Online fashion retailer Missguided has launched its own iPhone app in a bid to expand its online retail offering.

The business, which specialises in “catwalk looks and celebrity inspired women’s fashion”, hopes to use the application to strengthen ties with customers by providing access to its online catalogue as well as fashion industry news for shoppers on the move.

Missguided’s venture is the latest sign of a growing trend among fashion retailers to connect with potential buyers through mobile and smartphone devices. And after research released last week suggested that in three years time mobile owners may be spending over £250m a year on goods bought through their phones, it’s not hard to see why the fashion sector is taking such an interest.

In an effort to widen the customer experience and make its iPhone app more than simply a sales tool, Missguided has included a host of features on top of its online catalogue. New fashions are sent to users’ phones each day, and social media fashion links to the firm’s blog, Facebook and Twitter pages are provided.

By Richard Morris

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Spanish fashion retailer Inditex has announced it will start online sales later this year.

The company, which owns brands including Zara and Massimo Dutti, is due to open an online store on September 2 covering the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Inditex currently has more than 4,700 stores in 77 countries.

In an announcement this morning, Inditex said it would ensure the internet service is designed to be accessible not only through conventional internet access networks, but also through smartphones and tablet devices.

Firms across the world are now starting to grasp the growing importance of providing a usable web offering through mobile devices to customers. A new report has said mobile phone users purchased almost £123m worth of goods in the UK last year, and this figure is set to more than double in the next three years.

Last month, Andy Murray, head of in-store marketing agency Saatchi X, admitted he had never seen times like this before in the retail sector, saying: “Mobile is changing everything in retail”.

As part of this morning’s announcement, Inditex said net sales reached 2,67 billion euros in the first quarter of 2010, 14 per cent up year-on-year. Net income for the quarter was up 63 per cent.

Analysts and traders responded positively to the announcement, and the company’s shares jumped by 2.32 euros (5.3 per cent) to 46.2 euros during early trading in Madrid according to Bloomberg.

Karen Howland, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London, said: “Emerging-market growth and the launch of its online business this autumn will drive above-consensus top-line and earnings growth.”

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UK internet, mail order and phone sales were up 21.9 per cent year-on-year last month, according to the latest figures released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC). The month-on-month increase was 15.9 per cent on April.

The BRC-KPMG retail sales monitor showed that like-for-like UK retail sales values across all categories were up by 0.8 per cent on May 2009, when sales fell by 0.8 per cent. On a total basis, sales were up 3 per cent last month, following a 0.8 per cent increase in May 2009.

Commenting on the online sales figures, Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: “This is excellent sales growth – the highest since December.

“Customers took advantage of the many online deals and promotions, especially on televisions in the lead-up to the World Cup, as well as clothing and footwear.

“But we’ve got to put these figures into context: it’s compared with last year’s very weak performance – the lowest growth for at least 18 months.”

The BRC said while consumer confidence has improved since last year, there remains uncertainty, making people think twice before buying expensive items such as furniture.

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Mobile phone users bought nearly £123million of goods in the UK in 2009 using their smartphones, according to a new report, and this figure looks set to more than double in the next three years.

As total online retail spending in 2009 was £21.2bn – or a market share of 0.6 per cent – this means that by 2013, mobile internet sales could reach £275million, or the four per cent of the overall market, claim analysts Verdict and Ovum, who have released a joint study.

They claim that, in the last year, only 2.1 per cent of the UK adult population shopped using internet access on their mobile. This is less than a tenth of the 28 per cent of the population who have mobile internet access.

“Consumers are not spending significant amounts via mobiles and, for now, we believe the true potential for m-commerce is to provide consumers with a valuable tool for research, comparison shopping and retailer interaction,” said Malcolm Pinkerton, senior analyst with Verdict Research.

“However, with internet-savvy consumers now accustomed to the multichannel environment, they are beginning to embrace m-commerce,” he told Brand Republic magazine.

Christine Bardwell, senior retail technology analyst at Ovum, added: “The opportunities are there for the most proficient multichannel retailers to claim a share of the growing cross-channel expenditure by exploiting the possibilities provided by mobiles to seamlessly link the online and in-store environments.”

Home furnishings and women’s fashion retailer Laura Ashley has announced a 74 per cent increase in online sales during the first 17 weeks of its current financial year.

Continuing growth from its web operations helped lift the business’ total UK revenues by 6.2 per cent for the period, according to a report by Reuters.

