eCommerce and

A recent supplier addition provided a strong reminder that the definition of A, B, and C products aren’t always the same from one shipper to the next.

Driving Sales and Meeting Expectations

Generally, and this is what got us in trouble in the first place, manufacturer’s class each unique model number based on some understanding of performance, and the market’s demand for that particular model number. The manufacturer experiences this demand as turns, or total number of units sold in a given period of time.

When adding new product lines, it’s important to clearly communicate reasonable delivery expectations to a potential customer. These expectations can be communicated in a number of ways; in stock, out of stock, quantity on hand, or with lead times to name a few. Customers are then free to make their buying decisions based on their specific project deadlines.

It can be difficult to balance driving sales with communicating availability, especially if the product has an unfavorable lead time.  Don’t shy away from this kind of proactive communication solely for the purpose of increasing sales. Communicated or not, note that every customer has some set expectation for what they consider a reasonable delivery time. Right or wrong if you’re unable to meet this expectation the sale will likely result in a cancellation and likely the subsequent incurred transaction fees. Nothing is gained but a poor customer experience. Framing a customer’s expectation of a reasonable delivery time with availability information serves to curb a potentially out of control cancellation rate.

The A's, B's and C's of Product Classification

As part of a recent supplier addition, we built our availability logic around the suppliers communicated A, B, and C classifications. At the heart of our logic was this understanding that an “A” product should experience greater turns and therefore be stocked accordingly; subsequently “B’s” then “C’s”. In less than four weeks a high cancellation rate was raising its head. In an attempt to positively impact our cancellation rate, a meeting was calendared to sit down with our supplier’s purchasing department. It was quickly pinpointed that a far more complicated definition of A, B, and C was at play. Things such as anticipated turns and current marketing efforts were skewing the historical data from which their classifications were determined. Stocking hadn’t necessarily caught up to these classification efforts.

It was apparent that a more real-time solution needed to be established for determining unallocated on hand as well as next anticipated unallocated delivery dates. Building availability logic around this data should prove accurate, translating into a more positive customer experience with a decreased cancellation rate.

A Couple Key Take Aways 

• Consider communicating availability clearly pre-transaction for a better customer experience. 
• When establishing a new supplier relationship, make sure you’re aware of the internal philosophies that establish classifications from which you’ll build your logic. 
• Attempt to peal back a layer from classifications by seeking real time unallocated availability. 
• Always keep an eye on reporting such as cancellation rates. Look for nuances that will help you bring efficiencies to your processes before a potential issue is out of control.

This week’s variety is fun because it is full of images, and as studies have shown as the text increases visit time decreases.

• Google is updating its logo daily in honor of the Olympics.  These are the logos that have graced us so far:
  

• Paying attention to social networks can pay off for the retailer and the social butterflies.
• What if we could create linkbait before it happens?  Visa, in a sense, did it with their latest commercial.
• What are you trying to offer that your competition isn’t?  Seth Godin helps us take a look at the intangibles.
• SearchEngineLand.com reported on a new tool called Wordle this week.  What it does is create a customizable tag cloud of the most prominent words in a text or url.  So I took the liberty of seeing what our eCommerce and Entrepreneurship tag cloud would look like:

Recently a fellow coworker sent me a blog about multi channel selling which was basically a "pro niche" piece.

"A highly effective strategy in ecommerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate."

While I understand the niche v. mega site argument (and I also may have my mind set on which I like best both from a customer and retailer perspective) I thought this was an interesting article which highlighted all of the great things about niche websites and none of the bad. I know people say they are great because of the niche SEO value, the ability to really hone in on your marketing campaigns and the ability to focus on a particular product niche. And I agree, those are some great reasons to sell via niche websites. However, I see even more reasons to avoid buying or selling via a niche website. Developing niche SEO campaigns and polishing marketing strategies can be done on a large scale, in a similar fashion to that of niche retailers, by focusing on categories and product types.

