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Directory Of United Kingdom Online Catalogues / Stores |
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| Arts & Books | Gifts | Books, Posters
& Prints | Cards, Chocolates,
Flowers, Other Gifts | | | | | Business | Health & Beauty | Business Services,
Business Supplies | Body & Soul, Cosmetics,
Health Care, Perfumes | | | | | Casinos & Betting | Home & Garden | Casinos, Lotteries,
Sports Books | DIY, Furniture,
Garden, Home | | | | | Consumer Electronics | Loans & Finance | Electrical Retailers,
Mobile Phones,
Computing | Financial Advice,
Insurance,
Loans | | | | | Entertainment | Motors | Films & TV, Music,
Tickets & Events | Cars, Car Hire,
Car Parts, Car Audio, | | | | | Fashion | Online Services | Clothing & Accessories,
Footwear, Jewellery,
Lingerie | Charities, Dating,
Price Comparison,
Training & Recruitment | | | | | Food & Drink | Sports & Fitness | Food Shopping,
Gourmet Food,
Wine & Spirits | Sports, Fitness,
Sports Equipment,
Sportswear | | | | | Games & Competitions | Travel | Competitions,
Games | Flights & Tickets, Holidays,
Travel Accessories, Insurance |
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Thank You For Visiting The Racing Ahead Store |
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I Hope you enjoy shopping at the Racing Ahead store and that you find what you are looking for. From time to time, new additions will be made to departments so please do come back and look again.
Online Catalogue shopping
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Online shopping is the process consumers go through using online catalogues to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, webshop, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.
The metaphor of an online catalogue is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogues . All types of stores have retail web sites, including those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogues .
Online shopping is a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.
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Online Catalogues Store Logistics |
| Consumers find a product of interest by visiting
online catalogues of the retailers directly, or do a search across many different vendors using a shopping search engine.
Once a particular product has been found in the online catalogue of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to accumulate multiple items from the online catalogue and to adjust quantities, by analogy with filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A "checkout" process follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online catalogue account so that some or all of this information only needs to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the online catalogue transaction is complete. Less sophisticated stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (though credit card numbers are not accepted by e-mail, for security reasons).
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Online Catalogue Payment |
| online catalogue shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems enable users to create an online catalogue account and pay by alternative means, such as:
Debit card
Various types of electronic money
Cash on delivery (C.O.D., offered by very few online stores)
Cheque
Wire transfer/delivery on payment
Postal money order
PayPal
Google Checkout
Reverse SMS billing to mobile phones
Gift cards
Direct Debit in some countries
Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which the online catalogues do their business. Other online catalogues allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a transaction might be processed in real time (for example, letting the online catalogue consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or might be done later as part of the fulfillment process.
While credit cards are currently the most popular means of paying for online catalogues goods and services, alternative online payments will account for 26% of online catalogue e-commerce volume by 2009 according to Celent.
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Online Catalogues Product delivery |
| Once a payment has been accepted the online catalogue goods or services can be delivered in the following ways.
Download: This is the method often used for digital media products such as software, music, movies, or images.
Shipping: The online catalogue product is shipped to the customer's address.
Drop shipping: The online catalogue order is passed to the manufacturer or third-party distributor, who ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical location to save time, money, and space.
In-store pickup: The customer orders from a online catalogue, finds a local store using locator software and picks the product up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model |
Online Catalogue Shopping Cart Systems |
Simple online catalogue systems allow the offline administration of products and categories. The online catalogue shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. These systems do not use an online database.
A high end online catalogue solution can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's own webserver and may integrate very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
Other online catalogue solutions allow the user to register and create an online catalogue on a portal that hosts multiple online catalog shops at the same time.
open source shopping cart packages include osCommerce and Zen Cart. Virtuemart is a shopping extension for the extremely popular CMS Joomla.
Commercial online catalogue systems can also be tailored to ones needs so that the online catalogue shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities required by an online catalogue can be adapted and combined. |
Market Share of Online Catalogues |
| E-commerce product sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States in 2006, representing about 6% of retail product sales in the country. The $18.3 billion worth of clothes sold through online catalogue represented about 10% of the domestic market.
For developing countries and low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of affordable Internet access.
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Advantages and disadvantages of using an Online Catalogue |
Convenience of an Online Catalogue |
| Online catalogues are usually available 24 hours a day, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store requires travel and must take place during business hours.
Searching or browsing online catalogues can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. Consumers with dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer load times for image-rich online catalogue web sites, and have a considerably slower online shopping experience. They are more likely to find physical retail stores more convenient.
Some consumers prefer interacting with people rather than online catalogues and computers (and vice versa), sometimes because they find computers hard to use. Not all online catalogue retailers have succeeded in making their sites easy to use or reliable.
In most cases, merchandise must be shipped to the consumer, introducing a significant delay and potentially uncertainty about whether or not the online catalogue item was actually in stock at the time of purchase. Bricks-and-clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many online catalogues give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online catalogues generally do not ship online catalogue products immediately upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many online catalogue retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they generally have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time is sometimes an important factor in online catalogue consumers' choice of merchant.
In the event of a problem with the online catalogue item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not what they expected - consumers are concerned with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may need to contact the online catalogue retailer, visit the post office and pay return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online catalogues companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online catalogue shoe retailer Zappos.com includes labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are prohibited from charging a restocking fee if the online catalogue consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000.[
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Information and reviews for Online Catalogues |
| Online catalogues must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail store, the actual product and the manufacturer's packaging will be available for direct inspection (which might involve a test drive, fitting, or other experimentation).
