"Expert Baby Advice" to be Offered by Retailer Mamas and Papas

Along with the retail service that has made them one of the biggest parent targeted retailers, Mamas and Papas are now joining forces with the parenting advice service Greatvine, to enable them to also offer advice on pregnancy, labour and even good parenting via their online website.

The move is set to offer customers a better relationship with the store, which will not only increase their trust of the brand and its products but should also in turn drive traffic to the site from those using the advice service as a stand-alone tool and therefore increase sales.

Parents who use the site for this new function are more likely to go on and purchase from them, or so hopes Rob Jennings, e-commerce director of Mamas and Papas. But Jennings also insists that this new addition is in no way attempting to directly compete with the existing prenatal and parenting advice sites like Netmums or Mumsnet, although the similarity to Mothercare's already established and cleverly named parenting site gurgle is clear to see.

A retailer offering an alternative service alongside just the products that they sell is a great way of increasing brand awareness. With a strong SEO backing, the alternate service will be found by a whole new range of potential customers that can now find the brand for the retail section, the section that makes the company money.

Along with the parenting advice service, Mamas and Papas are also aiming to introduce a click and collect service in the near future that will roll out across all stores, which along with the aimed improvement of their mobile channels and CRM database will give the retailer a better overall strategy that will inevitably drastically increase sales, and as regards to the click and collect, should increase in store footfall.