I would even go so far as to say that I think that SEO, in particular, can go much further for larger sites.  I say this because a larger site can draw more links, have more authority within an industry and create a community built around an entire market instead of a niche. My next step in the conversation or thought process then usually turns to the ability to cross sell, up sell and convert repeat buyers which is much harder and far less effective on a niche website.  Think about it, how much harder would it be to convince a consumer to buy just one more barstool on a website that only sells barstools, as opposed to a website that sells outdoor furniture who can then up sell on the matching tables, chairs, accessories, and more?

The next thing that goes through my mind, or the next thing I would bring up in a conversation regarding niche v. vertical is operating costs.  Depending on the retailer's level of technological prowess, I also like to bring up the level of overhead with operating several websites v. one. Don't let me convince you, though; several retailers are moving away from niche websites. The Gap recently combined their web properties so that shoppers can simply visit the gap website and shop at all of their stores by means of one shopping cart. There are also several mega sites like, Amazon, QVC, etc. which continue to do well. So, while I lean on the anti-niche selling side of the fence, I believe it can be done in a scalable and profitable fashion. However, both as a buyer and seller, I prefer the larger non-niche sites.

This also brings up a nomenclature issue. I would consider "multi-channel selling" to be either selling through different means (i.e. as a physical store, catalog and online) or through different marketing channels such as shopping engines, marketplaces, and search engine marketing. So the verbiage of the article is also confusing in and of itself. I might consider the means through which products are listed and categorized on a site a "selling channel", but I would probably classify niche websites as a "selling strategy" based upon how the business has decided to sell online.

A while back I was perusing through a brick-and-mortar Staples and I saw this.  The "Beauty Bamboo Ceramic" priced at $9.99.

What caught my eye wasn't the beautiful foliage or the simple ceramic pot.  What turned my head was the "FOR SALE" sign in ALL CAPS affixed to the plants branch.

Even though the plant was in the middle of Staples (the largest office supplies retailer on the planet), on a rack chock full of fake plants, in the middle of the furniture section, and product names and prices were clearly posted in association with the plants, someone (maybe the manufacturer?) saw fit to make sure everyone knew that these plants were "FOR SALE".

I wonder how many people are walking through Staples and notice this plant thinking "Man, this is such a great fake plant on this entire rack full of fake plants in the middle of the furniture section with all these price signs everywhere.  I sure wish it was for sale, instead of just decorating Staples.  OH CRAP!  Look at that sign.  It is FOR SALE!  EUREKA!".

What if we had to do this in eCommerce?  What if on product detail pages we had to display a banner shouting "FOR SALE" in order to make sure customers understood that our products were, indeed, for sale.  Shoot, do we?

One would hope that any sophisticated internet retailer presents itself in such a manner so that customers understand when they are looking at a product that happens to be... FOR SALE.

The 2008 Summer Olympics started today; opening ceremonies have already taken place in China, but will not be available for viewing on T.V. in America until this evening.  Did you know that the Olympic Rings is the world’s most recognized symbol?