Some online catalogues provide or link to supplemental product information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or manufacturer specifications. Some provide background information, advice, or how-to guides designed to help online catalogue consumers decide which product to buy.
Some online catalogues even allow customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different products.
In a conventional retail store, clerks are generally available to answer questions. Some online catalogue stores have real-time chat features, but most rely on e-mail or phone calls to handle customer questions.
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Online Catalogue Price and Selection |
| One advantage of online catalogue shopping is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services with many different online catalogue vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines and online catalogue price comparison services can be used to look up sellers of a particular product or service.
Shoppers find a greater selection online in certain market segments (for example, computers and consumer electronics) and in some cases lower prices. This is due to a relaxation of certain constraints, such as the size of a "brick-and-mortar" store, lower stocking costs (or none, if drop shipping is used), and lower staffing overhead.
Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the price advantage of online catalogue merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack of sales tax may compensate for this.
Shipping a small number of items, especially from another country, is much more expensive than making the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some online catalogue retailers (especially those selling small, high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.
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Online Catalogue Fraud and Security Concerns |
| Given the lack of ability to inspect online catalogue merchandise before purchase, consumers are at higher risk of fraud on the part of the merchant than in a physical store. Online catalogues also risk fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. With a warehouse instead of a retail storefront, online catalogue merchants face less risk from physical theft.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption has generally solved the problem of credit card numbers being intercepted in transit between the consumer and the online catalogue merchant. Identity theft is still a concern for consumers when hackers break into a online catalogue merchant's web site and steal names, addresses and credit card numbers. A number of high-profile break-ins in the 2000s has prompted some U.S. states to require disclosure to consumers when this happens. Computer security has thus become a major concern for online catalogue merchants and e-commerce service providers, who deploy countermeasures such as firewalls and anti-virus software to protect their networks.
Phishing is another danger, where consumers are fooled into thinking they are dealing with a reputable online catalogue retailer, when they have actually been manipulated into feeding private information to a system operated by a malicious party. On the other hand, dealing with online catalogues automated systems instead of a population of store clerks reduces the risk of employees stealing consumer information, or dumpster diving of paper receipts. Denial of service attacks are a minor risk for online catalogue merchants, as are server and network outages.
Quality seals can be placed on the online catalogues webpages if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all requirements of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online catalogue shoppers; the existence of many different seals, or seals unfamiliar to consumers, may foil this effort to a certain extent.
A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online catalogue retailer services. These include:
Sticking with known online catalogue stores, or attempting to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences; also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the online catalogue website before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as trustmark or trust seal.
Ensuring that the online catalogue retailer has an acceptable privacy policy posted. For example note if the online catalogue retailer does not explicitly state that it will not share private information with others without consent.
Ensuring that the vendor address is protected with SSL (see above) when entering credit card information. If it does the address on the credit card information entry screen will start with "HTTPS".
Using strong passwords, without personal information. Another option is a "pass phrase," which might be something along the lines: "I shop 4 good a buy!!" These are difficult to hack, and provides a variety of upper, lower, and special characters and could be online catalogue site specific and easy to remember.
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Privacy Considerations of Online Catalogues
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| Privacy of personal information is a significant issue for some online catalogue consumers. Different legal jurisdictions have different laws concerning consumer privacy, and different levels of enforcement. Many consumers wish to avoid spam and telemarketing which could result from supplying contact information to an online catalogue merchant. In response, many merchants promise not to use consumer information for these purposes, or provide a mechanism to opt-out of such contacts.
Brick-and-mortar stores also collect consumer information. Some ask for address and phone number at checkout, though consumers may refuse to provide it. Many larger stores use the address information encoded on consumers' credit cards (often without their knowledge) to add them to a catalogue mailing list. This information is obviously not accessible to the merchant when paying in cash.
Many successful purely online catalogue companies deal with digital products, (including information storage, retrieval, and modification), music, movies, office supplies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. Examples of this type of company include: Google, eBay and Paypal. Other successful online catalogue marketers use Drop shipping or Affiliate marketing techniques to facilitate transactions of tangible goods without maintaining real inventory. Examples include numerous online catalogue sellers on eBay.
Some non-digital products have been more successful than others for online catalogue stores. Profitable items often have a high value-to-weight ratio, they may involve embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations, and they may have shut-ins as their typical online catalogue purchasers. Items which can fit through a standard letterbox — such as music CDs, DVDs and books — are particularly suitable for a online catalogue marketer, and indeed Amazon.com, one of the few enduring dot-com companies, has historically concentrated on this field.
Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates for selling in online catalogues . Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets -- in such cases, e-commerce online catalogue solutions in spares do not compete with retail stores, only with other ordering systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number.
Products less suitable for online catalogues e-commerce include products that have a low value-to-weight ratio, products that have a smell, taste, or touch component, products that need trial fittings — most notably clothing — and products where colour integrity appears important. Nonetheless, Tesco.com has had success delivering groceries in the UK, albeit that many of its goods are of a generic quality, and clothing sold through online catalogues is big business in the U.S. Also, the recycling program Cheapcycle sells goods over the internet, but avoids the low value-to-weight ratio problem by creating different groups for various regions, so that shipping costs remain low.
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