Archives

Notice Anything New?

May 13, 2010 | eSpares Updates | 1 comment

If you’ve recently visited our website you may have noticed an update from this:

To this:

If you haven’t spotted it already, we’ve cleaned up the top navigation bar of our website. Through customer testing we realised that our top menu was too busy and the black blocky design took the eye away from the rest of the page. We hope that our new navigation bar is kinder to the eye and makes the search box more apparent.

Stay tuned…We’ve got more finely tuned changes up our sleeve.

Senior Software Developer / Superstar

May 5, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

We’re in need of someone. Someone good. To be precise, we need a Senior Software Developer to improve our already kick-ass ecommerce site.

We’re eSpares; the UK’s leading spare parts business. No, you’re right, that doesn’t sound very interesting. That’s why the website has to be so damn good. We sell over half a million products, and have over a million customers worldwide, which obviously presents some challenges. And our site helps our customers to fix their own appliances too. We’ve got videos, help diagrams, and part finders which mean that the site has to do some funky stuff. We’ve won awards for our use of social commerce and our innovation in social media marketing. Our tech team was recognised last year by Retail Week as rising stars in the industry. We also have about the best view across London imaginable from our Chelsea office.

You

You’re going to need to be good (I think we mentioned that). You must be adept in:

  • C#, ASP.NET, .NET Framework 3.5 and 4
  • jQuery
  • SQL Server
  • XHTML 1.1, CSS 2 and 3

And if you’re a real superstar, you’ll also have worked with the following concepts:

  • Object Relational Mapping (NHibernate, Entity Framework)
  • UI / UX concepts
  • Unit testing / Test driven development
  • Requirements gathering, problem solving and analysis
  • Documentation

But more than just someone with a proven set of skills, we need someone who wants to make a real difference, be a leader and win awards for a fast-growing ecommerce company.

The Job

If you’re the right person, you’ll get an impressive salary and benefits package. You’ll be working on our core framework and suite of applications, used throughout the company, from our warehouse and call centre, to product management and accounts. You’ll interface with 3rd parties and internal departments, and you’ll work with some highly-skilled and fun people. We’re sure you’ll find it to be varied and interesting, challenging and rewarding: we sure do.

To apply please visit the Personforce Talent Discovery Network.

How To Replace A Washing Machine Door Handle

How To Replace a Washing Machine Door Handle – New Video

April 29, 2010 | Laundry Appliance Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

As this was the most requested video topic from our customers, we’re quite pleased to have finished production of our video ‘How To Replace a Washing Machine Door Handle‘. The door handle on a washing machine is susceptible to wear and it’s not uncommon for it to break; particularly if you’ve got a heavy-handed member of your household. The good news is that a washing machine door handle is inexpensive to replace and easy to fit, in this video Mike demonstrates how it’s done.

Washing Machine Drum

How To Fit New Flymo Lawnmower Parts – New Videos

April 22, 2010 | Gardening Tips | 1 comment

Like any retailer there is also a level of seasonality in our business. In the winter months it seems that people mostly are interested in cooker spares and in the summer it’s gardening spares. To make the most of this we’ve been spending a significant amount of time creating new videos that focus on how to keep your lawnmower and trimmer in top shape.

One thing that we cannot emphasize enough is the importance of a sharp blade when cutting your lawn. It’s pretty easy to go with the flow and cut with the blade in your mower, even if it’s blunt. A blunt blade will rip at your lawn, tearing it, and over time your lawn will appear patchy. Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure you always mow with a sharp blade. In our latest Flymo lawnmower video we show you how to fit a new Flymo cutting disc, which comes fitted with new blades.

Of course if you don’t need to replace the cutting disc and you just want to replace the Flymo plastic blades this is very easy to do as well:

Behind The Scenes of an Online Retailer

April 21, 2010 | eSpares Updates | No comments

I would hazard to bet that the majority of people who shop online don’t give a second thought to the experience except for when things go wrong. One of the many secrets to being a successful online retailer is to continually test the usability of your website with members of the public. Fundamentally, as an online retailer, what you want to test is that people who are unfamiliar with your brand have confidence buying from it. In order to achieve this your website has to run smoothly and look great.

This week we’re running another round of website testing to make sure that the buying process is completely straightforward. Here’s how it works:

We recruit members of the public to come into our office and complete a few shopping ‘tasks’ on the eSpares website. Ideally you want testers who represent your target audience. So, if for example, your target user-group is female and 30-45 years old, you should get testers who fall within that category.

The tricky thing for us is that our website defies traditional ‘target audience’ metrics. We’ve got just as many women buying from our site as men and they come from all age groups with varying degrees of online shopping experience. As you can imagine our testing group is very diverse. Once we’ve got all of our testers lined up we go ahead with a round of testing. Our Marketing Director, Matt Henton, runs the testing in our meeting room whilst members of our team look on remotely, as shown in the above photo.