• For those of you that are as excited about the Olympics as I am you can catch an estimated 2,000 hours of online footage via the NBC Olympics site.  If there is a particular event that you are looking to see that won’t be broadcast domestically, Leo Laporte, the “Tech Guy”,  will be giving out websites that are broadcasting events both legally and illegally on his radio show tomorrow.  To listen on demand visit this link. 
• If you have followed our blog or speakers at conferences you have probably heard us talk about hiring “shining stars” or “analytical aces”, these are the top notch employees that help to grow the company and vigorously love their jobs.  We may have an advantage at this since one of our fearless leaders is a professor at a University and is able to give semester long interviews to students without them even knowing it, but what about the rest of eCommerce?  Harry Joiner, specializes in recruiting and filling online marketing executive slots, he says “If the candidate senses online is an afterthought [to the hiring company], then they are not going to work there. It’s essential the company sees ecommerce as a pie-enlarging value proposition, not just a pie-rearranging proposition. Because at the end of the day, “A” players want to go where they are going to matter.”  If you tend to agree with him, then I would suggest reading this interview with Joiner by Alan Rimm-Kaufman. 
• Dan Kaminsky of IOActive Inc, a security consultant firm based in Seattle, discovered an internet security flaw that has the ability to affect emails.  According to the article when Kaminsky spoke at this week’s Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, the room was packed and had people sitting on the floor to hear what he was going to reveal about the security hole.  Most vendors and many providers have fixed the issue, but some have not, which could leave some at risk.  According to Kaminsky “The industry has rallied like we've never seen the industry rally before”.  For those of you who aren’t so technical (myself included), some of our fellow blogger nerds provided some insight about the security risk:
  From Jordon: “It works kind of like a man in the middle attack, where the attacker can respond to a DNS request before the actual DNS server.  When DNS isn’t using port randomization it’s only responds on port 53 which it makes it easy to intercept the response because you know what port it is on.  If port randomization is enabled then the response can come back on any of over 65 thousand ports making it harder to respond on the correct port. 
  So you would think that the odds are over 1 in 65,000 to make the attack work, except the attacker can respond quicker than the DNS server, say like a hundred times.  So then the odds of getting a correct response becomes 1 in 650, which is much more reasonable.  Port randomization helps but doesn’t completely solve the problem.  So they had to fix some code and other stuff that I don’t completely understand yet.”
  From Zach: “Yea that sounds right, when I was reading about it last week several people said it had to do with some DNS configurations not randomizing correctly. Instead of the ports being random they might be linear or have some kind of predictable pattern so if you can figure that out then you know where to point the attacks.”
• 38% of female blog writers make their online purchasing decisions based on information they have found in a blog according to a BlogHer/Compass Partners study.  This may be an untapped area for internet retailers as the study also shows that 35% of all women in the US participate in the “blogosphere”. 
• Avinash Kaushik of Occam’s razor posted on using Google Trends for competitive analysis.  It’s a great post, but be sure you are prepared before you try to take on this task, Avinash explains “Doing competitive intelligence analysis without knowing enough context about your competitive space, your general ecosystem, is like going to play a football game naked. Won’t lead to a great outcome for you (even if you paid a ton of money for your players - tools :)).”  For those of you who feel you are prepared for the task the post is highly informative.
   

So, usually I'm the guy who is doing his best to champion the cheaper technology solution. Even though the iPhone 3G is not the cheapest cell phone solution, I was so excited that this device was worth every penny and I had to share...

So, I’ve been using my new iPhone 3G for nearly 3 weeks now…I am a believer.  

I remember when I got my first, first-generation TiVo.  I tried to explain to friends, family, and colleagues why it was so amazing and invaluable. I got the standard response; mostly, “I don’t watch that much TV.” This is a terrible reason not to get a TiVo. You watch TV so much more efficiently and the experience of watching TV goes through a paradigm shift that makes one never desire to watch TV in any other way. This is how I feel about the new iPhone 3G. Not since TiVo has a piece of technology so enriched my life and fundamentally changed the way I do stuff.

So, it’s a phone…so what?!  

True. It is a phone. However, it also breaks whatever has tethered you to your phone, phonebook, map, photo album, radio, TV, clock, flashlight, newspaper, calendar, game console, …the list goes on.

What’s more, it isn’t just that the iPhone 3G does all of this, it’s that it does it in a way that changes the way you feel about what you’ve previously experienced with each of the features and tools.  It’s not only that I have everything in one place; it’s that the experience for each of the features is usually fluid, intuitive, and frankly somewhat sexy. Also, my experience of browsing over 3G has been very positive. One of the managing partners here at Gordian Project has a first-gen iPhone and told me before I got one that browsing certain sites on the web (such as flash based sites) isn't always practical on the iPhone. I have found this to be the case when on the Edge network, which boasts an experience like dial-up. However, 3G has been more like a low-end DSL connection. I have been very impressed.

