Online on Target, Retail Gets E-Savvy
It’s been a fulfilling holiday for online retailers, according to Andersen Consulting’s second annual e-fulfillment study, which found the online shopping experience dramatically improved over last year; this year, 92 percent of Andersen’s attempted holiday purchases over the Internet were successful, compared to last year, when fully a quarter of all attempted purchases failed.
As part of the study, Andersen attempted to place 563 orders for various goods at 97 different Web sites, with delivery scheduled for Atlanta, Chicago or San Francisco; 517 of the 563 orders placed were successfully fulfilled, according to the company.
Andersen’s study also found the gap between the service level at so-called “pure play” e-tailers’ sites and at bricks-and-mortar retailers’ sites is diminishing, and that approximately 40 percent of all sites continue to charge sales tax, despite a congressional moratorium on taxing Internet sales. (Andersen, a management and technology consulting organization, will change its corporate name to Accenture on Jan. 1, 2001.)
Retail Giants in Cyberspace
How well the holiday 2000 versions of the Kmart, Wal-Mart and Target Web sites performed won’t be fully known for some time yet, but the three discount retail giants did stake out different turf in cyberspace, based on different strategies, before the season got underway.
Minneapolis-based Target decided not to carry books or CDs at its Web site and limited its online wares to just 15,000 selections in a bid to focus on higher-margin products and avoid promotional wars. And Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart eliminated many of the under-$5, low-margin impulse items on its site, according to the Associated Press. Troy, Mich.-based Kmart’s Bluelight.com site, on the other hand, offered more than 300,000.
All three discounters did allow customers this holiday season to return online purchases to local bricks-and-mortar stores, and all three offered Internet software at their stores as well, with Bluelight signing up more than 5 million subscribers to a free Internet service and even offering Bluelight-branded PCs for just $450.
Macys.com Turns Up the Volume
Macys.com has turned up the volume in the retail battle in cyberspace, introducing audio to its Web site.
The Java-based technology Macy’s San Francisco-based e-tail arm is implementing is from Audiobase, based in Sausalito, Calif., which includes voice talent, recording and copywriting among its services. The result: A pleasant female voice issues from consumers’ computers who click on the Macy’s Web site, guiding them through online wedding planning, gift giving, personal shopping, bill paying, credit-card applying and the all-important checkout process, among other services.
What attracted Macy’s to Audiobase was the “simplicity of their approach,” said Kent Anderson, president of Macys.com. “It was easy to get up and operating and easy to maintain...
I was looking for something with low bandwidth...as a way to add texture to the Web site, make it a little more three dimensional, like the store I walk through every day.”
The future for Audiobase at Macys.com is to better integrate audio clips into the site’s marketing messages, Anderson said, using them to inform consumers about what’s new and what the key items are.
WASP Buzzes Mall
GeePS.com Inc., the location-sensitive Wireless Applications Service Provider (WASP) focused on bricks-and-mortar retailers and malls, has signed up 50 retailers at the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, N.Y., for its “Go Power Shopping” program, which delivers targeted, local shopping information, including news and promotions, to consumers via their cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) or other wireless Internet-enabled devices.
This holiday season, “mobile- messaging technologies have made the move from fiction to fact,” GeePS chief operating officer Arshad Masood said in a statement.
Participating retailers at the 1.85 million-square-foot mall just outside New York City include Filene’s, Eddie Bauer, Brooks Brothers, Lord & Taylor and Old Navy.
Zippix Pumps for PDAs
Larkspur, Calif.-based Zippix is now offering its ImagePump Viewer software for handheld personal digital assistants. ImagePump is designed to enable handheld-device shoppers to view high-resolution image detail “anytime, anywhere,” according to a company statement.
ImagePump will allow hand-held users to “zoom, pan and scroll images, enjoy the experience of seeing items in detail and make better purchasing decisions,” according to the statement.
