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One of the most stressful shopping experiences can be gift-buying. Many gift-givers fret over finding the right gift and then worry over presentation. When you add remote shopping to the mix, the stress level goes up even higher as shoppers then can worry about timeliness of delivery. Thus are the challenges of flowers, gifts and jewelry sites complicated beyond the challenges that other online retailers face.
Successful online flowers, gifts and jewelry sites leverage existing brands！or find ways to play off of consumers' confidence in other ways. 1-800-Flowers.com and Hallmark.com have built online sales through the power of their brands. Hallmark, for instance, introduced flowers to its web site a year after launch and has created a blooming flower business in spite of not being known as a flower seller in the offline world. "They can be late to the game in selling flowers and be a major player just because of who they are," says Neil Stern, consultant with McMillan/Doolittle. "Their brand extension into floral is a great example of what you can do online that you can't easily do in stores."
1-800-Flowers long ago took its well-known brand！one of the first to exploit the power of long-distance, toll-free calling！online. Today, it's a well established e-retailer and so it's taking its operation to the next level by harnessing the power of the Internet to communicate with customers. Unlike most retailers who are simply using e-mail to promote products, 1-800-Flowers is using its e-mail database to ask customers what the company should promote. Asking customers' opinions resulted in a hit last Valentine's Day on a promotion that company staff had low expectations for, and the jettisoning of another promotion that the staff was enthusiastically behind. "The web is more to us than an online catalog or a way for us to reduce operational costs," says president Chris McCann. "It's a key way for us to establish a relationship with our customers and get them involved." That, in turn, makes the customer more confident about shopping at 1-800-Flowers.com.
Zales Jewelers is another example of the power of a brand. Its Zales.com replicates the store experience closely. "Zales knows its Middle America consumer well and everything in the web site reflects that understanding," says Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president of consultants Retail Forward Inc.
Other sites in this category use their brand power, but then build on it with their web sites. YankeeCandle.com, for one, offers candles with custom messages and presentation by employing an easy-to-use, fast-loading Flash-based customization process. The custom-candle feature is one example of YankeeCandle.com's focus on usability that has resulted in a sale completion rate that jumped to 75% of all shopping carts started from 58% and sales growth of 27% in this year's second half vs. last year. It's also an example of easing a process that is difficult to execute in stores.
1-800-Flowers
Where customers help manages
Lots of retailers say they're customer-centric, but 1-800-Flowers.com takes it to another level. The multi-channel flower and gift company uses the web not just to sell product or gain customer information, but increasingly, to engage customers in the very management of its business, says president Chris McCann.
"Strategically, the web is more to us than an online catalog or a way for us to reduce operational costs. It's a key way for us to establish a relationship with our customers and get them involved," says McCann.
Since expanding into non-floral gifts over the past several years, 1-800-Flowers.com's sales and repeat customer rate have expanded, too. Repeat customer rate has grown from 35% to 58% while 50% of sales are in the non-floral category. McCann says listening to customers helped point the company down that expansion road, and in the last few years, it's fine-tuned its listening further, sometimes to dramatic effect.
Several months before last Valentine's Day, for example, 1-800-Flowers.com assembled draft presentations of more than a dozen floral and non-floral prospects for holiday promotion and e-mailed them to tens of thousands of customers asking for their opinion. The feedback！which it could never have garnered without the web！sparked changes in promotional plans when response to one item picked by staff as a winner proved "underwhelming," says McCann, while another for which the company had lower expectations was a hit.
"That became our top-promoted item for the holiday," says McCann, adding that the web helps turn customers into merchandisers. In another listening exercise, the web marketing team talks to phone customers weekly to analyze the navigational flow of phone transactions in much the same way they analyze the web site clickstream！with an eye toward improving the interaction.
