I think Macgyver is the ultimate handyman.  The way he is able to fix, create, or build whatever it is he needs  under nearly any circumstances is amazing.

Most Americans don’t have Macgyver’s knowledge, capabilities, or writers- but what many of us do have is access to the Internet.  And when it comes to fixing, creating, or building, people are using it in record numbers.

Continue reading “Clicking Their Way to Home Improvement: How Consumers are using the web in home improvement projects” »

As a renter, I never understood why Home Depot and Lowe’s were so popular. Then, I bought my first house. I lost track, but believe that first month of home ownership resulted in me going to THD approximately 537 times.

As these two titans continue to battle for contractor and consumer’s hearts and wallets, The Home Depot has taken a page from Hoosier’s Coach Norman Dale’s playbook and announced a focus on “fundamentals” – on customer service.

Below is a chart showing traffic to the “Customer Service” section of Homedepot.com and Lowes.com:

It is interesting to see the increase in visitation to each section, and how Lowes.com has actually seen the greater increase in visitation to the customer service section. So, what are people using and what are people doing online when they do go to these sections?

The first thing I notice is how two of the top 5 areas of interest for The Home Depot are not necessarily a post-sale activity: Specials and Contact Us both could be pre-sales activity. Customer Service can often times be a powerful selling agent. Perhaps we will look deeper into this section for a follow up posting. Lowes.com online rebates and coupon printing is the top reason for visitors to use their Customer Service.

What makes this even more interesting is when we look at the likelihood of people to actually purchase online when visiting the Customer Service section. This is where you will see clear distinction. Visitors to Homedepot.com that use their Customer Service section are far more likely to also purchase online. Below are the Purchase Rates for those users who have visited the Customer Service section of either Homedepot.com or Lowes.com:

It is shocking to me, to see how many people purchase online at homedepot.com that also visit the customer service section. As a consumer, I have become numbed to poor customer service; I almost expect it. That is why it is always so refreshing to me whenever I have an experience with a company that focuses on the fundamentals – and actually has good customer service.

“…there’s more to the game than shooting. There’s defense and fundamentals.” – Coach N. Dale

“My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.” ~Author Unknown

I’ll never forget the day I fell in love. I was driving north on the 5 in San Diego from the airport home to Del Mar. Cargo was flown in from Oklahoma City to San Diego and this cargo changed my life. I had been against getting a dog for years, but after a while my emphatic “no” turned into a hollow “yes.” That hollowness was quickly filled by a 5 pound brindled French bulldog puppy. There is nothing cuter than a puppy.

Spring time not only means Mother’s Day and graduations, for dog owners it also means check-ups, fleas, ticks, and the struggle known as “bath time.”
As virtually everything has become more web-friendly, I was curious just how much consumers relied on the web to get the essentials needed for their pets. Are these sites becoming more popular? And what are people searching for on these sites?

Petco isn’t just where the pets go, it’s also where we seem to go. Petco has seen a tremendous increase in traffic year over year (44%), while both 1800Petmeds (-7%) and Petsmart (-15%) have experienced a decline.

So where are these people coming from, and what are they looking for? Share of pet-related searches has increased significantly from 2008, and all three stores have benefited from an increase in search related traffic to their site.

Once on these sites, it is interesting how the consumer seems to use each of these sites in a distinctly different way. Below is a list of the top search terms for April on each site:

A couple of things immediately become apparent:

• Frontline is one of the top 3 items searched for all on all 3 sites. (Flea medication)
• While Advantage (Pepsi, to Frontline’s Coke) appears as the 5th most popular search term on 1800Petmeds, it doesn’t crack the Top 20 search terms on either Petco or Petsmart
• Branded terms dominate when on 1800Petmeds
• Generic keyword searches dominate when on Petsmart - with only a handful of branded terms surfacing to the top of their list

It is no surprise that 1800Petmeds shoppers are looking for specific medications and prescription diets on their site, but what is surprising is the difference in interests between Petco and Petsmart. The Petco shopper seems to already know what they are looking for when arriving at the site, whereas the Petsmart shopper seems to be a bit more casual with their needs, searching for more generic terms such as “turtle” and “rabbit.”

There is no doubt consumers are turning to the web more and more not just for their own needs, but also for their pets. Petco clearly has the edge at this point but with 1800Petmeds and Petsmart, there are clearly options for the consumer. The question is: as more consumers are turning to the web for their pets, which retailer will be able to capture the most of these “net new” shoppers?

Spring: A time for celebrations, baseball, and flea medication.

Compete recently had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Ertell, a well known E-Business and Online Operations veteran. Most recently Kevin led the E-Business efforts at Borders and guided the highly successful launch of Borders.com. Prior to Borders Kevin was an SVP with Tower Records responsible for online operations.

Kevin shared his insights on everything from Border’s Magic Shelf to the impact of Mobile and use of Videos.

What’s the one thing Online Retailers should be paying attention to?

I believe customer satisfaction is the most important metric for any online retailer. Conversion rate is also important, but it’s getting to be a tricky number to calculate as more and more retailers use their sites for purposes beyond the buy button (as they should). For example, at Borders we found the standard conversion rate calculation of traffic/orders didn’t really work because we couldn’t correlate it to sales on the site because we used the site to host store coupons, video entertainment programming, Borders Rewards tracking, etc. So, if we wanted to focus on a metric that tracked our selling success, we needed to focus on the type of traffic that likely came with an intent to buy (or at least eliminate the type of traffic that came for other reasons). We ended up going with something we called “true conversion” that measured product page views/add to cart multiplied by checkout process starts/orders. This true conversion metric was far more correlative to orders than anything else, so it was the place to focus.

