In the previous instalment of Power Up, we discussed security issues and related personal and financial information risks. Now it’s time to consider how hackers might gain access to that information, the damage such an attack can do to your webstore as well as what you can do to prevent it.

There is also a matter of trust, because it doesn’t matter how well protected your site is if this isn’t communicated effectively to customers.

Cyber-Attacks

There are multiple ways that hackers can gain access to sensitive information in an online store. When this occurs, personal and financial data can get stolen, orders, inventory and fulfilment information can be altered or lost, and your webstore itself can even be pushed offline, causing costly down-time.

“Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks can wreak havoc to networks and equipment, causing website and systems outages,” explains Art Leyzerovich, General Manager of Emerging Technologies (Hosting) at Macquarie Telecom.

This form of attack can be targeted to a specific site, or might occur to many sites at once and at random as a hosting provider’s systems are attacked. DDOS attacks have been known to be used to test for system vulnerabilities or to exploit a known issue in order to cause a security breach.

The method by which web-based attacks occur can be varied and often highly-sophisticated. Usually they will involve malware, like a virus, which can be used to infect multiple host computers. The hacker can then assume remote control of these machines, directing them in a concerted effort to breach a website’s security. These scenarios often result in a DDOS.

Attack Prevention

Firstly, it is important to note that not all attacks on a website arrive from an external source. Sometimes, software can even be unwittingly loaded into internal systems by members of staff.

Any website administration systems, servers and wireless internet access points should be protected with complex, alphanumeric passwords that are regularly changed. Make sure these passwords are changed whenever a staff member leaves your employ.

In the case of web-based attack scenarios, like a DDOS, the best thing any online retailer can do is ensure they have partnered with the best security software systems they can afford.

“In terms of IT infrastructure security, there are different levels of security available – with different costs attached,” explains Leyzerovich. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and every retailer needs to consider their business model, customer base and risk level before a solution can be decided upon.”

Just like real viruses, it's better to prevent security threats than have to cure them, so be sure to take your medicine!

Individual staff members can also assist by having suitable security software installed on their personal and work computers in order to reduce the risk of virus infections and other security breaches, making sure they are regularly scanned and checked for all kinds of malware.

“Security can be managed in-house if there are suitable resource available,” says Leyzerovich. “This requires having staff that have the time and expertise to ensure every box is ticked – it can’t simply be a part-time job assigned to a software developer, for example.”

“It’s near impossible for an internal IT resource with a day job to be able to keep up with the latest developments,” Phil Morgan explains, e-Commerce and Omni-channel Retail Consultant for Playhouse Group. “Also, there’s often internal pressure that can influence the results of any recommendations, so impartiality is often invaluable.”

It is also a good idea to evaluate the hosting provider’s ability to deliver online security, as they should have comprehensive layers of security surrounding their hosting infrastructure that can be tailored to suit an individual business’s needs.

“A hosting provider should also be able to provide information on security accreditation and help ensure a business is PCI DSS certified,” says Leyzerovich.

On the other hand, digital security firms specialise in providing analysis and vulnerability testing for online businesses, says Morgan.

“Many businesses contract outside businesses to perform vulnerability testing at (or soon after) the time they perform performance testing,” he says, “generally bringing in outside experts to create an assessment. Often this can be done on an ad-hoc basis, and is rarely re-visited in detail regularly. We would strongly recommend regular scheduled assessment of any website.”

What to do in the Event of a Security Breach

A business can spend all its resources on trying to prevent security breaches, and while the risk of a breach may be minimised, nothing is ever 100 percent secure online. For this very reason, having a method of handling a breach once it has occurred is just as important as trying to prevent it in the first place.

Responding to a threat first requires you to be able to identify the threat. The first indication of a breach may be that your site isn’t operating normally or optimally – it may even be offline. If you have access to a web analytics system like Google Analytics, then the site may show a spike in activity, usually from international locations. At this stage, it’s time to call the hosting provider and request them to check the intregrity of your site.

