media update’s Adam Wakefield spoke to East Coast Radio programming manager, Zane Derbyshire, about the station’s move into the online shopping space and the value that marriage produces for the station’s clients and brand.

What led to East Coast Radio deciding to have an online store on its website?

Our website, ecr.co.za, is the busiest radio station site in the country from both unique browser and page view perspectives. One of our core business functions is to create innovative commercial solutions for our clients. It made sense for us to see how we could marry our digital offering with an e-commerce play that would deliver a new form of value to our clients.

In order to deliver this, we collaborated with Liquidbox, a cloud-based online shopping platform with the option of either theme-based or custom design online shopping websites. The platform took two years to develop and, since its launch in 2012, it has seen over 2 500 South African online shop registrations.

The Shop on ecr.co.za is not simply an online store. It’s more like a virtual mall that our vendors self-manage using the user-friendly control panel, which includes all functions such as order, product, courier, and customer management. It is fully integrated into all South African payment gateways and many of the shipping providers.

How did you go about selecting your current online partners and, from a brand perspective, how advantageous is having the online store associated with the East Coast Radio brand?

We launched the concept in the local KZN market and, using Liquidbox’s sphere of influence, we managed to bring some great brands on board from the launch date. We are currently in the process of on-boarding a host of new brands in time for Christmas shopping. The key benefit that the East Coast Radio brand brings to online shopping is the trust and equity our audiences have in how we do business. This project was thoroughly tested and vetted before it went live, and we believe our shoppers will have a simple, stress-free online shopping experience.

While The Shop is still in its relative infancy, have you noticed anything interesting in how its customers interact with it? Do you think it is drawing listeners to the East Coast Radio brand?

We have been amazed at the uptake of The Shop on ecr.co.za. We believe this is related to how we promote it on both our FM and social platforms. FM and digital are great when you engage them together, and this project is another great example of how the power of radio and the ease of digital integrate to deliver excellent results. Since we launched on Monday, 13 November, we have seen growth of 372% in unique browsers visiting The Shop on ecr.co.za, and growth of 420% in page views.

How important is the data East Coast Radio receives from those who shop on the site and does it use this data to offer advertisers a fuller picture?

Insights are a critical element in our business. From researching our music, to our presenters, to understanding how promotional campaigns track and deliver for clients, we are always looking to better understand what works for our audiences. We will share all our vendors’ stats with them and are already in the process of building case studies that demonstrate how different products perform across different time channels using different promotional elements.

For more information, visit www.ecr.co.za.

Online shopping is becoming increasingly important in South Africa, but the online environment itself, and how it works, is also undergoing important changes. Read more in our article, What you need to know about net neutrality.