Woolworths to roll out web tills

Woolworths is to install internet terminals in all its UK shops by the end of the year.

The retailer will roll out 'web tills' to 806 outlets this summer, following successful trials at 18 Welsh branches over the past few months.

Customers will be able to use the terminals to view Woolworths' entire stock range, including bulkier items that cannot be displayed on the shop floor because of their size, such as outdoor toys.

'It's really about the big-ticket items, such as trampolines and bikes, that we can't physically offer in-store,' said a Woolworths spokesman.

'It will turn a 3,000 sq ft regional high-street store into any other of our larger floor-space central stores.'

The terminals will be integrated into Woolworths point-of-sale system and its web site, allowing customers to place orders for home delivery and pay for them directly through the terminal or via traditional electronic point-of-sale (ePOS) tills.

In financial results published last week, Woolworths says the web till rollout was made possible by an ePOS branch network upgrade completed last year.

'The internet-enabled till technology will play a key part in the development of our evolving multi-channel strategy,' said the company in its 2004 trading statement.

Woolworths hopes the system will drive more sales of its larger products, but customers will also be able to look up and purchase any products, including smaller items such as CDs and DVDs.

Woolworths' largest stores are 55,000 sq ft, but only have room to display some 55,000 of the group's 400,000 products.

The introduction of the terminals follows installation of similar technology by Argos and HMV last year.

Woolworths hopes it will be able to compete more effectively with rivals such as HMV, via its Entertainment UK brand that sells CDs, DVDs and games.

'We have always been a chart retailer. But it isn't common knowledge that our Entertainment UK arm is a back-catalogue specialist supplying Amazon and MVC,' said the spokesman.

'This means we can turn our regional high-street stores into as a good a back-catalogue stockist as HMV.'