If your webstore is already offline, it may be because the hosting provider has already acknowledged the breach and restricted access to prevent further damage. In many cases, a cyber attack will given up on a particular site if it cannot gain access to it after a certain period of time. The hosting provider may even attempt to block specific IP addresses or locations from accessing the site in order to prevent future attacks.

Developing Trust

There is really only one reason for developing a top-notch security strategy for your online retail venture: profits. Profits will not be generated or maintained if a website cannot protect itself or its customers from security risks. However, a large part of this invokes a trust relationship between the retailer and its customers.

“From a retail perspective,” Morgan says, “the most commonly raised concern is customer data security, as they realise that beyond everything else, customer data security poses the biggest threat to their ongoing credibility (and by extension, commercial viability) if a breach occurs.”

Trust is paramount in making sales online, as customers will not buy from a store that they do not immediately feel is safe. Unfortunately, a webstore might have the best security in the world, but it still won’t convert sales well if it doesn’t visibly appear to be trustworthy.

An example of quality SSL certificate and security testing 'trust markers'.

“Showing consumers that you have secure payment options, an SSL certificate, and are PCI DSS compliant will inevitably make them more likely to continue with a purchase as it helps to assure consumers that the transaction is secure,” says Leyzerovich. “Of course, don’t go into too much detail – you do not want to inform hackers what defences they are likely to encounter!”

Alec Nelson, Founder and CEO of Vacuumspot.com.au says that trust online can be a difficult asset to gain, but it’s well worth the effort.

“Register with brands like GetPrice and Shopping.com in order to go through the process of earning their trusted badges, which can be displayed on your homepage and checkout,” he says. “By far one of the best ways to gain trust is by word-of-mouth. If your customers are referring your website to their friends, trust isn’t even an issue. Email follow-up campaigns asking customers to review products, recommend to friends or ‘like’ on Facebook are becoming more powerful.”

Massages and facials are out, steak and golf are in. For this weekend only Scoopon will be running a ‘man-up’ promotion that will see the lads snapping up bargains for golf days, go-cart racing and $2 pints of beer. This promotion is to lift group buying sales amongst the men in Australia.

“Men love a bargain too,” says Jon Beros, General Manager at Scoopon. “We thought it was time to re-address the balance and introduce something new and exciting to the group buying space – a mancation! An opportunity for men to escape the clutches of their daily responsibilities, giving them time to regenerate and have a bloody good time!”

The man-up promotion is available only for this weekend (ends noon Monday May 28th) and will be used to try and widen the Scoopon audience.

“We want to be the clear market leader in lifestyle experiences and to do that we need to ensure we are leading the way with innovative and above all fun promotions that everyone can enjoy. Targeted promotions such as these allow us to build a unique campaign for this under represented segment of the market, and help us to widen our appeal to a new audience,” says Beros.

We will have to wait to Monday to see how successful this promotion is.

Unfortunately, the nature of the World Wide Web has some inherent downsides and the most obvious of these is the simple fact that people can access any piece of information that exists online, they just have to know how.

As an online retailer, this means that your personal and business information, your customers’ information and your storefront itself are constantly at risk of being digitally compromised. That doesn’t mean the risk of security breaches can’t be minimised, and any good online retail business will work hard to ensure it is as safe as possible.

This instalment of Power Up discusses the threats that an online retail enterprise needs to be aware of, as well as what tools and techniques are available to combat them.

The Risks

Macquarie Telecom is a company with plenty of experience in analysing, assessing and preventing online security threats. General Manager of Emerging Technologies (Hosting) Art Leyzerovich, spoke to us regarding the primary areas of concern for online retailers.

According to Leyzerovich, these concerns are:

• Compliance – ensuring your website adheres to the minimum security requirements in order to be ‘trusted’
• Identity management and fraud – being accountable for protecting any personal data stored via your site as well as ensuring an individual is authorised to use a given type of payment
• Cyber-attack – having systems in place to protect against intrusion, as well as response plans should an intrusion occur
• Down-time – planning and protecting against a situation where your site goes offline, which can severely impact trade

Even in the physical world, many security technologies can be subverted, as demonstrated by Harry Houdini, for example.

