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Woolworths boosts ecommerce functionality
How about a colander with your grater, sir?

By Julian Goldsmith

Published: Thursday 06 December 2007

Mixed merchandise retailer Woolworths has built on its use of product reviews on its website with the development of an automatic recommendation engine.

The system by Avail draws on previous purchases on the site to recommend additional products to customers.

Cheat Sheets

♦ Web 2.0
♦ Mash-ups

Woolworths online marketing manager Mark Batty said the retailer expects an uplift of online sales in the region of 20 per cent added to the average purchase value.

Batty is hoping that Woolworths' automatic product recommendations will be more effective than other sites, such as Amazon, that use similar tools because the UK high street retailer's customer demographic has a narrower range.

The move is part of a sustained online strategy that includes taking independent customer reviews from Revoo and a trial of video product demonstrations some time in the next six months.

Batty said: "We will be looking at video demonstrations on the site for high-value items and where it is difficult for the product to come to life with a static image."