We have just posted our first interview with an Australian retailer: Luke Hilton from Dick Smith Electronics.

Dick Smithis part of Woolworths (ASX: WOW). DSE is Australia’s largest online electronics retailer and they have over 200 retail stores. Luke is the Web Manager at Dick Smith and in the interview he shares plenty of his experiences. I particularly like their viral promotion around the launch of the iPhone in Australia and their plans to introduce user generated support.

SLI is powering the search and navigation on the Dick Smith site. They have recently updated of their whole site including their search and navigation. I really like the way it looks. It starts with the auto complete functionality on their search box, on the search results page the facets are on the left hand side their are plenty of products above the fold, the prices are big and bold and the navigation has a similar look as the search. The search and navigation is all search engine friendly and it is helping to drive a lot of traffic to their site.

We are also powering the RSS feeds of the popular searches and the hottest products for their main categories. This is something a little different and is a service we developed for Dick Smith.

Luke says that their conversion rate has improved significantly since the release of their new look.

We have just released an interview with Jack Love, President and CEO of Vertical Web Media – better known by their brand Internet Retailer.

Jack discusses his career in publishing from starting as a journalist through to Internet Retailer. He talks a lot about the upcoming Internet Retailer show in Boston (June 15-18) which is going to be their biggest and their best. A lot of online retailers I talk to say this is their favorite show. But don’t take my word for it - listen to what Jack has to say about it.

Yesterday we released a podcast interview with our customer Ian MacDonald from Century Novelty. During this interview Ian talks about how he started off as a stock boy while he was at school and is now General Manager.

Century Novelty started with a physical store in 1951 but is now is exclusively online. Focusing solely on their online store has given them some valuable experience. I’m sure you’ll enjoy listening to Ian share some of the secrets he has discovered from this experience.

Also see our press release which summarises the ROI Century Novelty achieved from using SLI’s Learning Search and Site Champion services.

We posted this interview with Jeff Zwelling from YLighting just before Christmas but I was a little busy and did not get a chance to blog about it. Jeff is very entrepreneurial – he co-founded Ylighting and is currently working on an opportunity he sees to improve analytics for ecommerce. I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening .

Jeff discusses an print advertising campaign he is proud of called Life Illuminated. I’ve uploaded a copy of the Life Illuminated ads so you can take a look at them.

Jeff mentioned a Yahoo group that he has found to be a valuable resource. I’m pretty sure it’s called Web Advertising Roundtable. It is a retailers only group – so you aren’t hassled by any annoying vendors (like me).

Yesterday we released an interview with Alan Lim from Purely Gadgets on the ecommerce podcast. Alan is one of our UK based customers and is our first non US guest on this podcast. Alan is from Singapore, has an office in London and one in Hong Kong (from where he sources a lot of their product directly from the manufacturers). Purely Gadgets sell through out the UK and Europe and are planning to expand further – this podcast has quite an international flavor to it.

Although Alan has many plans for expanding the business he talks about some of the tactics he’s had to employ to ensure his business thrives during the recession. 

Alan uses and recommends Web loyalty and Live Chat.