Halfords Mobile Site Goes Transactional

Watford, London December 7th, 2010 – Salmon, specialists in delivering eCommerce solutions today announced car accessories and cycling retailer Halfords has launched its first ever transactional mobile website.

This builds on the success of Halfords’ dotmobile site, which went live in August. Now the retailer has made further enhancements to enable customers to pay for orders via their mobile phone. Shopping from mobile phones is booming. More than a quarter of Britons have a smartphone, rising to 45% amongst 15-24 year olds. IMS research states that the number of internet connected phones has now surpassed the number of connected computers. Metrics from Halfords support this progression. Since the launch of the dotmobile site, the retailer has seen mobile visitor numbers increase to 8% of Halfords’ dotcom total. Conversion levels have also doubled. Chris Corbin, Head of Multichannel at Halfords said: “More and more of our customers are accessing our site via mobile and we want them to have the same experience as they have from a computer. Smartphones point to how trends in shopping habits are changing fast.” The new transactional site, developed by Salmon, makes Halfords the first retailer in the UK to offer such a variety of delivery options via their smartphone. Mobile customers will now have access to Halfords’ extended range of products and the same fulfillment options in use on the main Halfords.com site, offering a true multichannel experience. Customers can choose from Home/Work Delivery, Order & Collect (Free to Store) or Reserve & Collect, as well as using functions to search for products, read customer reviews, compare products, and find their nearest store with stock. When using the new dotmobile site, customers can choose to pay by credit/debit card or PayPal, the same payment methods supported by Halfords.com. Halfords is the first mass UK retailer to offer PayPal as a mobile payment method. Sue Pratt from Salmon added: “In response to customer feedback we’ve made a number of improvements to the navigation of search results, and the usability of links on mobile touch screens along with other minor enhancements to the navigation, look and feel of the site.” Notes to editors: The mobile platform was developed by Salmon using the same underlying architecture as Halfords.com (IBM WebSphere Commerce). Developing the transactional capability involved complex integration by Salmon between the mobile site, DataCash and PayPal to offer 3-D Secure. Salmon also integrated the mobile site with Multimap, SAP and Store6. About Halfords Halfords is the UK’s leading specialist retailer for automotive parts and accessories, cycling and leisure. We provide a unique mix of 10,000 products to help keep our customers on the move and enjoy their active leisure time. We have 10,000 staff and our 469 UK stores puts 90% of consumers in the UK within an average of 18 minutes drive from their nearest Halfords. Meanwhile we are building a significant presence in Ireland and the Czech Republic. Halfords customers also shop at our award winning website to access an extended product range. About Salmon Salmon is a highly innovative regional systems integrator whose commitment to on-time, on-budget projects is increasingly embraced by the leading names in retail, insurance and financial services markets. Since 1989, leading brands have been turning to Salmon for its ability to build, integrate and support business-led systems that add measurable competitive value to their day-to-day operations – and to their bottom line. Salmon quickly understand business needs, creates realistic development schedules, and efficiently delivers solutions to plan; based around an ethos that marries a depth and breadth of development skills, with a management process that removes virtually all risk from successful project roll-outs. Customers include Argos, Ann Summers, Boots, Bristol & West, Halfords, ICI Paints, Selfridges and Swiss Re. Salmon is headquartered in Watford, Hertfordshire and has offices in US, China and Australia. For more details about Salmon visit http://www.salmon.com