The company, which has 229 stores across the country, said like-for-like sales were up 5.3 per cent between February and the period finishing the end of May.

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By Richard Morris

The latest online sales figures covering the month of April show consumers spent 13 per cent more over the internet compared with a year ago.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index for April revealed that shoppers spent a total of £4.4bn online during the month. There was a particular spike in clothing sales, which enjoyed a 21 per cent year-on-year increase.

Accessories and footwear also benefitted from spikes in sales of 52 per cent and 49 per cent respectively. The travel sector took an expected battering thanks to the ash cloud, with month-on-month sales dropping by 9 per cent compared to March 2010.

The figures show a 3 per cent month-on-month decline which experts say is usual when Mothering Sunday falls in mid to late March.

Chris Webster, vice president of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini, said: “Online retail is seeing continued high growth levels of 13 per cent as more and more retailers are using an online channel to attract a new market and retain existing customers.

“The clothing sector in particular has been given a boost by April’s early signs of summer, with shoppers logging on to update their wardrobes for the new season. This sector is driving growth behind the industry as a whole.”

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“Don’t just shop for it, i-Phone it to Argos” – that might well be the latest variation of Argos’ well-known advertising catchphrase promoting the retailer’s latest idea to open new channels for its customers.

The high street company has followed several other big-name retailers in announcing the launch of an interactive shopping service available over customers’ i-Phones.

The move has been prompted by a huge increase in traffic to its website from Apple mobile devices last year.

Customers can use the app to update their Argos accounts, order items for collection in-store, and check the availability of stock in specific stores.

Regular users of its website are the main targets of the launch.

David Tarbuck, head of multi-channel development, said 750,000 people visited the Argos site using Apple devices.

He told New Media Age magazine: “The biggest trend we’ve seen in the way customers use their mobile phones to shop has been the increase in product browsing online.

“We’ve seen product browsing figures increase by nearly 700 per cent in the last year from the iPhone, so we’ve developed an app tailored to this consumer trend.”

Google’s Nexus One phone is no longer available from the company’s own website, after the company admitted buyers had proved reluctant to buy the phone without putting it through its paces first.

In an announcement on its blog, Andy Rubin, Vice-President of Engineering at Google, said: “We’re very happy with the innovation delivery through Nexus One … but, as with every innovation, some parts worked better than others.

“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not.

“It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a range of service plans to choose from.”

Already, Google has inked a deal with Vodafone in the UK to offer the Nexus One in its stores, as well as online and via phone sales. But now it has said it will be entering similar negotiations to give the phone a presence in stores, where customers will be able to handle the phone before they decide whether to buy.

The move sees the end of Google’s vision of changing the way people buy phones, which did not take off as they had hoped.

It also appears that the company is moving away from selling the hardware to concentrate on partnerships with other smartphone makers to make the Android software, on which the Nexus runs, more widely available through other phone makers.

“We believe that the changes will help get more phones to more people quicker,” Rubin concluded.

So in Google’s eyes at least, the Android platform is clearly far more important than the vehicle which carries it. In the blog post announcing its withdrawal of the Nexus One from online sale, it openly points would-be buyers towards two other handset manufacturers with whom it has already collaborated to make Android available.

Total display advertising impressions in America numbered 1.1 trillion in the first quarter of 2010 according to data released by comScore.

The research firm found a 15 per cent increase in the number of display ads shown to internet users in America when compared to Q1 2009. Total spending is estimated to have reached 2.7 billion.

Social networking site Facebook claimed the lion’s share of ad impressions, publishing 176 billion during the period, equivalent to a 16.2 per cent share of the market. Yahoo and Microsoft placed second and third, with 12.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent of the market respectively.

Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president, said: “Following a severe ad recession that began in late 2008 and continued through the first three quarters of 2009, we’ve been seeing a strong resurgence in the online display ad market.

“The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers. This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010.”

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The value of payments for physical and digital products made through mobiles will reach almost $630bn by 2014, according to industry experts.

Hampshire-based research firm Juniper Research said the gross value of all mobile purchases stands at $170bn this year, but that major growth is expected across all market segments in the coming years thanks to the wide adoption of smartphones and use of app stores.

The 2014 figure means mobile purchases would still only represent around 5 per cent of total e-commerce retail sales.

The Far East and China, Western Europe and North America, represent the three top regions for mobile payments. Users in these countries alone are expected to represent almost 70 per cent of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2014.

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