Leyzerovich says that, should the worst occur, “any of these situations is likely to result in not only lost sales, but lost customers.”

The most important step a business can take is to take online security seriously and have a proactive and integrated plan in place. Leyzerovich recommends online retailers should cover at least the following:

• Use of a payment provider or accredited payment gateway. They should not store credit card data on their web server or in their online store database
• Acquire a valid SSL certificate
• Ensure PCI DSS compliance
• Software should be kept up-to-date via patches and service packs
• Ensure secure firewalls are in place

Phil Morgan, e-Commerce and Omni-channel Retail Consultant for Playhouse Group says that online retailers need to be more aware of all facets of their digital security.

“PCI DSS and DDOS are the items most frequently asked about,” says Morgan. “We find most businesses have a handle on how to prevent DDOS attacks, but knowledge of PCI DSS needs is usually restricted to a company’s finance team, and is less understood by the wider business in a lot of cases.”

Credit Fraud

Depending on how you set up your site to receive payments, many people will potentially be seeking to use a credit card for their purchases. Even in a bricks-and-mortar store credit card fraud is not uncommon, but in the virtual world, this can be a lot harder to prevent.

Jonathon Green, Co-founder and Director at Eljo.com.au, has developed a wealth of experience in preventing online credit fraud, as his webstore has been a target on numerous occasions.

“Our online security threats all stem from the banks’ limited liability in Australia to cover credit card transactions that are unaccompanied by a signature.”

While it is now mandatory that all credit cards include a CSV number on them, which could theoretically be used in place of a signature online, Australian banks to not accept them as a substitute. As such, if there is no signature recorded as part of an online transaction, your business will be held liable should it turn out to be a case of fraud.

“While we have learnt it is not possible to catch every single person,” Green says, “we certainly aim to stop and report as many as possible.”

“I would encourage all business owner’s to note the names, addresses, IP details and every other piece of information from anyone who tries (or succeeds) to steal from you and pass them on to your local police department.”

Fraud Prevention

One method of preventing fraud is to request all customers fill in a credit card authorisation form, however this can slow the online path-to-purchase and have a negative impact on your conversion rates. Alternatively, it is possible to set up an advanced detection system, which stops and flags any fraudulent attempts made.

These systems can use an enormous number of variables, including IP address analysis, proxy IP detection, fraud database cross-checking and even customer typing analysis.

“Our staff are drilled on how to spot fraud and we take pride in reporting the details of every attempt to the police, whether they are successful or not,” says Green.

In the next instalment of Power Up, we’ll discuss further security risks and preventative measures, as well as the issue of communicating trust to customers.

“It’s a huge problem,” Australia Post Chief Executive Ahmed Fahour told a Senate inquiry. “The only way we can minimise our losses is if the domestic price goes up.”

Fahour said that Australia Post was among the postal services in developed countries that are disadvantaged by the system where costs are set by the Swiss-based Universal Postal Union (UPU). These costs were established in an era when letters still made up a large portion of the regular postal freight. Now, with the rise of digital technologies and e-commerce, letters are rare and small parcels are numerous.

The UPU determines costs based on an outmoded system, which takes weight, country of origin, exchange rates and other costs into account – but this doesn’t add up in today’s society.

“There are some very obvious characteristics about Australia to do with geography that make it a difficult market, and we also place an emphasis – quite rightly – on border security,” Richard Umbers, Executive General Manager for parcels and express services at Australia Post, told The Australian Financial Review.

Umbers also said that losses from the international sub-2kg parcel category would reach $70 million this year. Meanwhile, Fahour points out that Australia Post has been able to offset any losses so far by increasing domestic shipping costs.

“Rest assured, the more Australian retailers go online the happier we are, because we actually make a buck on that,” Fahour said.

It was here that she discovered a flourishing space for fashion and apparel retailers that were able to amass huge membership lists and offer those members exclusive sale prices. It was in this model that Thomas saw an opportunity to offer Australian consumers similar access to high-end homeware, giftware, furniture “and everything to make your home beautiful at up to 70 percent off retail prices,” she says.