With expansion has come the challenge of effectively presenting a greater number of products online, a task Forrester Research Inc. analyst Carrie Johnson calls a potential "technical nightmare." But not on 1-800-Flowers.com, which she says understands how much space on each page to devote to describing the product at hand versus exposing the rest of the product catalog through text links. "It is hard to manage that many SKUs and tag them with the appropriate category label," she adds. "That behind-the-scenes work ultimately comes through in a very easy, clean interface. They've struck a good balance between being cluttered and useful, a very difficult thing to do." 1-800-Flowers.com
Date
1996
Unique Visitors (monthly)
1,865,000*
Sales (annual)
$265,000,000
Site Design
Fry
CRM
in-house/Oracle/SAS
Affiliate Management
LinkShare
Fulfillment
BloomLink
Order Management
in-house
Web Analytics
FireClick
Payment Processor
Paymentech
Content Management
in-house
E-Mail Management
Kana
Site Search
Endeca
Search Engine Management
in-house
Content Delivery Network
Akamai
*As reported by comScore Networks Inc.
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Diamond.com
Upscale and online
Talk about vertical integration: jewelry retailer Diamond.com draws a line of ownership that reaches back almost into the De Beers mines. In addition to a large stake under private ownership, Diamond.com's parent company, Odimo Inc., is one-third owned by The Steinmetz Diamond Group, which cuts, polishes and distributes about 70% of the diamonds mined by De Beers.
That puts Diamond.com close to the nucleus of the diamond industry. And gives it ready access to a broad selection of GIA-certified diamonds！the only kind it sells！while leveraging the powerful marketing efforts of both Steinmetz and De Beers. That puts added sparkle on its own online efforts, says Michael Dell'Arciprete, chief marketing officer.
For example, Dell'Arciprete says, Diamond.com was among the first online jewelers to launch collateral developed by De Beers for its right-hand diamond campaign. "We had it up in mid-October, while most retailers didn't launch it until November," he says. The campaign, which encourages women to purchase their own diamonds in an empowerment theme, dovetails with Diamond.com's marketing plans. Unlike online competitors that prioritize the male engagement ring customer in the hope he'll return for subsequent gifts, or the woman buying on her own but at a lower price point, Diamond.com is after both. For men seeking an engagement ring, there's help in designing a ring online; while women shopping on their own are encouraged to upgrade to fine jewelry.
In fact, 62% of Diamond.com's customers are women. "We've drawn in the female customer with the right-hand diamond ring and a wider selection of fine jewelry and watches," adds Dell'Arciprete. "Repeat purchase potential with women is much higher."
A relative latecomer to the web, Diamond.com launched in 2000. It's the cornerstone of a broader luxury brand on the web, with the addition in 2001 of WorldofWatches.com and the acquisition and relaunch of luxury retailer Ashford.com this year.
Diamond.com is using some of the new best practices common among e-retail's leaders but not widely used in the luxury goods segment; such as directing shoppers who come to the site from a search term directly to the product page rather than to the home page. But the online retailer also knows when to stay with a traditional approach: for example, cross-sells, offered on 40% of products, are selected not by collaborative filtering technology but by merchandisers.
"They are trying to think about luxury products online in a way that will make sense for consumers," says Jupiter research analyst Patti Freeman Evans. Diamond.com
Date
2000
Unique Visitors (monthly)
1,400,000
Sales (annual)
$50,000,000
Site Design
in-house
CRM
in-house/@Once
Affiliate Management
BeFree
Fulfillment
in-house
Order Management
Ecometry/in-house
Web Analytics
Coremetrics
Payment Processor
Paymentech
Content Management
in-house
E-Mail Management
fill in at once
Site Search
Endeca
Search Engine Management
Performics Back to Top
Hallmark.com
A card-carrying flower site
With a powerful brand in gifts and greeting cards, Hallmark Cards Inc. decided a few years ago to add flowers to its retail mix. But selling perishable products in its national chain of Hallmark Gold Crown Stores！now numbering 4,300！didn't make economic or logistical sense. "We felt that flowers made a lot of sense for us," says Jay Dittmann, vice president of consumer one-to-one marketing for Hallmark.com. "But we also felt that if we're going to be in the flower business, it would be easier in the direct business. Our ability to display products, explain features and promote our lines just works better online."
The company introduced flowers to Hallmark.com in 2000, a year after the web site launched with cards and gifts. Hallmark is privately held and doesn't release financial numbers, but Dittmann notes that cards, gifts and flowers sell well when offered in combinations. "We've had good success when adding gifts or cards to flower bouquets, and we're looking to do more of that," he says.
Neil Stern, a principal with retail consultants McMillan/Doolittle, says Hallmark has succeeded quickly in extending its brand to cover the floral market on the web. "Their brand extension into floral is a great example of what you can do online that you can't easily do in stores," he says.
