Ten years ago we would have laughed at the thought of purchasing our clothes, let alone our groceries from an online retailer. Now, in a society pressed for time, the tedious task of hitting the shops has been reduced to a hassle-free click of a mouse button; and voila – milk, delivered straight to your door.

The latest figures from the ABS show that retail figures are flat, as sales have contracted sharply by more than three per cent over the past year. In comparison, Internet shopping is picking up the pace with online retail consumption growing rapidly. A recent report from the Commonwealth Bank shows that online retail stores knocked 1.3 percentage points of b-a-m retail stores top-line growth in 2011, with similar trends expected for the remainder of this financial year. The total amount of precious money spent online by Australian consumers in 2011 was – hold your breath: $248.5 billion. That’s one very big pie for brands without an online presence to be missing out on.

So, why are so many consumers making the shift from brick-and-mortar, to online? It’s pretty straightforward really: Lower prices, due to fewer overheads, and of course, convenience. Yes – shopping online means you can purchase goods at 3am and you don’t even have to get dressed. Win.

Analysts at Frost & Sullivan have predicted Australian online retailing to grow by up to fifty per cent over the next four years, sparking huge demand from many companies to invest in non-traditional means of delivering their product and/or services.

It would be naive to suggest that brick-and-mortar retail is completely dead, it isn’t. But the fact remains that as technology allows consumers to purchase goods in a fast and easy manner, from anywhere in the world, brands are going to be expected to keep up, or lose out. The era of E-commerce is well and truly upon us.

A few months ago the twenty4 team were approached to build an eCommerce site for a new startup called Vinspi. The idea was to create an online store where customers can design their own bespoke tailored mens suit!

We’re happy to announce that Vinspi has gone live and we’re extremely proud of the end product. The idea behind the business is to allow men to enjoy a perfect fitting tailored suit instead of buying off the rack sizes that still require alterations. The pricing of a premium Vinspi suit is also competitive, starting at $419 with free shipping.

Powered by Magento, the corner piece of the site is a unique custom suit builder where anyone can design a suit in a couple of mouse clicks.

The company is founded by Ivan Lim who has a background in ecommerce from his days as Marketing Manager at OZHut. We look forward to watching Vinspi grow and the next phase of our work together will be building more functionality to the site.

Check out Vinspi Bespoke Suits Website

Congratulations to the team at Designers Guild on launching their new website – www.designersguild.net.au

Established in 1970 by Tricia Guild, Designers Guild designs and wholesales furnishing fabrics, wallcoverings, upholstery and bed and bath collections worldwide.The company is headed and owned by brother and sister, Tricia Guild, Founder and Creative Director, and Simon Jeffreys, Group Chief Executive. The Designers Guild business philosophy is to combine creativity and innovation with the highest levels of quality: quality of design, product, service and people.

The purpose of the website development was based around creating an eCommerce experience for customers online.

Magento is the eCommerce platform – it allows Designers Guild to sell products and grow their business online, supported by backend managements tools and sales reporting. Magento is also the Content Management System (CMS), which gives their team the autonomy to update their own website.

The next phase we are working on together is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Adwords (PPC), to help the Designers Guild website rank on search engines like Google, to generate more traffic and leads to the online business.

With the current retail situation in Australia a lot of companies are turning to online sales to compete, worried they will be left behind. We’ve had a lot of enquiries about Design and Development and marketing strategies for online stores using Magento. Magento is a great tool, it’s kind of like the PhotoShop of eCommerce where everything you can possibly imagine has been thought of before, and if it doesn’t do it out of the box there’s a plugin that will do it for you.

Coupons and vouchers are a great tool in Magento particularly if you are using voucher codes in offline material so you can measure the effectiveness of your offline campaigns. Big news came through yesterday which will boost Magento to the forefront as the eCommerce tool of choice. eBay has agreed to acquire Magento. Details are still a bit sketchy but Magento could possibly become the X.Commerce platform or the two could be developed side by side, whatever the outcome it’s good news for Magento.