Thomas then came to establish her webstore, Home Culture, halfway through 2011 as Australia’s first members-only flash sales site dedicated to these categories. According to Thomas, Home Culture aims to provide three major offerings:

• A positive, interactive and informative experience for the customer while securing the purchase of items at great prices
• A launchpad for young designers, decorators, stylists and brands
• A marketing opportunity for more established brands and interior designers, decorators and stylists

Thomas achieves these things by astutely acknowledging the model her business venture operates within, while also carefully curating the products she offers. The flash sales model, which was in fact defined originally by fashion site Vente-privée.com, also works well for the homeware and furniture categories, and has been pioneered by OneKingsLane.com in the US.

Pairing this model with her own sense of style, Thomas also offers a ‘Be Inspired’ blog that features hints and advice from interior designers, such as Greg Natale, Darren Palmer and Diane Bergeron, once again proving the power of good editorial content when it comes to selling niche, unwieldy or high-end items.

Kristina Thomas presents a blog via her website called 'Be Inspired', which she updates regularly.

Creating a One-of-a-Kind Culture

Thomas describes her brand as being very down-to-earth, but the model is anything but simple. It relies on convincing trusted brands to partner with the site in order to produce short-term sales at drastically reduced prices, and this doesn’t happen without headaches along the way.

“Generally, sales run for seven days and products are delivered to customers anywhere in Australia,” says Thomas. “There is a strong focus on offering hand-selected collections of high-quality products.”

In order to offer this, Thomas has been growing her business on a shoe-string, and as such, things have grown slowly. Where she once operated in a niche all of her own, lately Thomas has been facing off against some heavy-hitting competitors.

“My biggest issue so far has really been one of ‘bandwidth’,” says Thomas, “that is, I often struggle to afford to have enough hands on deck with a limited resources base in general. Now, competition has begun to be an issue as well. There were no other businesses offering what Home Culture does when we launched in 2011, but since then several others have entered the market. Some of these are well-established in other online retail sectors as well.”

Thomas says that the only option she has is to maintain her brand’s image wherever possible, instilling the sense of a ‘down-to-earth’ and personal shopping experience for every person that signs up. She has also had to innovate in order to ensure she can maintain her members’ engagement.

“One example of this is our highly popular Sunday Secret Sale, where one ‘mystery item’ is put on sale for one day only at up to 85 percent of recommended retail price.”

For the most part, Thomas strives to feature product from Australian brands, whether they are established names or only just emerging in their respective categories.

“Good examples of exciting emerging brands include Your Table Matters, In Mixed Company, La De Dah Kids and Ecosleep,” she says. “Online retail is becoming highly competitive, so it’s important that Home Culture continues to provide unique offerings that can help it differentiate from any competitors. Without having the marketing budget of some of the larger online outfits means that we are always striving to stand out in others ways. We are building a strong offering on social media and we try and innovate as much as possible in this direction.”

Email Marketing: The Core of the Members-Only Model

Of course, the most integral part of any members-only or flash sales online retail venture’s marketing strategy is email marketing. Emails are gathered at the point of entry to Home Culture’s site and then added to an ever-growing membership database. From this point, sales can be easily broadcast to the entire list, or certain items can be targeted to certain kinds of customers.

Beyond this, however, Thomas focuses the rest of her marketing nous on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Kristina Thomas, Founder and Managing Director of Home Culture

“Home Culture has daily ‘conversations’ with close to 5,000 fans on Facebook, which is also broadcast to Twitter followers,” Thomas explains. “This has proven to be a cost-effective means of building brand-awareness. Home Culture also offers a referral program where a member can invite a friend and receive a $10 voucher when their friend makes a purchase.”

Home Culture also employs a unique shipping and fulfilment strategy, which is handled entirely in-house that means Thomas doesn’t need to hold large amounts of inventory at any given time.

