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The Hut

This summer saw the launch of a major new online home-entertainment provider, thehut.com, who took a substantial new catalogue business venture directly to the online channel. The website www.thehut.com was delivered within 8 weeks from the initial project brief and features over 224,000 games, CDs, and DVDs, offering consumers an extensive choice of competitively priced products and a customer experience that has been carefully created in order to win and keep winning market share in this growing online sector.
Shopcreator’s solution underpins the new online business, effectively managing the product feed and presenting the substantial catalogue of products in a customer-centric e-business web site. Online features and functionality include: ‘try before you buy’ audio samples; pre-ordering of forthcoming new releases; precision search capabilities; informative content; and a wide range of e-CRM features, such as automated user discounts, e-vouchers and gift certificates. The entire operation is managed through a centralised database, enabling simple and effective customer marketing initiatives.
With such a broad range of products to effectively display and manage, consumers require simple, speedy and direct navigation in order to locate and purchase from their area of preference in super-quick time. Clearly defined sub-menus are simplified into major categories to aid browsing and keep the time spent online to locate and purchase against specific requirements at a minimum.

As a user, the number of searchable components on the site is vast, for example by hyperlinking each cast member of a film, that actor or director’s entire catalogue of available work can be accessed. The software also displays a wide range of ‘recommended alternatives’ in order to introduce the user to new products that they were not initially searching for. Each page will typically feature an extensive list of links to show related content and provide an information-rich experience. This helps add value to the shopping experience and concurrently maximises basket size at checkout.

In addition, features such as ‘Hut Picks’ (recommended titles), ‘latest releases’ ‘coming soon’ and the ability to search by genre, alphabetical listing or chart position, provide a level of convenience and instant information feed that cannot be emulated offline.

To simplify the purchasing process, the site has been designed with minimum number of clicks to checkout, enabling consumers to purchase from any page of the site. Also, with a basket summary on every web page, consumers need not interrupt the shopping experience in order to add or view selected products. Returning customers are then instantly recognised and, with the simple post-code look-up facility, there is no need to re-input customer details for re-ordering.

Keith Westhead, Chief Operating Officer, at thehut.com articulates the benefits of utilising the online channel, "Building The Hut has been a process focussing first and foremost on the customer, channelling the technology and Shopcreator’s technical expertise to achieve an accessible and rewarding value proposition. A clean design, intuitive navigation, high quality content and genuinely useful cross-sells are the site’s commercial foundations, allowing the successful leverage of an extremely broad range of products at highly competitive prices."

With delivery costs identified as a key feature in incomplete transactions, it was decided that the prices on thehut.com would all include free delivery, reducing the risk of cart abandonment. In recent research Forrester found that cost of delivery was the 4th most important factor when choosing which online retailer to purchase from. This followed security of payment transaction, privacy policy, and ease of ordering. Price interestingly came 6th in the list! In the home entertainment business however, the correct pricing model is essential.

To effectively and efficiently manage such a tremendous number of products The Hut uses Shopcreator’s catalogue management service, which integrates the supplier data from multiple sources in order to create a simple product catalogue management system. The entire product catalogue is updated on a nightly basis to ensure that the featured product’s status, such as ‘new release’ or ‘pre-order’ is always current.
Keith Westhead continues: "Our commercial priority was to remain focused on retailing expertise – purchasing, marketing, store management, fulfillment and customer care. We wanted to avoid the traditional e-commerce trap of becoming an accidental software company, and, in Shopcreator, found a partner who could reliably deliver the right technical solution with the flexibility that we demanded – as a partner, not just as a provider."
When a new business launches, site marketing is fundamental to success. In order to proactively generate new and repeat business, the Shopcreator e-CRM module enables The Hut to target customers with relevant offers and can set discounts per user, enabling a user to automatically qualify for promotional pricing. With the addition of e-vouchers and gift certificates, building repeat volume business has been achieved in a very short space of time.

The online stock control facility enables the Hut to hold stock of offer items, enabling the business to keep instantaneous control of outgoing and incoming stock, in order to fulfil and manage so many complex promotions and offers.

There will be much additional development work in the coming months but the initial figures are extremely encouraging with daily orders racing ahead of projected targets.
Andy Kitchener, CEO at Shopcreator, concludes, "If high customer-satisfaction scores are any guide, then people seem to enjoy shopping on the internet. E-business solutions are becoming increasingly sophisticated and better at serving and entertaining customers, and the internet seems set to continue taking an ever increasing share of people's spending. Customer service is all about flexibility, the adaptability of your offering to ensure that you always meet the needs of the client – that goes not only for the merchant but also for ourselves as the solution provider."