Poundland puts paid to e-commerce outlet

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - 13:00 by David Aiken

After kick starting its bid to enter the online marketplace back in 2015, budget chain Poundland has finally pulled the plug on its e-commerce site this month, according to Retail Week.

The main reason that Poundland has ended its attempts to entice customers to carry out safe shopping online is that most of the people who regularly visit its stores showed little interest in migrating to the web.

A number of other factors have been thrown into the mix by experts attempting to dissect the brief dalliance that this retailer had with e-commerce, drawing a range of conclusions which suggest the trial was perhaps doomed from the start.

Firstly, the in-store experience fostered by Poundland is one of impulse buys and discovery, with shoppers rarely visiting its bricks and mortar outlets to fulfil their weekly shopping needs, as they might with other major chains.

Secondly, people were no doubt put off by the fact that they would have to pay for delivery of the items that they ordered unless they hit the fairly high minimum spending requirement of £50. Few customers were willing to spend this much in store, so were even less likely to do so online.

Finally, analysts have pointed out that consumer habits in the UK are changing, with shoppers tending to make more regular trips to supermarkets and convenience stores to buy smaller numbers of items, rather than getting everything in one big weekly shop. This puts the bulk buy approach which Poundland encouraged via safe shopping online at odds with expectations.

Coupled with the claims that the design of the Poundland site was not all that intuitive, it is perhaps simple to see why this particular retailer is better off leaving the online shopping market place to its rivals.