“Home Culture delivers directly to customers anywhere in Australia,” she says. “The business model means that no inventory is held and stock is ordered once given the sales campaign has finished. I initially outsource the management of Home Culture’s logistics, but I eventually found it was easier and cheaper to manage it in-house. The choice of delivery service usually depends on the customer’s location, as well as the size and type of their purchased product.”

“Our survey indicates that online shopping in Australia is going strong and most Australians have and will continue to purchase online in 2012,” said Mark Randall, Country Manager of Rackspace Australia and New Zealand. “Online shoppers’ loyalty is largely driven by convenience, variety and pricing. But, if online retailers get one thing wrong, they could quickly lose them to the competition.”

Australians Seek Convenience First, Price Second

Of the respondents, 83.2 percent listed convenience as one of the key benefits, closely followed by price (71.1 percent), price comparison (60.8 percent) and a wider variety of products and services (47.4 percent).
“Shopping websites that don’t invest in website technology that allows shoppers to easily browse through products, ensures that prices remain competitive, and deliver an overall convenient shopping experience could quickly lose customers.” Randall concluded.

Australians shop online for purely self-motivated reasons, and some may be quick to call them selfish for doing so.

Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t indicate what proportion of the Australian online consumers’ spend consists of gift purchases, so an accurate degree of ‘selfishness’ is yet to be developed.

Australian Shoppers are Impatient and Don’t Use Apps

One of the standout pet peeves of online shoppers turns out to be loading times.

• 44% of shoppers polled said they would move on if a page takes more than 15 seconds to load
• After 30 seconds almost 70% said they would be gone
• If a website takes more than a minute to load, more than 90% said they would give up

“Some of the key sales drivers can be directly attributed back to the technology that powers the online store. Online shoppers are impatient” said Randall. “Carefully selecting a reliable and fast hosting solution and other technology service providers could mean that an online retailer greatly increases their chances of a successful sale.”

The survey also reveals that a surprisingly low proportion of online sales in Australia are done using apps and smartphones. Compared to a recent, similar survey in the UK, Australians are about half as likely to use an app or a smartphone for online purchases.
“Australians don’t seem to have taken a liking to shopping on their smartphones or using apps quite yet and the vast majority use their PC or laptop for online purchases,” said Randall. “More than 85 percent of respondents make their online purchases on their home or work computers.”

Do these results match your experience? Do you think Australian online shoppers are predominantly self-motivated and impatient, seeking mainly convenience and price benefits?

This deal saw 163,093 Pizza Mia’s sold for just $2, (making it a great deal for anyone who participated in live below the line this month). Adam Rigby, Executive General Manager of Living Social Australia and New Zealand claims that this tops all other group buying deals.

“With 163,093 pizzas sold nationally, this is Australia’s best group buying deal,” he said.

The deal differed from the 400,000 vouchers Scoopon sold with Hungry Jacks, due to the fact that this deal sold on LivingSocial, and was not just available to download. Therefore it has been hailed as the ‘largest transactional group buying deal’.

“LivingSocial’s Pizza Hut deal was so compelling that Australians opened their wallets, not just clicked to download, showing their commitment to redeem,” says Rigby.

The success of fast food companies with group buying sites means that we can probably expect future campaigns with similar food outlets.

G&M Direct 2 U, the company that purchased WOW Sight & Sound’s online business when the retail chain was forced into administration in March, said they had no plans to attempt to revive the brand’s physical retail business.

“When we purchases WOW’s name and the online e-commerce platform in April, we immediately began plans to update the website to make WOW Sight & Sound into the success that the ‘brick and mortar’ stores could no longer achieve,” the company said.

The new owners believe that the online channel makes a lot of sense for the WOW business, allowing them to regrow the sales that the company once achieved, without the risk and overheads associated with bricks-and-mortar stores.

“It’s a more sensible, cost effective way for businesses to operate and deliver great value to customers who increasingly want to save time and money by ordering online.”

Interestingly, the new website is planned to have an initial focus on the gaming market, according to spokesperson Rachel Quilty.

