Growing online sales

A recent report by Clavis Insight, a leading ecommerce insights company, suggests that online confectionery sales in the UK are currently growing at 30% year on year; far more than offline sales.

The report states that the UK online grocery market is worth £8bn, growing at 20% year on year, whilst UK online confectionery is worth £100m. Online purchases for the take home market are key to the growth in UK confectionery sales online.

This makes interesting reading for any confectionery retailer in the UK, whether large or small. The factors around an online and an offline purchase are very different and therefore those that find success offline will not automatically replicate it online. Consider firstly, the offline confectionery purchase. A big colourful display of different products, often at the point of purchase. The shopper might not consider buying any confectionery until they are faced with the display. They can look at and touch the products in order to make their decision and consume their confectionery immediately upon purchase.

In contrast, an online confectionery purchase cannot be particularly impulsive; it’s a more considered thing, looking at each product in turn, making a careful choice based on need and budget, knowing that delivery is required. Clavis Insight suggests that more premium brands and larger products (as oppose to single serves) perform best online.

Three things are extremely important to help consumers successfully buy more confectionery online. Firstly, they have to find it! We’re not writing an SEO article here and so we’ll just mention the importance of such activity and the challenge of ranking highly on Google. Online directories such as our very own UK confectionery suppliers directory can pay dividends too. Secondly, images are key. They cannot see the confectionery and hold it in their hands so they need great images, quite possibly of the front and the back of the pack. Thirdly, product information is essential. Optimising the product name is important (also for search) but consider also the product description (does it showcase the product at its best?) and product information such as dimensions, ingredients and nutritional information.

Selling confectionery online is without doubt, a fantastic opportunity for smaller confectionery brands wishing to reach a larger audience. Present yourself with the above considerations in mind and there is little reason why you could not grasp some of that 30% growth for your own business.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

Dark chocolate increases attention span

Yet more research is highlighting the potential benefits of eating dark chocolate. This time it concerns attention and alertness. Could dark chocolate help to keep you focused during the sleepy post-lunch phase?

The research was carried out in the USA, led by Professor Larry Stevens at Northern Arizona University. The team recruited 122 volunteers aged between 18 and 25 years old. Some were given 1g of dark chocolate (60%) for each kg of their body weight whilst others were given a placebo. Carrying out various thinking and memory tasks afterwards, those who ate the 60% cacao chocolate were more alert and attentive compared to those who ate the placebo.

The only negative point appears to be that the 60% dark chocolate also raised the blood pressure of those that consumed it and so there is also experimentation in adding L-theanine (an amino acid found in green tea that acts as a relaxant) to the recipe.

Could it be that we’re going to see further developments in the creation of healthy chocolate brands? This is certainly an interesting development in research surrounding the potential health benefits of dark chocolate.

Be aware that eating Cadbury Dairy Milk or a Mars Bar will not yield the same results! Eating too much chocolate is probably not a good thing either. It is only dark chocolate with a minimum of 60% cacao that might have this most useful effect. I’d swap caffeine for chocolate any day!

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

 

Time for pink sweets?

We all enjoyed the “good news” story over the weekend of William and Catherine’s new baby girl. I wonder how many sweet shops are now eagerly developing a pink display to encourage their customers to celebrate with a good helping of pink sweets?

We had a ponder and realised just how many great sweets are pink! The fact that we all love strawberry flavoured sweets certainly helps this. So here’s a quick list from us of pink sweets that might just fit the bill for your royal baby girl celebrations:

• Shrimps
• Pink Hearts
• Porky Pigs
• Strawberry Bon Bons
• Strawberry Milkshake Bottles
• Pink Mallows (Princess Mallows even!)
• Raspberry and Strawberry Millions
• Strawberry Jelly Beans
• Pinkies
• Strawberry Belts and Whips

You could pack up small amounts of these pink sweets into bags or containers and adorn with pink ribbons or perhaps just refresh your pick and mix display and join in the celebration. Either way, these sweets are generally very good sellers and so doing something creative could be quite worthwhile. We hope that we might have inspired a little bit of thought around pink sweets!

www.sweetretailing.co.uk