GAME: We’ll triple digital revenue by 2013

GAME Group CEO Ian Shepherd has outlined the company’s Strategic Update in which he has expressed his intention to triple the Group’s online and digital revenue from 100m to 300m by 2013.

The exec said that recent behind the scenes investment in GAME’s digital infrastructure will start to become apparent to customers this year. A beta version of a new Gamestation web portal has recently been rolled out and the technology will be transported over to the GAME.co.uk portal in the coming weeks.

"Sites will be better engineered to go from click to purchase better," Shepherd stated.

At present GAME offers pre-owned versions of 2000 individual titles on its site. It shortly hopes to offer an alternative pre-owned purchase on every title in GAME’s catalogue shortly.

"This gives a fantastic value proposition," Shepherd added. "It’s bringing the multi-channel opportunity to the fore that a standalone online competitor cannot.

GAME will also offer a Click & Collect service in the UK as it currently does in Spain where customers can reserve and pay for a title online and then pick it up in person at any store.

In addition, an expanded in-store tech presence will allow customers to order titles that cannot be found on the shelf direct from a retailer’s website for delivery potentially the next day.

"Alone that’s not enough," Shepherd outlined. |We also need to speak to core product pricing. We will layout clearly the distinction between the price you would expect to pay for a standard web order, the price for a web order with accelerated delivery and the price you would expect to pay in store.

"As we do that we will be more aggressive online. This will result in market share gain. We will also offer the possibility of buying in-store for later delivery from the web. This gives consumers in store the access to back catalogue titles currently only available online. You’re capturing in market share you would otherwise be losing. Both of these channels will be better and stronger together than they are apart."

Shepherd also revealed that GAME’s PC download business grew 230 per cent in 2010. In addition, its mobile app has been downloaded 250k times. This, it hopes, will tie-in to the introduction of wi-fi hotspots in stores from which customers can log into the mobile app and order titles directly, as well as access content such as videos and reviews.