Constant improvement is a mantra here at ShopLocal. To that end, the team knew there was room for improvement in our popularity ranking algorithm that we call “Wisdom of the Crowds” (WoC).
The current system for determining product popularity only counted those products that a shopper specifically clicked on. There are a number of product level clicks that are counted in terms of a shopper expressing interest such as a product detail page, a buy online click or an add to a shopping list click (which are cumulatively called Expressions of Interest). Not any more. The ShopLocal team has begun collecting and counting another key piece of consumer interest data – product rollovers.
By factoring in both product rollover data AND expression of interest data, the overall Wisdom of the Crowds ranking data is all the richer and accurate. This process of collecting and using rollover data for SmartCircular sites is underway and will complete over the next month or so for all clients, SC sites and versions of SmartCircular.
At a macro level, what we have learned so far about rollover data is:
- Rollovers are on average about 5x as common as Expressions Of Interest. This means by adding them to the Wisdom of the Crowds calculation, the overall popularity ranking data should become much more accurate and more truly reflect actual consumer interest.
- Rollover usage varies significantly by retailer. No surprise given all the variation in UI/UX out there within weekly ad sites. Also some sites don’t even use rollovers. Or on other sites, the rollovers are down played. In any case, we are now tracking them all so as to extract the most useful and complete set of consumer interest data as possible.
Illustrated here is a specific product level rollover that has been triggered by a user rolling over a predefined hotspot region that is overlaid on top of the circular page view images. When talking about rollover tracking, what is actual being tracked is the number of times, for a specific product, a rollover is triggered and left open for at least 2 seconds. If it meets that criteria, it would be counted as one (1) rollover for the product.
Here is a quick snapshot of some early returns from a 6 day sample set of data across 20 retailers:
- # of total product level exposures: 1,006,078,269
- # of total product rollovers: 25,620,887
- # of total product specific indicators of interests expressed: 4,532,430
- Overall ratio of interest divided by rollovers: 18%
- Rollover trigger rate (of overall total product exposure) : 2.55%
- Interest trigger rate (of overall total product exposure): 0.45%
- Total CTR (rollovers + interest): 3.00%
UPDATE 1/21: The ShopLocal analyst team just today cranked out a nice little additional stat on this topic that is worth sharing. The correlation of interest/exposure ranks compared to the rollover/exposure ranks, on average overall is 0.6636 Meaning that rollovers are for most sites a good measure of interest. Maybe think of it this way. This correlation helps prove that the items a user rolls over are likely the very ones that they end up taking other subsequent action at a later point in their site visit.
Free is the name of the game in today's marketing budget
The economy is in the crapper. Budgets are tight. We all get this news cast at us every day within the retail world. So now is the time to make the most of internal and essentially free marketing tools that nearly everyone has at their disposal to drive additional in-store traffic and sales. Often times these resources go overlooked and are vastly untapped due the common, low-tech nature of many of them. That however is the beauty of many of them. The price is right (free), the complexity is low (quick implementation) and there is still potential (as many of these ‘stones’ have not yet been turned over).
Below is an examination of a few techniques that I have personally witness retailers using over the last 4+ years that are designed to drive consumes cross-channel.
1. Web – To – Store
a. Search - Every single site has a keyword search box. However most sites only search items available online and ignore those items on sale OR for sale in the store. By simply integrating these data sets and providing a holistic view to search across all channels,. ShopKo for example does a great job of this on their dot com site where store based on-sale items are included in the search and browse results.
b. Email - Who doesn’t have a million plus house email list these days? It’s a well proven method of driving on-line sales. Consider however how email could easily be made to serve an additional master – the store. By simply including in-store promotional content within. Retailers such as JCP, OSH, Staples and others faithful use email to promote and drive people in-store. Just sign-up for their newsletters and you’ll get the picture immediately.
c. Store Locators – OK. This one is becoming a personal ‘soap box’ for me. It is however probably the most powerful method defined here. Online store locator visits = in store visits. It is the closest, most well established measurement proxy for how to track the effectiveness of the web driving in-store sales. As such, by including in-store messaging as to give an incentive for the user looking at the online store locator to actual take action and drive to a local store (via what is happening in store, what’s on sale in store, etc). Here is another good example of how this key asset can be best used.
2. Print – To – Web
a. Inserts / Circulars / Flyers / Catalogs – Print ads are not cheap to produce or distribute. Help keep print costs in check and add additional users by messaging that the same in-store promotional content is available online.
Here is the front cover of a recent JCP ad that has messaging that is cross promoting the online weekly ad site
b. Direct Mail – Same story as circulars above. Cross-promotional messaging is the key here.
c. Bill Inserts – Another variation for those retailers that run their own private label credit cards. This customer touch point is one more area that cross-promotion can naturally occur.
d. Newspaper Insertion Add-Ons – These come in many forms. Yellow sticky notes on the outside of the shrink rack bags that hold all the FSIs / inserts. Other actually branding the circular bag itself.
