The first is category-centric merchandising. Selecting merchandising tactics that are appropriate for your category is essential. In the furniture market, which faced early difficulties in selling online, room visualization techniques now help Pottery Barn customers gain a sense of what their furniture selections might look like in a room. Other competitors allow shoppers to manipulate those settings, and, most importantly, these tools give consumers a comfort zone about making an online purchase in an otherwise tactile-driven shopping experience. Sites that embrace these kinds of tools set their brands apart.
Much work is also being done on the customization front where shoppers can create their own chinos on Lands’ End, design their own laptop bags at Timbuktu, and of course build a computer that meets their needs at Hewlett-Packard’s HPshopping or at Dell. The web as a channel is uniquely suited to that role and these kinds of capabilities address today’s quest for individuality and a desire to “do it yourself” with the aid of technology. Lastly, the web has given the world of gifting a number of great tools that make one wonder why anyone would choose to buy a gift in any other channel. My favorite is the ability to shop for the same item for multiple recipients during a single shopping experience. Exemplary execution can be found in purchasing a Starbucks gift card to selection of mint melt-aways at Crate and Barrel or a dozen roses at 1-800-Flowers.
The second critical element is customer service execution. In customer service the devil is in the details and some of the critical ones include access to your 800 number and the ability to easily check on the status of an order. Also significant are clearly laid out FAQs or information regarding placing and processing an order all the way to your shipping policies. Often times customer service pages and information destinations are the last to be reviewed yet the first to be accessed by customers so merchants need to keep these current and customer friendly.
The web has opened up many new possibilities for better customer service, but just as in traditional catalog or store-based retailing, execution is all that counts. Each holiday season the E-tailing Group emails 100 merchants a product-related question and also tests live chat where available. We typically find that those merchants who are strong offline execute best online. It is the novice outdoor enthusiast’s receipt of a comprehensive answer from REI when making their first kayak purchase, or J. Jill’s live-chat customer service rep’s ability to help one select the right size or garment based on a series of queries that sets standards other merchants should emulate.
Around key holidays, messaging that clearly articulates shipping cutoff dates as well as expedited shipping costs will be the key to customer trust in placing their order with fulfillment left in the hands of the merchant. It’s a must to ship within a five-day timeframe as we find in our annual mystery shopping that the average ship time among the e-tailing 100 is 4.4 days.
Thirdly is cross-channel execution. Today, most multi-channel merchants offer the option to buy online and return to any of their channels. Our experience with returns to over 50 merchant’s retail outlets showed great improvement. To date, unfortunately, only a handful of merchants offer the ability to also buy online and pickup in stores. Certainly, there are many obstacles but the value of the capability could certainly be seen in the sales numbers just before Christmas.
Online retail sales reached $1.22 billion for the week ending Dec. 26, a 53 percent rise from $795 million the prior year, according to ComScore. Beyond electronic gift cards and last minute expedited shipping, I believe the lion’s share of that revenue was due to in-store pickup capabilities.
Merchants who offered it, such as Sears, Compusa, Best Buy and Circuit City, optimized email campaigns to remind shoppers that there was still plenty of time to buy. Some even encouraged Christmas Eve pickup, thereby extending their season to match that of the harried last-minute shopper. I believe this is an area where merchants must make the effort to integrate their channels and the dollars will subsequently follow.
The last critical element is consistency. At the end of the day, branding rules. Delivering a consistent, customer-centric experience where the consumer recognizes your products, your messaging and your promotions garners loyalty among today’s fickle customer set. A quick look at Coach truly sees best-in-class branding at work. All one has to do is peruse a circular, open an email, preview their ad in The New York Times, browse their catalog, or glance at a store window to see that all are in sync, making it a perfect experience for today’s time-starved shopper.
