09.00 Registration

09.30 Chairman’s opening remarks

09.40 Placing your customer at the heart of your multichannel strategy
Jonathon Brown, director of multichannel, B&Q

10.20 Engaging with the customer across channels
Peter Callaway, director of e-commerce, House of Fraser

10.50 Offering an integrated, seamless retail service
Tim Brennan, head of direct trading, Currys

11.20 Morning refreshments

11.50 Panel discussion: What makes a successful transactional web site?
Nick Robertson, chief executive, Asos
Tom Lodge, head of e-commerce, Kurt Geiger
Shaun Wills, strategy and business development director, New Look
David Walmsley, head of web selling, John Lewis

12.50 Lunch

13.50 Examining the best ways to deal with outsourcing
Fiona Fairweather, e-commerce controller, Peacocks

14.20 Where should we be by now? What’s hot in multichannel?
Paul Emslie, head of multichannel, Argos

14.50 Afternoon refreshments

15.20 Keeping up with the shopping evolution: How will we shop in 2015?
Tom Berry, head of retail business programme, Forum for the Future

15.50 Closing remarks from the chair

16.00 End of conference

Giving customers what they want

B&Q’s multichannel offer is coming on in leaps and bounds. The DIY giant launched its web site DIY.com in 2001 and is now working on integrating its store and web offer more closely.

A Reserve & Collect service – tested in three stores – has been rolled out to 10 more sites. B&Q multichannel director Jonathon Brown says the company spends a lot of time looking at what customers want and working out how to roll out initiatives that proved successful in trials.

On the homepage of its site it gives customers the chance to provide feedback. The retailer is using the web to enhance information that is available to shoppers in its stores with a series of web services linked to its environmental programme, One Planet Living.

Jonathon Brown will speak about the importance of customers in a multichannel strategy on June 26 at Retail Solutions.

Online in vogue

If anyone is qualified to discuss what makes a successful transactional web site then it is Asos chief executive Nick Robertson.

In its latest trading statement the online fashion retailer reported sales up 90 per cent for the year to the end of March 2008.

Robertson adds that, despite a slowdown on the high street, Asos is still trading well, with sales up 80 per cent on the year for the first four weeks of April.

This tremendous result builds on the previous staggering growth the company has seen. In its 2006 to 2007 financial year, sales surged 116 per cent.

The company has also been named Online Retailer of the Year for the past two years at the Retail Week Awards.

Asos.com attracts more than 2.9 million unique visitors a month and, at the end of April, it had 1.8 million registered users.

Robertson says: “We continue to benefit from the increasing popularity of online shopping and we have made considerable investments in management, infrastructure, product ranges and marketing to support and sustain future growth.”

Asos makes continuous improvements to its web site and in the past year has refined its product search and improved navigation on the site. Category and product pages have also being updated.

Now the company is planning to up its brand portfolio by almost 70 per cent for the autumn/winter 2008 season – with womenswear rising from 125 to 200 brands and menswear from 130 to 225 brands.

Nick Robertson will be part of the panel discussion on successful online retailing at the Multichannel conference on June 26.