How did you justify the cost?

True, the iPhone 3G costs a bit more money than the standard phone. Similarly, TiVo costs a bit more than someone just watching regular TV. But, the additional cost of the iPhone, like TiVo, is eclipsed by its tremendous value. Here are 10 reasons that the iPhone has so much value for me:  

1. I didn’t have to buy an iPod. 
2. I didn’t have to buy a TomTom. 
3. I will save money by having SlickDeals.net notifications right at my fingertips.
4. I didn’t have to buy a Light Saber.
5. I don’t have to rush home or to the office if there is an online emergency; I can work remotely if needed.
6. I can clear unread posts in Google Reader during my commute (I usually don’t drive in my carpool).
7. I never waste time waiting in lines.
8. Gen Y’ers won’t make fun of me anymore for my antiquated brick.
9. Every time someone mentions something that sounds interesting, I don’t have to try to remember it or write it down…I can just look for that something.  
10. I quit smoking (cold turkey) the moment I got an iPhone 3G.
    

The idea to quit smoking came to me when I was trying to convince my wife that I absolutely had to have the new iPhone. The fact that the iPhone may actually save my life is what sold her.

 
I probably wouldn’t do all that stuff with it… 
 
OK. So maybe you aren’t a “power user”. However, like TiVo, I can’t think of a single profile or demographic that wouldn’t be able to use the iPhone to improve their lives. Everywhere you go, you’re fully connected. If someone could figure out Flash on iPhone’s Safari and if AT&T would allow users to make the iPhone an access point, this device would be near perfect. Of all the technology I have consumed, the iPhone 3G is easily my favorite device so far.

• Amazon announced new payment services in two flavors - Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay. Frankly I am excited to see what Amazon can bring to this already crowded space (PayPal, Google Checkout, eBillme and many more). Read the thoughts of Linda Bustos and Scot Wingo on the new service.
• I will not make mention of that new search engine and be another one of the 24,928 posts about Cuil. DANG IT.
• Write your own blog? Want to take a vacation this summer? Lisa Barone at Bruceclay is using guest bloggers to cover while she's on vacation. I leave next week for my vacation but luckily I found a blogging service called Posterous which you might be able to use. You can email just about anything to the system and it will post it your blog, pretty slick.
• Say, speaking of taking vacation like Lisa, and the fact that I also live just a couple miles from our office, I was wondering what else I might have in common with some popular bloggers. Please help me find matches for the following or create one for me, I'll take care of the first one.
  • Live less than 3 miles from work - Lisa Barone, Bruceclay.com
  • Is left-handed - ?
  • Was born in the November -  ?
  • Has never experienced a tornado (since I've done the whole earthquake thing) - ?
• I've planned and routed my whole trip using Google Maps. Earlier this week it appeared that Google was testing new features for Maps. As of today it looks like they may have rolled back certain ones, but I'm happy that one feature they rolled back and kept is the ability to reorder your multiple desitinations. I do appreciate the "avoid tolls" feature, that should save me $20 by avoiding bay area bridges!
• Microsoft's Live Search page got a makeover. If you are familiar with Easter Eggs on DVDs, then you'll enjoy finding the hidden hot spots on the page.
• SES San Jose is coming up soon. It's already August?! It doesn't look like I'll be going (not that I have something better to do), but please don't postpone your honeymoon to attend like this guy.
• I lost all my Scrabulous games on Facebook! If you enjoyed this game as much as I did, be sure to add wordscraper, the replacement that was built by Scrabulous developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla.
• I love Firefox 3 more everyday. I found a new favorite Firefox 3 plugin this week that refreshes webpages at customizable intervals. No more pounding the F5 key during a Woot-Off (I mean to review our orders tab without having to always keep logging in). My top 3 Firefox add-on's I can't live with out at work are; ReloadEvery, Screengrab!, and Live HTTP Headers. Zach suggests Search Status, Session Manager, and Web Developer for SEO-minded folks.
• Ask yourself, am I a Guru or an Expert?
• My random fact of the day is dedicated to Matt, our Development Manager, who's been looking to adopt a dog. Los Angeles' top dog is the chihuahua according to the LA Times.

