Video and mobile will be must-haves for online retail

The Lastminute.com co-founder and Marks & Spencer non-executive director Lane Fox said that her experiences had shown that a relentless focus on IT was essential. However, she did also add that the biggest cost base, most difficult people to manage and the hairiest moments during her time at Lastminute had all been down to technology.

Now a non-exec for M&S as well as Channel 4 - two businesses that she says are similar in that they are having to address new customer issues - she certainly hasn’t taken her eye of the technology ball.

One of her passions right now is how retailers could be using mobile as a channel for communication and to bring in sales. Not only was she able to reel off sales uplift figures from Harvey’s mobile voucher campaign with Eagle Eye Solutions, she was also highly aware of the work of Fizzback; which retailers including Tesco and T-Mobile have signed up to collect feedback via SMS among other channels.

Video is another technology that she thinks retailers could be making better use of, and in the longer term she says that she would like to walk along a virtual 3-D high street browsing goods from the comfort of her own lounge.

The audience was certainly enthralled by what she had to say about where e-commerce could go next. Let’s hope that M&S, one of the slower retailers to catch on to the potential of online, is also listening.