It's also an example of how a new venture backed by capital and a strong brand can do things right from the start, he adds. "They can be late to the game in selling flowers, and be a major player just because of who they are," he says.
But Hallmark didn't rely only on its brand, which has been around since the late founder Joyce C. Hall and his brothers began peddling postcards in Kansas City, Mo., in the early 1900s. Before going live with online floral sales, Hallmark established a distribution center in Memphis, creating a centrally located fulfillment and shipping center for overnight delivery throughout the U.S. of fresh-cut flowers sourced from South America, Europe and the U. S. Separate orders of gifts and cards are shipped from a network of other distribution centers. In addition, to satisfy requests for same-day delivery, Hallmark works with a network of florist partners.
It also offers a "Celebrations and Ideas" section to suggest cards and gifts for special occasions. And in a special service that helps keep traffic steady at its web site, it offers Hallmark e-cards at no charge. "The e-cards drive traffic to our site, and we use that traffic to promote our other products," Dittmann says. m Hallmark.com
Date
1996
Unique Visitors (monthly)
8,000,000
Site Design
in-house
CRM
in-house
Affiliate Management
LinkShare
Fulfillment
Yantra
Order Management
Yantra
Payment Processor
NA
Content Management
in-house
E-Mail Management
in-house
Site Search
NA
Search Engine Management
in-house
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PersonalCreations.com
This time, it`s personal
Give a gift and chances are you'll bring a smile to the recipient's face ！ personalize it, and you'll get a bigger smile. "That's what our customers tell us," says Geoff Smith, president of e-commerce and new business development at Personal-Creations.com. "The fact that you've gone that extra step to personalizing the gift makes people feel really special."
It's a sentiment that drives sales at Personal Creations, which sells！and will personalize with names, messages and photos of the giver's choice！a broad range of toys, collectibles, apparel and home accessories at prices set to entice even frequent gift buyers. Smith notes that while the average gift sells for under $25, options for personalized gifts range from $9 to $150. The company launched as a catalog in 1989, and it supplies personalized gifts to other companies including Toys R Us Inc. But the e-commerce b2c arm is its fastest growing segment, and web sales now represent 52% of sales.
The web site, launched in 1996, has brought extra efficiency to operations. The product makes perfect use of the medium of the web because it requires shoppers to type in the name to be personalized or the message added to the gift themselves when they place their order online, Smith says. That reduces the possibility of errors, for though the call center reps are well trained in taking customer information, there is more than one way to spell many names.
While customers can also contact the call center to walk through their gift needs and place an order, the web site does an admirable job of guiding the online shopper through the options with a clean, uncluttered interface and site search process that mirrors how the buyers of personalized gifts shop for products. A left-hand list of text links lets shoppers search by specific occasions or by gift recipient. Subcategories under the links then let shoppers see a selection of gifts for a particular occasion according to recipient, or gifts for a recipient on a particular occasion. Sizeable thumbnails in each set of search results quickly pull up even larger views providing considerable product detail.
PersonalCreations.com doesn't just use the web to transact sales; it harnesses its real-time customer data to re-merchandise on the fly. When a wedding album on the home page failed to attract the expected customer attention, for example, Smith put another product, already doing well on a page deeper in the site, in its place. "My colleagues in the catalog business have to wait and hope," says Smith, "but on the web site, we can react right away." PersonalCreations.com
Date
1996
Unique Visitors (monthly)
386,000*
Sales (annual)
$30,000,000
Site Design
Fry
CRM
Ecometry
Affiliate Management
LinkShare
Fulfillment
Ecometry/in-house
Order Management
Ecometry
Web Analytics
WebTrends
Payment Processor
Paymentech
Content Management
Ecometry/Fry
E-Mail Management
Vertical Response
Site Search
Microsoft Commerce Server 2002
Search Engine Management
in-house
*As reported by comScore Networks Inc.
YankeeCandle
Lighting the way to customization
One of the great promises of online retailing is the vaunted "market of one." With the right technology, the thinking goes, retailers can create products that appeal to the individual. While many sites have tried to create that market, few have succeeded. One that has is YankeeCandle.com.