I thought starting a new regular post discussing what affiliate websites are doing to be profitable and effective, affiliate websites that are downright hilarious, and affiliate websites that fall in between these two ends of the spectrum would be beneficial to our readers. My goal is to point out aspects of publisher websites that are unappealing, and also support those who are doing it right. I don't want anyone to feel ripped on, but I think we can learn from the bad websites just as much as we can learn from the good. Sometimes the sites are funny, like the ones that put pictures of themselves from way back in the day all over the site.  Sometimes there is so much going on with colors, animations that are flashing and making noise, and pop-ups that I wonder if they may cause viewers to have an epileptic seizure.  Still other times I question what the webmaster is thinking, for instance I recently came across an affiliate website that used a 7 year old Drowning Pool song as background music "Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor" (shudders).  While these examples may be obvious “no no's” to those attempting to create a quality website, there are a few basic rules that I would like to point out this month that may help affiliate marketers make improvements.

Site 1: HydroponicsUSA.com - This website does not have a strong affiliation to our products, unless you really want to classify it as "Home and Garden". From what I'm aware, hydroponics are used frequently to grow illegal substances, and whether or not that is all they are used for, the correlation is strong enough to make me question the website before I even see it. Consider the affiliation between your brand and the connotation of hydroponics.  I guess it depends on who your target market is, but for me a red flag goes up. One of the first things that I notice when I look at an affiliate website is the contact information; it provides a sense of validity to the retailer and potential guests.  What I notice about this website is that there is no contact information or about us so that visitors can find out more about the website. This always makes me concerned about the legitimacy of the website.  

Site 2: BurberryCoatReview1234.blogspot.com - If your website listed in the program is a blog named BurberryCoatReview with a string of numbers, you are probably spam. I wish there was a way to block affiliates based on their URL, or words within their URL. Spammer affiliates will create hundreds of free blog websites about a particular product or brand in order to try and gain massive exposure to visitors. You'll also notice that such sites will have 1-2 posts that are likely very old. The publisher writes an article or two, then moves on to create another blog website account. If blogger affiliates are signing up for your program, verify their start date and look to see how many posts they have in their history. If there are only a few posts, most of which are older, and there is a good chance that this is the case, the publisher will not likely be a quality affiliate as most blogs fail when they are abandoned by their owner. 

Site 3: CouponCactus.com - This is an example of a wonderful effort by David Fitterman to collect and organize coupons from merchants. With a strong offering of exclusive coupons, Coupon Cactus has over 800 stores and 2,000 coupons to check out. The site provides visitors with the ability to browse by store, category, size of discount, new and expiring, as well as site favorites. Coupon Cactus incentivizes its users to sign up and register to earn cash back to their account, similar to Jellyfish cashback. While there has been much talk about coupon sites and whether or not they should be part of a merchant's affiliate program, I believe with the right approach and management a coupon affiliate site can be a positive addition in an affiliate program, and I think this is a good example of a publisher that is doing it right.

Site 4: Homeincomeportal.com/... - If your site is about how to make $$$$ from home in just minutes a day, you will get declined, at least by our affiliate management team. The quality of these sites is generally terrible, packed with false/questionable statements and gimmicky software solutions for sale, such as "traffic magnet" or "banner fiesta". This specific example has dozens of different topics including software ads, recipes, testimonials (with a picture of a man with no shirt on), and ten plus links to products called "Buy this here". The page was so long, I seriously had to scroll for quite a long time to review all the content (if you can even call it that). Such a long page is poor design and ineffective at generating conversions for your program.  This design structure and get rich quick type of marketing is not something I consider to be beneficial to the retailer, or all eCommerce for that matter.

