Retailing Synergy Through Multiple Sales Channels: Two Success Stories

Online sales are growing for small businesses. But that doesn't mean they should ignore their offline efforts. Indeed, by using metrics provided from online sites, retailers can improve their both sales and customer service at their brick-and-mortar sites.

“At the end of the day, the bottom line profit from e-commerce isn’t just from revenue generation,” says Edward P. Foy, Jr., chief executive office of eFashionSolutions, a company manages e-commerce sites for specialty retailers like Baby Phat, House of Dereon, and Orange County Choppers. “Only one percent to six percent of all sales today are online, but the relevancy of the information that you can get online can help the profitability of your online and offline operations alike."

Knowledge is power, and by using the tools that are available to measure online success can remove the guesswork for all aspects of running a business. Data can help you increase operational efficiencies and profit with targeted media buying, more efficient distribution, and insight that helps bring the right products and services to market.

"That information provides you with an edge in the marketplace,” says Foy.

From experience, eFashionSolutions, which helps fashion designers with Web site design and management, has found that online surveys help determine if a retailer is spending adverting dollars in the right place. The information garnered from online surveys, e-commerce sales, and returns data can help a retailer determine the items customers want as well as where customers are geographically, the latter can help with proper merchandising at physical locations.In managing the online site for JLO by Jennifer Lopez, eFashionSolutions at first attempted a multimillion-dollar media blitz, but an online survey later showed that the media used weren’t effectively reaching the targeted customers. E-mail blasts have been much less costly and much more effective, according to Foy.

“Today’s customer is smart and connected,” Foy says. “They have higher expectations for what they expect from [retailers]. Guesswork is in the past. By bringing data to the forefront, we can learn what the customer expects from us today and in the future.”

By digging deep into data, companies can locate and fix problems, Foy says, pointing to an example of a retailer with an unacceptable return rate. However, deeper examination of the issue found that 90 percent of the returns were coming on items from a single factory.

“You only have one shot to make a first impression,” Foy says.

Multiple Online ChannelsWhile most think of “different channels” as brick-and-mortar, telephone sales, and online purchases, successful online-only merchants have different e-commerce channels as well, according to Ty Simpson, owner and operator of Ty’s Toy Box, an online retailer that’s grown to a multimillion-dollar operation in less than three years.

Ty’s started selling through eBay, but that method is becoming more dominated by “big box” retail chains and is a more expensive option than running one’s own site, says Simpson, who chose to mix a variety of online channels to reach the market: hosted--which includes eBay, Overstock.com, Shopzilla, ubid, and Froogle--and its own e-commerce platform.

But for those hosted options to work alongside a company’s own e-commerce site, it’s important for the customer to have the same checkout experience regardless of which site he initially enters by, Simpson says. EBay (21.8 percent), Yahoo! (17.3 percent) and Google (15.8 percent) are the top sites visited before a consumer goes to Ty’s Toy Box.

So Ty’s Toy Box chose an e-commerce platform from Truition that takes the consumer from any of the hosted sites directly to a customized Ty’s Toy Box home page. There are a handful of different Ty’s Toy Box home pages a user might come to, all depending on the brand of toy a shopper is interested in, Simpson says. One thing he has learned: “Consumers shop by brand,” he says.

Each of these “microsites,” as Simpson calls them, offers items by brand category, such as Strawberry Shortcake or Wiggles. At checkout, each has the same look and feel as the Ty’s Toy Box site. And any user logging on to check order status or get customer service will get the same look-and-feel regardless of which microsite they enter by.Citing a Forrester Research study, Simpson says that product placement and promotion on a company’s home page is the top method (92 percent) for turning browsers into buyers. Use of measurements and analytics is second (84 percent), while site redesign (82 percent) was third.

“Consumers expect a shopping standard,” Simpson says, adding that he has learned by analyzing the various channels that shipping costs are the top reason for shopping card abandonment. The "sticker shock" of such costs result in more than half of all transactions that consumers don’t complete.

Ty’s also pays for premium listings with search engines, Simpson says. “Search engine itemization is critical. We were an early adopter of paid search. And we pay for performance [actual sales], not just clicks.”

Another critical factor is offering multiple payment options. So Ty’s Toy Box recently added a “bill me later” feature. It was an option that many of the company’s shoppers requested, Simpson says.