“The company recognised there could be some issues with the existing brand after entering receivership, however they recognised the opportunity to reposition the brand and utilise the sophisticated e-commerce platform,” Quilty told ConnectedAustralia.com.

Repositioning the brand and launching a pureplay operation makes a certain amount of sense, however by initially focussing on the already over-competed gaming market seems like an odd choice. What will WOW be able to offer its customers in video games that other existing online stores can’t?

International online operations are already notorious for being able to sell games at prices that are simply not profitable for local businesses to match. WOW could choose to try and match these bottom-dollar prices and position their gaming business as a loss-leader, with a view to quickly building a new customer base – however this doesn’t seem like a very safe strategy for a brand that has already suffered the humiliation of obligatory receivership.

That being said, the new WOW online store should be live in a week’s time; perhaps it really will live up to its name.

Joel Kendall co-founded the venture alongside Geraldine Shackleton having realised their complementary skills and attributes. Shackleton, a suburban fashion store owner, was looking to clear sale product and promote her store outside of her traditional customer base. Kendall brought his passion and growing experience in IT, marketing and e-commerce development to the table. Together, they realised they had the right blend of attributes required for an online retail store.

RetailonSale: A Stuttering Start

The idea the pair hit upon was to pitch their site to potential affiliate stores across New Zealand with the hope of providing struggling bricks-and-mortar operations the online channel they so far lacked.

“In amongst a raft of directory-only sites that redirected shoppers to individual shopping sites or physical stores, RetailonSale was the only multivendor fashion website available in the country,” Kendall says.

Mode features a bevy of New Zealand-owned fashion labels and stores.

After a year of working out their business plan and trying to establish exactly who would benefit from the site, the founders originally decided that the site wouldn’t necessarily only sell fashion items, but potentially just about anything. They then went in search of a platform.

“We went looking for a web developer that had built large e-commerce sites that we liked the functionality of,” says Kendall. “We eventually arrived at EstarOnline.”

After that, Kendall and Shackleton allowed six months for business development, web design and product procurement before launch. At this stage, their venture was entirely self-funded.

“The build took about three months,” explains Kendall. “In that time, we sold the idea to other fashion retailers and wholesalers, asking them to start sending product through to us so we could launch with a decent depth of inventory.”

The first real headaches that RetailonSale ran up against involved the website’s back-end. This was EstarOnline’s first attempt at a multivendor-style e-commerce platform, so it was as much an experiment for them as it was for the business’s founders. At first, inventory uploads and order processing was only partially automated, leaving plenty of manual work to be done. Reporting was limited for vendors and account reconciliation at the end of each month was largely a manual process.

“We essentially overcame these issues by paying more for further web development,” Kendall says, “as well as by working full-time on the business in order to take care of every detail for our vendors.”

By contrast, this intense focus came with one serious upshot for Kendall, as he was able to keep a very close eye on new software solutions and platforms as they appeared on the market, as well as doing much of the necessary development himself.

“The second major challenge was selling the concept to nervous retailers,” Kendall explains. “The initial reaction across the board was that their ‘customers would never shop online’ – we had to convince them that it wasn’t their existing customers the site was targeting, but a whole new marketplace.”

Other retailers had been previously sold expensive e-commerce sites that didn’t work for various reasons, and had been “burnt” by the experience. In the end, the pair decided to only take on board retailers that quickly understood their proposition, even if this did entail some added “hand holding”.

The Kiwi Phoenix Rises

Kendall and Shackleton eventually came to the decision that RetailonSale’s original mission and branding was no longer in line with the direction the business was taking them. Beyond this, Kendall had developed enough e-commerce nous that he felt he was able to found an online store on his own hard work, rather than rely on a partner agency.

“We build Mode.co.nz on a shoestring budget,” he says. “We have been able to collaborate with specialist developers as needed, while still managing the majority of the work in-house without much expense. Now, we even offer web design and development services via DecentExposure.co.nz, so we have most of the resources we need immediately at hand. DecentExposure is actually a by-product of Mode.”