Even though most of us at eSpares spend all day looking at our website, there are things that we miss. Some of the feedback that we’ve had from testers has actually been quite simple, easy to action, and has made our website considerably better. We try to do testing at least once every two months to make sure that we’re moving our site in the right direction.

It’s quite easy to assume that all the tweaks and changes you make to your website are perfect and just what the customer wants. Hubris is responsible for the downfall in most Greek tragedies; don’t let your ego lead your website, let your customers lead it. If you’ve got a new bit of functionality or a new design it’s much better to test a new bit of functionality first rather than launching it and having to make a lot of changes to a live site. It’s also quite easy to fall into the trap that if functionality is live on your site, and no one has complained about it, then it’s working to its full potential. This is why you should test.

When you work in an online marketplace, it’s quite easy to forget about the customer as your face-to-face contact is limited, we try our hardest not to let this happen. If you work for an online retailer we’d encourage you to test your website with members of the public as frequently as you can.

Win a Flymo 3 in 1 Grass Trimmer

How To Make Sure It Fits – New Videos

April 19, 2010 | eSpares Updates  |  Vacuum Cleaner Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

We hold our hands up and say that carrying cleaning tools that are considered ‘generic’ or ‘universal’ has been a real struggle for us. We carry them for our customers who own vacuums where the genuine tools just aren’t made any more. On our landing pages we do our best to explain within the product description what you need to do to ensure that the tools will fit. Regardless we still encounter a higher than desirable return rate on these items with the reason being that the tool didn’t fit the cleaner.

As we all get more comfortable with online shopping it’s not always the case that the full product description is read prior to the item being purchased. I’m guilty of this too and currently own a beautiful, but very oversized, laundry basket. After all if the tool looks identical to the one that you need that’s basically all you need to know, right?

In order to combat this problem we’re trying a different approach and using videos to convey the fitting information. Here are our two latest videos that we’ve shot, we’re hoping that they’ll decrease our returns rate for the products they feature and increase customer satisfaction.

This video is featured against our universal 30-37mm vacuum floor tool.

This video is featured against our universal 32mm dusting brush.

As a retailer you don’t want people to return products to you, generally it means that you’re doing something wrong. Even worse is when a customer orders a product, is unhappy with it, but doesn’t bother to let you know or return it. We’ll be keeping a watchful eye on the conversion of these products, their returns rate and customer reviews now that the videos have been added.

Are You a Customer Service Guru?

April 9, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

We’ve started our search to recruit an excellent Customer Support & Sales Advisor to join our team.

Providing a top rate service to our customers is our absolute priority and the successful candidate will need to demonstrate excellent communication and sales skills, be flexible and professional. You will need to be computer literate and be very comfortable navigating around websites and intranets. You must be fluent in English and have had experience in delivering great customer service in a previous role. We’re looking for someone with a ‘can-do’ attitude who can take ownership and continually strive for improvement.

We have a great working environment, the team is vibrant, young and friendly and our offices look out onto the river Thames in Chelsea.

Main duties include:

  • Dealing with high call volumes from customers wishing to place orders for their appliances
  • Chasing enquiries for expected deliveries
  • Processing returns and cancellations
  • Liaising with our suppliers
  • Using appropriate software programs to locate parts

This is a permanent/ full time position, working 5 (40 hours a week) out of 6 days. The call centre operates a shift pattern which includes working weekends. Our opening hours are 8am – 6pm, Monday – Saturday.

To apply please email your CV and a covering letter explaining why you’re perfect for this eSpares job. The email address to use is: callcentrejobs@espares.co.uk.

How to replace a washing machine lifter – new video

April 8, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

The lifter in your washing machine drum is responsible for agitating your clothes so that the dirt disperses and your laundry becomes clean. If the drum lifter is broken not only will your clothes not get as clean as they should, but you could also risk creating tears in the items that you’re trying to clean. In a similar vein you could lose socks and small articles of clothing through the gap a missing lifter creates. Replacing a drum lifter in most washing machine models is quite easy. In this new eSpares video Helen will show you how to fit a drum lifter in a Hotpoint washing machine:

Little Girls And Boys

A Lightbulb Moment – New Video

April 6, 2010 | eSpares Updates  |  Kitchen Appliances Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

As a retailer one of our business objectives is to increase customer satisfaction by ensuring that you get the right product every time. In the world of spare parts we acknowledge that it can be a bit confusing to find the correct part the first time around.

Oven light bulbs are an area where we knew that we needed to improve. Oven lamps had a high return rate in addition to customer reviews that shared the sentiment the bulb didn’t fit but wasn’t worth the hassle to return. We weren’t happy about this; it reflects a very poor customer experience. In response we shot this short and simple video to ensure that our customers get the right oven bulb the first time around:

Our objective for this video is to help reduce our returns rate for cooker light bulbs and increase our customer happiness.We’ll be watching our customer reviews and returns rates to make sure that we’ve achieved our goal.