News
According to a study conducted by Ericsson people living in London are currently more reluctant to use digital shopping assistants than their global counterparts.
For example when making larger purchases, such as cars and furniture, only 27% of Londoners would use a digital shopping assistant compared to 39% in worldwide.
This figure was also lower for restocking products, 37% as opposed to 46%, and taking fashion advice, 32% to 47%.
To read more, click here.
Amazon is planning on expanding its Amazon Go concept, offering cashierless grocery stores, and the first two shops will be located in Chicago and San Francisco.
Amazon Go was originally tested at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle in January. However no date has been provided for when the shops in Chicago and San Francisco will open.
The basic concept is that customers must first download the Amazon Go app, they can then walk around the shop adding items to their basket and then leave with their shopping without having to queue to pay.
To read more, click here.
Instagram, the social media platform, has added a payments feature to its app for some users.
With users now able to add their payment details as part of their profile and products that can be brought direct through the app, Instagram is facilitating the purchasing process for its users.
This feature could change the ecommerce landscape and make retailers consider increasing their focus on Instagram marketing in order to appeal to more buyers.
To read more, click here.
Some advice from Ritam Gandhi, director and founder of Studio Graphene, to help tech entrepreneurs safeguard the longevity of their businesses.
Keep focused on a specific audience
Startups can be tempted once they are developing their tech to start considering all the different kinds of people it could serve, but it is essential to focus on the original core group they wanted to target. This will allow them to create a strong foundation of support. Once they have created this then they can start building on this success and consider their future roadmap.
No entrepreneur is an island
One of the best things that has come from the recent boom in startup companies across the UK is that it has created an incredible network for newly evolving startups to tap into. In order for this to happen the new startups need to be able to acknowledge where their strengths lie and what their weak spots are. It may be they have the technical know-how but do not know how to market their brand or they have an amazing idea but don't know how to technically bring it to life. There are many ways to tap into the experience that is available, whether that is by attending talks, hiring new talent, working with agencies or using the wide source of information online.
Even the best laid plans…
However prepared a startup may feel, they must also be ready for failure. It is no easy task creating new technology and launching it to market and so even though a company is organised and done its due diligence something could always happen. The best way is to embrace this, to try to resist failure could have worse effects then something going wrong and quickly learning from it and improving the product or business model. The best preparation is to allow enough time and budget to be able to tackle any hurdles that might pop up.
In conclusion
What these three pieces of advice illustrate is that so much of making a success of a business comes down to an entrepreneur’s mindset. They must have the ability to remain focused on very specific goals without getting carried away; the modesty to seek help when it is required; and be adaptable enough to take failures – big or small – in their stride.
If an entrepreneur launches a tech startup with these things in mind their business will undoubtedly improve its chances of not just surviving, but thriving.
To read more, click here.
Fuse Universal, an EdTech company, has raised £14.79m ($20m) in growth capital from Eight Roads Ventures to support workplace learning.
Fuse helps over 100 enterprises across the globe to facilitate learning, knowledge sharing and communication among employees. Such enterprises include Merck, EY, International Hotel Group, The Prince’s Trust, Spotify and Vodafone and more.
This latest funding will be used to continue advancing its work in areas such as machine learning and augmented reality. It will also be used to support global expansion and to accelerate FuseSchool, its charity arm which currently has over 140,000 subscribers and delivers free educational content to children around the world.
To read more, click here.
Big name high street retailers have hit the headlines recently with cases of store closures, job losses and declining profits. There are many reasons for this but a large part can be attributed to the growth in ecommerce.
Consumers are more confident than ever in spending online, but they are also becoming more discerning with both their expectations of the on and offline shopping environment and how they prioritise their time.
In essence, the digital environment combined with growth in the proportion of digitally savvy consumers is making the creation of value much more complex, particularly as more and more consumers look for specific products, unique to their own needs, fragmenting the marketplace into more segments than previously thought possible.
To read more, click here.
Seafolly, Australia's largest swimwear brand, has launched a new global eCommerce platform to compliment its growth aspirations of expanding globally and online. The company launched in 1975 in Australia and has since expanded to North America, Europe and Asia and has more than 2,700 stockists.
The new site has been developed in partnership with Tryzens, a leading systems integrator and services provider, and was created to budget and on schedule and is available across mobiles, tablets and laptops.
To read more, click here.
New research has revealed that nearly half of UK adults would like part of their digital history to be permanently deleted. The research, conducted by Accenture, surveyed 2,000 UK adults on data privacy and discovered that 47% of them would like certain aspects of their online activity deleted.
The five most popular things that people would like to be deleted from their digital history are:
- Photos of themselves posted by others
- Embarrassing social media posts
- Search engine history
- Shopping habits
- Credit history
When GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) comes into effect on the 25th May it will provide people with more control over their digital information. It will give everyone in the UK the right to access data that companies hold about them and ask for it to be deleted.
To read more, click here.
Quiqup, a London-based company that organises on-demand and same day courier delivery for businesses, has expanded into Manchester and Dubai.
The expansion follows Quiqup’s £20m Series B funding round, which they secured in May 2017.
Since it was founded in 2014, the company claims to have seen a 170% growth year-on-year and delivered over a million orders.
Quiqup will offer two services to its 100 new trial business partners in Dubai and Manchester: Quiqdash (a web app that allows small to medium sized business to instantly order or schedule a delivery) and its API integration service (that incorporates Quiqup’s delivery service into retailers’ existing e-commerce channels), allowing customers to still order directly from the retailer
To read more, click here.
Outdoor Voices, an activewear company that launched as an online-only shop before expanding to bricks-and-mortar, has released an AR app called OV Trail Shop. The app is designed to get customers out onto the trail, where they can shop for its activewear items in the environment where they would wear them. The concept of AR being used outside contrasts with current retailers use of AR solely within their stores. It is this digital creativity that could help them stand out from competitors such as Lululemon.
To read more, click here.