Let's recap and look at the key takeaways for both publishers and affiliate managers this month:

1. Don't use animated gifs (especially ones of flames touting "Hot Deals!"), tiled/repeating background images, mouse cursor effects, useless sound effects and background music. 
2. Don't use free hosting site urls like tripod, geocities (yes, I still see applicants with these), etc. Spend $7 and purchase a domain, it will be worth it in the long run. 
3. Provide links for retailers to contact you for recruitment purposes or other reasons. 
4. Don't get nasty with the affiliate manager. Yes we have received, such distasteful replies to our publisher decline emails as "your loss", "it's your money (aka your company's) that you're losing" or "I don't know what your problem is". Let's act like responsible, grown up, mature professionals. We are trying to do business together to benefit both parties.  
5. Do include your affiliate ID in email communications, as it helps pull up your account instead of hunting you down by domain. 
6. Don't use free templates for affiliate sites. I usually get about a dozen applications a week that use some sort of pre-configured template. 
7. Avoid creating a page full of 468x60 banners that takes several minutes to load even on broadband. No one, I mean no one, will wait to see all the banners to load. 
8. Build a site that the merchant would be proud to link to and be associated with. 

Look for next month's edition with more reviews and tips. 

I was pleasantly surprised today during my morning order audit process to see an order with http://www.google.com/shoppinglist as its referer information. I did not remember Google Product Search having a shopping list feature so I poked around to see if I could find a post on the Google Base Blog or someone else explaining when this feature appeared and how it worked. Disappointingly enough, I could find neither so decided to write a post of my own discussing this neat little feature.

As you can see by the screen shot below, all Google product Search listings now have the "Add to Shopping List" text underneath them which by clicking on it (assuming you have a Google account) lets you save it to a list of products which Google keeps track of for you.

On the upper right when using Google product search it now says "My Shopping List" which by clicking on it will take you to the list of products you saved to your list. At this point Shared Wish Lists can also be created and shared with friends or family, another neat, friendly, shopping feature.

All in all, this is a smart feature and one that I appreciate.  In an effort to keep my shopping list organized, keep a running tally of the great deals I find and a list of the products I might be interested in for the future, having the functionality via Google will save time and enable me to keep my list in one place rather than among multiple retail venues. At this point one of the only gripes I have is not being able to save non Google Product Search products to these lists (but Google Notebook is an alternative for that).  Another option would be to build a feature that allowed retailers who posted products on Google Product Search to let their users add products to the Shopping List directly from the retailer's site.

After talking with a Product Search Rep from Google I found out that these features previously existed in the Froogle search interface and were removed during the transition to Google Product Search. It has been slightly revamped and was relaunched late last week.

The presenter for this session was Raul Vazquez, President and CEO of Walmart.com
(Paraphrased)

Raul was one of the most engaging speakers I have seen at a conference.  I wasn't able to post this right away because thanks to California traffic I missed the beginning of the session.  Through some contacts that I was able to make I gathered others notes and combined them with mine to bring our readers the nuggets of wisdom that Raul was able to impress upon the crowd.

The main focus of Raul's presentation was the 4 things that can be done to improve our websites.  

• Invest in a Key Performance Indicator 
• Be true to your brand and what you have promised your public 
• Be true to your vision 
• Invest in platforms that will support the brand and the vision
  

Walmart.com

The walmart.com team consists of 700 people stationed in Brisbane, CA.  Of the 700 employees 12 are dedicated to merchandising the websites over 100 categories.  The content created for the site is based and centered on site merchandising.  Raul reminds the crowd that “there are no shortcuts”.  The team focuses on improving the site by following a process similar to that of the scientific method.  The process is: Hypothesis, test, measure, optimize and repeat.  This is important because Raul states that continuous improvements will yield results that are not always immediate.

