Mothercare tries ‘community’ site

Mothercare has relaunched its first serious consumer website – Mothercare.com – with the aim of nurturing one-to-one relationships with its customers.

The retailer has been working with website personalisation specialist Broadvision to create a “dynamic, content rich site that will feed advanced, profile-based content relevant to Mothercare’s customers”.

The site replaces an online corporate brochure (Mothercare.co.uk) and features full e-commerce on a broad product range of clothing, hardware and toys. Fulfilment should take no more than a week. Mothercare hopes to build a sense of community through bulletin boards and chat-rooms, as well as a “parents network” that includes information on health, pregnancy, meal planning and children’s activities.

Giles Walker, head of technology at Mothercare.com, says: “The Broadvision e-commerce platform enabled the rapid development of the Mothercare.com website. The features of the software have assisted us in offering our customers the same quality of personal service, breadth of choice, and professional advice that they are accustomed to in our high-street stores.”

He adds: “Mothercare can now manage its entire e-commerce supply chain more effectively. The customer-facing front end and the back office are seamlessly linked and automated to give updates on stock levels every 20 minutes, and monitoring of each individual price nightly. As such, the entire online business can be run more cost effectively and efficiently for the benefit of the customer and the business.”