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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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October 16, 2000 |
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The Complete Package
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With the exception of $10,000 offerings from a New York company that caters to celebrities, customized fragrances aren't available in the offline world. Reflect .com--with perfumes staring around $40--is committed to the proposition that gift shopping on the Web must offer unique products and services, not just simplicity and speed. "The convenience factor is an overblown one, and one that is easily competed with," says Jonathan Grayson, VP of engineering at Reflect.com. "The real selling point of the Web is the benefit of matching personal information so you can be treated as an individual by experts in the field. We're about to enter the next phase of Web retailing, where convenience isn't enough, and this Christmas is the beginning of it."
Reflect.com customers fill out a detailed questionnaire online for the company to create a customized fragrance, which includes choosing the packaging and labeling along with the product itself. But the company knows that phone support--what it calls Concierge service--is crucial. "Web-site functionality is great, but Concierge is the clincher," Grayson says. "You're talking to experts in the field and they treat you as an individual."
In fact, "concierge" is what Proxicom's Connell calls the fourth "C" that Web merchants need to add to their offering--after content, community, and commerce. "You have to provide that extra level of service, which can include gift registries, gift certificates, E-mail notifications about products you want, and loyalty incentives," she says. "You have to offer the data that a good sales associate would: Do you have this product? How long will it take? It's an expensive challenge to offer that value, and many E-commerce sites may not get there quickly."
Online gift certificates offer an illustration of how far Web sites still have to go. In a recent survey of 9,400 online shoppers conducted by BizRate.com for CyberSource Inc., 77% of shoppers say they don't purchase gift certificates from Web sites, and only 30% say that online certificate offerings are satisfactory. Complaints range from the inability to redeem a Web gift certificate in a physical store (and vice versa) to the plain-text design of certificates that often resemble an E-mail--hardly the look and feel of a special holiday gift.
"Making the certificate graphical seems so simple and obvious, but in the rush to offer certificates, many sites just didn't build that in," says Don Endres, VP of Internet stored-value programs at CyberSource. Companies including Nike, cookware E-retailer Tavolo, and Ace Hardware's OurHouse.com are using CyberSource's stored-value platform to create online gift certificates.
Sears.com isn't ready to accept regular store-bought gift certificates on its Web site this holiday season, but it is very aware of perhaps the No. 1 imperative for brick-and-mortar retailers selling online: the integration of multiple channels. Sears offers the ability to redeem an online gift certificate in the physical store, and it has taken many steps in the past year to keep its online brand consistent with its ubiquitous real-world presence. "We don't look at online as a separate business," says Dennis Honan, Sears.com's VP and general manager.
In August, Sears brought 850 store managers to corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., to teach them about Sears.com. That included a program on training their own sales clerks how to teach customers to use the Web site, whether via in-store kiosks or at home. Honan says 10% of Sears' big-ticket appliance sales are influenced by Web-site research or purchased online, and Sears sells 38% of the major appliances bought in the United States, easily making it the market-share leader.
The phenomenon of browse-online-but-buy-in-the-store is considered the "dirty little secret" of E-commerce, but it's one that Sears and other brick-and-mortar retailers wholeheartedly embrace. "Because this channel is still so new, it's very hard to predict customers' channel preferences," Honan says. "We want to make it easy for them to buy the way they're most comfortable. When our sales associates see customers coming in with Web printouts, they love it. It makes for a more informed customer."
Sears also made some IT moves in the past year for a more personalized Web site, moving its E-commerce platform for appliances from IBM's Net.Commerce to BroadVision Inc.'s One-to-One Marketing, seen as strong in personalizing and customizing for individual buyers. The BroadVision application runs on Sun Microsystems Web servers and links to Sears' back-end systems for credit, inventory control, accounting, and replenishment. That lets Sears, in some cases, ship a Web-ordered product from a regional distribution center closer to the buyer's home. Sears.com offers in-store returns of Web-bought items, gift registries, gift wrapping, and Web pricing consistent with newspaper-advertised promotions.
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Photograph of Jonathan Grayson by Paul Harris
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