Highly branded shrink wrap bag that all the circular ads got stuffed into
Special call out on the front page of the newspaper drawing attention to in-store deals
3. Store – To – Web
a. Cash Register / Point of Sale (POS) Receipts – This is a technique that I first noticed at my local Target store. I just checked out and I looked down to notice that on the bottom of my receipt was a message that stated “No Newspaper? No Problem. The Target Weekly Ad Is Online At http://weeklyad.target.com“ Simple, useful information, high exposure and cost effective.
b. In-Store Signage / Bulletin Boards- Your local stores are a huge marketing machine. Making sure that all of the places where informational channel specific or cross-channel signage is displayed have the proper messaging in place to make shoppers aware of all the options, communication mediums/tools and channels you offer. Wal-Mart always has this huge glassed-in bulletin board by customer service that has the weekly ad pinned up. I see consumers actually getting out scrap paper and making notes of which items are of interest, the prices, etc. This is exactly the type of opportunity to drive these information requests to a better channel. Enter mobile site, kiosk standing right there with the ability to print, etc. Basically anything has to be better than making people do their store shopping research through a piece of glass.
c. Registries / In-Store Kiosks – Bringing the internet inside of a store is a brilliant idea, as it opens up a whole hoard of information to store shoppers. As more and more kiosks get deployed (Borders has made a big investment in this area), these store and web experiences get really blurred quickly. This is the exact reason that their needs to be good bi-directional messaging and promotion across both the online and in store channel. Registries are also another great example of how in store and online are all mixed up as users add items in store, edit the registry list on line and friends and family consume it back in store. Talk about a system that is ripe for cross-channel promotion.
d. Ad Racks – Walgreens is the retailer that comes to mind here. Every time I go in store, the first thing that I literally run into is a large chrome wire rack that has a stack of paper circular ads stuffed in it. However more times than not, the rack is empty. What if however there was a sign on this rack that said, “Go online to our mobile WAP site to find out the deals in our local store at http://m.walgreens.com” It would solve the out-of-stock issue, be ‘greener’, always up-to-date and drive awareness of a WAP site.
e. Check-Out Point Of Sale (POS) Terminal Screens – Whole Foods has really fancy, large LCD monitors that you are suppose to watch when you check out. There are of course the details of what you are buying but in addition there are tons of display ads and messaging that wrap around the transaction area of the screen. Again I see an opportunity here to drive cross-channel messaging and behavior by promoting that consumers can figure out what is on sale in that specific local store BEFORE they leave their house by going online to the weekly ad.
Whole Foods POS screen that has almost half the screen real estate being used to promote products in store
4. Mobile – To – Web
a. SMS Text Alerts / Reminders – Urban Outfitters has a pretty simple and cool mobile messaging effort that send periodic updates to a house file of mobile numbers that their customers have entrusted the retailer with. How about including in the bottom of each message a simple & short URL (like a www.tinyurl.com redirect) that links back to a mobile compliant site that has in-store content, events and promotions? That would be a perfect cross-channel promotional opportunity.
5. Phone – To – Web
a. Call Center: Recorded Messages - How many times have I been on hold hearing the same endless loop of music and messages? Too many to recount, but each time I get lost in phone tree hell, I always think about what a lost opportunity to ‘talk’ to a customer. The retailer has a very captive audience that it can easily expose to any ideas or messages it wants. Smart sellers should take advantage of this and provide teaser content to help build future demand for a future web or store visit. Tell the users what is on sale, for sale or being promoted. Keep fueling the demand fire.
b. Call Center: Catalog / Circular Requests – Mailing a physical circular ad or catalog to a customer is expensive and takes forever. Some cost conscience retailers are instead offering to email a virtual copy of the ad or catalog to the customer. This is a Win-Win. Cheaper for the retailer and faster delivery for the customer.
Am I missing other promotional methods? Have experience using any of these you would like to share? Are even better, results? Leave a comment and let’s discuss.
Multi-channel shoppers are not to be ignored. After all, they spend hundreds of dollars more per year and shop more frequently than shoppers who routinely shop only a single channel. With consumer adoption of Internet technology, multi-channel marketing is a “must-have” capability.
Research is telling you something:
- Most online consumers research online before they buy in the store. 92% of consumers research products online. (Source: Simultaneous Media Usage Survey, December 2006)
- In-store sales that result from online research are growing faster than online sales. Offline sales influenced by online research promise to grow at an annual rate of 12% through 2011, while online sales will begin to plateau in the next few years. (Source: JupiterResearch, US Online Retail Forecast 2006-2011)
- In-store sales not affected by online research are on the decline. Offline sales not influenced by the Web will decrease by 24% by 2009. (Source: Forrester Research, The Web’s Impact on In-Store Sales: US Cross-Channel Sales Forecast, 2006-2012)
- Multi-channel shoppers prefer to buy in the store. A recent survey indicates that multi-channel shoppers purchase in the store after researching online for instant gratification and to avoid shipping costs. (Source: Consumer Technographics Q3 2005 North American Survey)
- Multi-channel shopping is quickly becoming mainstream among consumers in all age groups. More than half of online Gen Yers, Gen Xers, and Younger Boomers are engaging in online research behavior. (Source: Forrester Research, Best Practices in Multi-Channel Retail 2006)
- You can’t afford to focus on a single retail channel any more. Although online commerce continues to grow, in-store sales still represent 95% of retail sales. (Source: Forrester Research, US eCommerce: Five-Year Forecast, October 2006 )
- Multi-channel shoppers spend more than single-channel shoppers. For every $1 spent online, the Internet influences consumers to spend another $6 in stores. (Source: JupiterMedia, 2004)
- Multi-channel shoppers spend more than single-channel shoppers, Part 2. A study by McKinsey & Company found that, on average, retail customers using multiple channels spent about 20% to 30% more than customers using a single channel.
- Major retailers are already feeling the influence of multi-channel shopping. A study by JC Penney found that its customers who use all three channels (store, catalog, and the Web) spent $887 per year compared with $150, $195, and $201 spent by customers who only use the Web, store, and catalog, respectively.
- Multi-channel shoppers are not going away. A study by DoubleClick found that 65% of consumers are multi-channel shoppers and their size was increasing at about 16%.
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