MULTICHANNELNEWS
09
TWENGA GETS NEW LOOK AND FEEL
◆ Peacocks,
the UK fashion
value retailer
T
wenga, the price comparison website has undergone used to optimise our product listings. This information is then
a massive overhaul to help consolidate its position integrated into our site, where we have about a hundred
has extended its
commitment to
as one of the leading companies in this space. thousand categories on the site, which is ten times more than
GSI Commerce
Retail Technology spoke exclusively to Twenga founder our competition.”
to provide an
and chief executive, Bastien Duclaux about the secret to the He added that retailers who take advantage of the
e-commerce
relative fl edgling company’s phenomenal success. common emerging technical standards on the web were
system that
“When we started Twenga, we saw that the competition able to fully exploit Twenga’s technology: “By improving the
includes web
technology, store
operated in a closed environment, yet at the same time there quality of descriptions and making sure products are properly
design, fulfi lment,
were hundreds of thousands of products and retailers online. categorised, retailers can improve conversion rates. But the
order processing
And we saw that the scale of what was on offer was just not development of emerging standards-based microformats,
and call centre
going to be sustainable for customers,” said Duclaux. “It was like specifi c [data] tags or the structure of data on a website,
services to
our vision to put retailers’ offerings in makes it easier for us to extract data
be launched
next year. Tim
one place for end users to fi nd.” and improve the quality of products
Bettley, Peacocks
Founded in 2006 by Duclaux and we get from a retailer’s site. So there’s
managing director
chief technology offi cer, Cedric Anes, a strong incentive to provide us with as
commented: “GSI’s
Twenga is headquartered in Paris, France; much data as possible.”
‘percent of sales’
and its 13 sites, including the UK, France While the internet continues to
business model
immediately
and the US, now display nearly 150 mature, Duclaux said Twenga would look
improved our
million offerings from more than 60,000 to fully integrate the likes of metadata
profi tability, while
online shops. In January 2009, Twenga tagging into its offering. In the meantime,
avoiding costly
sites received over 21 million visits. Twenga’s relaunch still refl ects the rapidly
capital expenses.”
“The business model most of our evolving demands of its users. This
competition operate on is a CPC [cost includes shopping guides to help plan
per click] basis,” he continued. “But we for events such as Halloween, Christmas
thought this was an old-fashioned way and Easter, while recommendations
of working because these sites can’t are offered for those in need of some
guarantee a full comparison of every inspiration.
available price for a given product The site has also introduced the
online - they were only able to display a option to shop by theme, such as
fraction of what was available.” keeping fi t or children’s birthday parties.
Duclaux said the decision to invest And browsing has also been made
in its own, proprietary technology has been key to its easier by assigning categories (such as health and beauty,
phenomenal growth and success: “Based on the retailer’s own, homeware, music, books, pets) and brands (such as Canon,
natural listing of their products, as well as additional placement Apple, Nike and John Lewis) with their own headings.
with partners, we developed a model that was monetised on This latest version also sees the launch of a travel section
a cost-per-acquisition basis. to search for deals on hotels, fl ights and car hire. And Twenga
“Our technology has three main components: Each day has also improved its customer feedback options, giving the
we refresh the indexing from over 150 million web pages, user the ability to ask a question, make a suggestion and
automatically recording each retailer’s product pages that is report any problems.
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2009 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
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