I just got back from a really great seminar series organized by e-retail consultant Cate Bryant under the auspices of the New Zealand Retailers Association. It was a great event with fantastic presentations from Grant Jennings of Ezibuy and Vikki Branagan, former CEO of Stevens. Sailesh Manga (of Optimal Usability), Cate, and myself also did some site reviews of well known Kiwi eCommerce sites as well as some on the fly assessments of sites volunteered by attendees. The event was held over three days in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch and I think was genuinely useful for all the attendees. If you are in the business of online retail I would recommend looking for the next in this series which will feature a talk by Will Hunsinger, ex VP of Gap online in the US.

A couple of takeways for me related to the use of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) in the online retail space, which was something the Ezibuy team talked to, and also the idea of Gift Giving as an online retail strategy which is what Vikki Branagan talked about. I’ll be following up with some posts reflecting on both these soon.