Yankee Candle is starting simply, with a custom candle feature. But by aggregating demand at the web site and offering a quick and easy way to create a personalized candle, Yankee Candle creates an experience that shoppers can't easily have in other channels. "This is one of the best custom applications I've seen online," says Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president of consultants Retail Forward Inc. "They are using the Internet in a way the Internet was designed to be used."
Using Macromedia Inc.'s Flash platform, Yankee Candle allows customers to try out different configurations of candles and alter components without having to start over. Yankee Candle stressed with designer Molecular Inc. it wanted the feature to be easy to use, says Dennis Shockro, vice president of information systems. "The key thing at our site is usability," he says. "We tested the design with people internally and externally."
Not only has the feature resulted in increased custom-candle sales, it also has decreased customer service calls from 90% of custom candle buyers who used the previous static system to 25% today, allowing Yankee Candle to re-deploy staff and eliminate backlogs of phone calls and spillovers to backup call centers.
The emphasis on usability also had other effects. For instance, YankeeCandle.com made its shopping cart easier to use and displays cart contents at all times a customer is on the site. The result was a sale completion rate that jumped from 58% of all shopping carts to 75%, Shockro says. Preliminary performance tests also show YankeeCandle.com delivers 100% uptime and transaction times in the top 10 of retail sites, Shockro says. The result: sales are up 27% from YankeeCandle.com's redesign in May to now versus virtually no growth in the prior year.
Whitfield notes that Yankee Candle has also done an excellent job of site organization. "They have thought of all the ways consumers approach the category and designed the site around that," she says. "If you use candles for decorating you can sort by color. If you want scents, you can sort by fragrance."
With steady growth and improvements on the web, Yankee Candle is focusing on creating the same shopping experience across channels. "If the product is not in the store but you can send customers to where it is available, whether that's the web site or the catalog, they'll keep coming back," Shockro says. m YankeeCandle.com
Date
1998
Unique Visitors (monthly)
1,000,000
Site Design
Molecular/in-house
CRM
in-house
Affiliate Management
Be Free
Fulfillment
UPS
Order Management
Ecometry
Web Analytics
WebTrends
Payment Processor
First Data
E-Mail Management
DoubleClick
Site Search
Oracle?s Intermedia
Zales.com
Educating and merchandising
Having the most technologically advanced site with the fastest connection speeds is not always the best for an Internet retailer. Take Zales.com, the online operation of jewelry chain Zale Corp. Sometimes Zales customers need to take a little longer to get to the products they want, but often the travel time can be beneficial.
"This site is not real tricky and it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles," says Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president of consultants Retail Forward Inc. "But it is a non-threatening site that is helpful to customers who are new to buying jewelry."
The site is geared primarily to men who are buying jewelry for wives, girlfriends and fiancees and it assumes the men need help finding the right gift. It even has a "hints" feature where potential brides and other women can register items they like so buyers can check to make sure what they're purchasing will be well received.
While Whitfield notes that the Zales site is not the fastest in getting consumers right to where they want to be, that is not always bad. "A lot of sites let you tell them exactly what you want then take you to those products," she says. "But a lot of
Zales' customers may be unsure of what they want, so the site asks a lot of questions, then slowly narrows down the choices." In the process of navigating the site to find products, the customer can learn more about jewelry and reflect better on what he or she really wants.
The site also has educational content about jewelry, such as sections that explain the differences in diamond cuts, color and carat size, or that tell customers how pearls are made and valued.
At the same time, images of products are clear and give the customers a good idea of what the potential purchases really look like. "The pictures are sharp and they give good details on items like earrings where you need to see them up close," says Whitfield.
The web site is also well integrated with Zales' other sales channels as it has a store locator and Zales' catalogs emphasize that a larger product selection can be found on the web site. Zales also allows store return of merchandise purchased online.
Zales.com's customer base is similar to that of its retail stores！middle-income consumers accustomed to shopping in suburban malls. "Zales is competitively priced, but it's not a discounter and it's not a high-end jeweler," Whitfield says. "It knows its Middle American consumer well and everything in the web site reflects that understanding." Zales.com
Date
1998
Unique Visitors (monthly)
303,000*
Site Design
NA
CRM
E.piphany
Affiliate Management
NA
Fulfillment
NA
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