What are your thoughts on Retailers being Cross-Channel?

Many times, “multi-channel” and “cross-channel” are used interchangeably, but I don’t think they’re the same thing at all. “Multi-channel” is more than one channel while “cross-channel” is leveraging the strengths of each channel to create an overall customer experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, the web has many capabilities that are nearly impossible to achieve in store because of physical constraints. Customer reviews are extremely popular online and customers regularly report using them to make purchase decisions (both online and in store); however, they are very difficult to make available in a physical environment. Some retailers are making them available via in-store kiosks, but the kiosks are a large capital investment to make if they’re not already available. So, I think we’ll likely see more and more use of mobile phone technology to give people access to customer reviews, recommendations, wish lists, gift registries, etc. in store while they’re standing in front of the products.

What are you currently most intrigued by?

I’m really intrigued by the ideal of distributed shopping. We’ve all built our sites based on brick and mortar thinking, really. By that I mean that we build sites and then work hard to get people to come to our sites. However, the web doesn’t need to work that way. We can take our sites to where our customers are. Traditional retailers occasionally do this. For example, when I was at Tower Records we used to build stores in tents at music festivals like the Monterrey Jazz Festival and sell jazz CDs to jazz music aficionados who were there for the festival. However, those opportunities were logistically and financially difficult, so we could only do them for certain types of events. On the web, the logistics and costs can be almost insignificant to get to the most niche of audiences.

To hear more thoughts from Kevin and read the full interview, simply sign up for Compete in Retail, Compete’s monthly Retail newsletter by emailing us.

All retailers rely heavily on the holiday season to boost their sales - with more and more of these sales now taking place online. According to a recent report by Internet Retailer, publicly traded companies saw their online sales grow by a collective 21% in the 3rd quarter.

Below is a list of the Top 10 biggest winners and losers so far this holiday season in terms of attracting traffic to their Web sites. We looked at traffic to their sites for Thanksgiving week (2007) through the first 2 weeks of December, comparing data from 2007 and 2008. We then ranked the sites that have seen the greatest % increase and decrease in traffic during this same time period.

Some interesting notes:

• Proflowers is seeing a surge in their holiday traffic while 1-800-Flowers has seen a slight decline of -1%. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner it will be interesting to see if 1-800-Flowers can change, or at least slow, this trend…
• Similarly, while Snapfish has enjoyed a strong holiday season, traffic to rival Shutterfly has stayed relatively flat, and is down -1%. Read Compete’s recent article comparing these two companies here.
• Blockbuster rival, Netflix, has seen their traffic remain flat Year/Year.
• Traffic to Walmart.com and Target.com is up 12, and 11% respectively.
• Gap, Inc. launched an integrated store and shopping basket strategy earlier this year combining Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Piperlime into one unified online location. While I personally love this idea and new site/s, traffic to these sites is down this holiday season:
  • OldNavy.com -15%
  • BananaRepublic.com -13%
  • Gap.com -3%

  Based on the early reports of strong holiday sales for Gap, Inc. it will be interesting to see the breakdown of online vs offline sales. It will also be interesting to perform an Online Sales Funnel Analysis of these new entities and learn if there are any marked increases.

• Conversely, Sears Holdings also developed a unified online location for their entities, and traffic is up at their major stores:
  • Kmart.com +37%
  • Sears.com +17%
  • LandsEnd.com +13%

I’m lucky. Or, at least I feel like I’m lucky. I don’t have to battle the lines, crowds, and traffic associated with holiday shopping. You see, I have several siblings that love to shop. So, with some careful planning I can deftly delegate all shopping off to each of them. I’m the idea guy. I come up with the gift – they get it.

As much as the holidays seem to put people in a good mood, they also seem to drive people crazy when making a trip to any retail store. It’s the yin and the yang of holiday shopping.

However, with more and more people shopping online, I’m not the only one avoiding these frustrations. To no one’s surprise, we are seeing more and more people flocking to e-commerce sites and spending more and more time online. Below is a graph showing traffic numbers to the most popular department stores for the first 15 days of November in 2007 vs 2008. You’ll see that in general, most sites are seeing an increase in traffic.

Since most people now are multi-channel consumers, companies need to think of creative ways to tie the various online and offline efforts and results together. Kohls.com has invested some noticeable real estate on their home page to this effort.

The Kohls.com Store Survey is an excellent tool encouraging consumers who have purchased offline to come online and share their valuable feedback. Some may scoff at this claiming it is not any different than printing a phone number for a survey on the store receipt. However, in addition to all of the benefits of using an online survey, Kohls is tying the online and offline channels together, getting the consumer to interact with them in a multichannel approach, developing yet another connection with the consumer, and encouraging multi-channel behaviour. And their customer base is letting them. An average of 180,000 people each month click on their Store Survey option.

Store Locators. Ship to Store. Item Availability (offline). Etc…. The transparency between the various channels is increasing. And that’s a good thing (for us consumers). Kohl’s has taken yet another creative way to help push for this transparency, and it will be interesting to watch in this Copy Cat world who else will follow suit.