Invest in a Key Performance Indicator

According to Raul and his experience the people that seem to get the most accomplished with the best results get their KPI/KPM score card every day.  KPM refers to dashboards designed to track Key Performance Metrics.  Raul reminds the crowd that when looking at this data it is important to look at it from three different perspectives: Absolute values, relative values, and trends.  He shares that walmart.com tracks a few key metrics: 

• Revenue 
• CTR 
• Conversion 
• Revenue/Page views
  

Under his direction and the direction of the merchandising team leader Mike Simas, he believes that his team is efficient, but admits that they can't do all of the things they want to do, they have to be selective.  He notes that in order to eliminate noise that can skew the KPI data it's important to look at the comps separately.  Some of the comps that walmart.com looks at are: Sales comps, traffic comps, and conversion comps.

Be True to Your Brand and What You have Promised Your Public 

This will be different by retailer, for walmart.com it is “Save money. Live better”.  He uses an example of how they pay attention to this by their use of “from pricing”.  They have to be careful not to violate the trust of the customer, which can happen when using this tactic; it is referred to as bait and switch.  He reiterates this point by giving the example “we don't show a picture of a Rolex and say priced from $119.00, then send the customer to the Seiko section when they click on the ad”.  They also try to bring the store experience online.  They replicate best practices seen in the store like showing more product features, multiple images, plus price and content.  He admits that they are tinkering with going back to single images for certain products, but he believes that if you can show an image that highlights the product features, or the product in use that it makes the online experience more like that of the store.   

Be True to your Vision 

Like the brand promise this will be different for retailers.  For them it is “to be the most visited and valued online retail site”.  He admits that this isn't easy to measure, because value itself is defined by the customer's use of the website features or frequency of returns.  He also reveals that this plays in to his recurring fear of not being able to measure.  He adds that he likes the quote “In God we trust.  Everyone else bring data”.  

Invest in Platforms that will Support the Brand and the Vision 

A key component of this is the ability to “highlight the best and make it easy to find the rest”.  He explains this by explaining the “long tail” side.  The products with the highest velocity and mass appeal fall at the head of the curve with their assortment at the tail end of the curve.  Some of the things that they are currently working on and planning on implementing in the near future support this claim.  They are rolling out a digital asset management system that is linked with in store assets, in order to guide the customer throughout the decision “tree” what we call the buying cycle.  This will also help with access to the “rest” and improve additional browse and search capabilities.  Next they will be investing in a more personalized shopping experience, but doesn't jump on every new technology as he is apprehensive about being able to operationalize the technology.  One of the barriers they have seen to adding this technology and others because of the limited amount of team members.  This is true of MVT testing for this team, they found that it turned out to be too complex to utilize in mass with their over 2-3 million visits per day, hence it has been dumped for A/B testing.  To support the brand promise and vision they invest in rich content which ensures information needed for purchases, ratings, reviews, and product availability for both online and in store purchases.  One of the key values they believe needs to be featured on the product detail page is the value to the customer for them it is the price in big red letters.  In order to be the most valuable and visited store assortment is essential, this is where the “Highlight the best.  Make it easy to find the rest”, he adds “if easy to find it will be easy to buy”.

Visual Examples 

Raul showed the audience screen shots of the site to further illustrate the points he has made throughout the presentation.  They use a POV approach; this is what they call the largest product placement on the screen, or the point of view.  The “site to store” function is featured across the site, not only highlighting ease to the customer but the ability to have products shipped for free.  He values consistency in navigation from page to page but explains that it is important to separate attributes by category.  Some interesting attributes that they use by category are: Shop by age for toys, shop by attributes for electronics, shop by ratings, and shop using the television product advisor.  Features like comparison shopping for customers, the top 50 in any category are highlighted and promoted, and savings all play a part in the walmart.com shopping experience.  In addition to the up and coming improvements they plan to improve checkout, localize, personalize, and creating an in store experience that is equaled online.