices, and so on.

I read an article recently on the DVD Industry site that suggested that entertainment category was bucking the trend. According to local GFK sales data, DVD sales in New Zealand are up 18% on volume and 13% on value over last year. There’s nothing gloomy about that growth?

Our own sales on GPstore for the last quarter (April-June 2008) were up 71% on the same quarter last year (and we thought last year was great!). There’s nothing gloomy about that growth either. From where we’re sitting… times are pretty good.

It seems that when times were tough… people like to stay at home, watch DVDs and play games.

Booyah.