Mode is based on a store-to-door model, which involves stores across New Zealand.

The added challenge of rebranding and rebuilding the company’s product lines in order to relaunch as Mode has meant a lot of time and effort on Kendall and Shackleton’s part – and this initially had a negative effect on conversions.

“But now we are adding more product lines to the site and our SEO rankings are climbing,” Kendall says. “We are in a much better place.”

Mode has been rebuilt around a store-to-door business model, whereby products are despatched directly to customers from a range of bricks-and-mortar shops or warehouses across New Zealand. This requires the website to allow vendors to log in individually in order to manage inventory and process orders. While this greatly increases the level of complexity from a back-end perspective, what it allows the customer is flexibility and choice.

“Our store-front customers are able to purchase numerous products from different retailers in one easy transaction,” Kendall says, “then each respective retailer receives the order and despatches direct to the customer. Mode offers fast deliver across New Zealand and a large selection of brand combinations that can’t be found in bricks-and-mortar outlets.”

The site even allows its retailers to create their own ‘store-fronts’, providing a level of branding and brand engagement that isn’t possible short of setting up an individual website. This in turn creates a favourable marketing strategy for Mode, as it is beginning to be seen as very much a multi-label fashion network, rather than a single online shop.

The conference is due to be held from the 16th-19th of July at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, and will feature a top-shelf educational program for Australian online retailers. The special ‘May Offer’ makes the normal ticketed prices even more attractive, with registrants garnering up to $525 off the price of a Main Conference pass – if you’re sending a team of four or more, you’ll receive 20 percent off the full price of registration.

If you’re thinking of attending, you can find a comprehensive program outline at the Online Retailer website.

Speakers for the conference are being added daily. A list of current, retail-side speakers so far includes:

• Nikki Durkin, Founder, www.99Dresses.com
• Carol Steinberg, EVP of Internet, Marketing and Human Resources, www.ShopNBC.com
• Allan Dick, EVP of Merchandising, Vintage Tub and Bath
• Rob Moss, Global Marketing Director, www.my-wardrobe.com
• Cam Balzer, Chief Marketing Officer, Threadless.com
• Paul Greenberg, Executive Chairman and Co-founder, www.DealsDirect.com.au
• Tim Beveridge, Director of Insights and Planning, APAC
• Dan Ferguson, Director, VistaPrint
• Kelly Brough, Founder and CEO, www.Oola.com.au
• Sarah Hayden, CRM & Digital Manager, Jeans West
• Mark Rowland, Chief Happiness Officer, StyleTread
• Jane Cay, Director, Birdsnest
• Ben Liau, Marketing Manager, mooo.com.au
• Sucharita Mulpuru, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
• Amy Africa, Internet Sales Guru, Eight by Eight
• Gaurav Patni, Technology Integration Leader, David Jones
• Craig Sullivan, Group Customer Experience Manager, Belron International
• Ivan Lim, Founder and Managing Director, Vinspi
• Martin Newman, Global E-commerce Leader, Practicology
• Steven Noble, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
• Stephan Spencer, Co-author of The Art of SEO
• Steve Zapf, EVP Multichannel Operations, Guitar Centre
• Joanna Lord, Director of Customer Acquisition and Retention, www.SEOmoz.org
• Nikki Baird, Managing Partner, Retail Systems Research
• Jim Lofgren, Vice President & Brand Manager, www.OneStopPlus.com
• Jethro Marks, Co-founder and CEO, www.TheNile.com.au
• Nick van Noorden, Digital Marketing Manager, Oxfam Australia trading
• Rod Jacka, Managing Director, Panalysis
• Justus Wilder, eCommerce Strategist, Amblique
• Jake Hird, Director of Research and Education , ANZ E-consultancy
• Ben Hare, Chief Operating Office, tinyme
• Dale McCarthy, Founder, Foundry
• Chris Reighley, Director of eCommerce, Totes-ISOTONER

Register before midnight, Friday the 25th of May using the code MAY2012 to make the most of this offer while it still lasts.