Canadian Retailer - Store 2013 - 36

STORE 2013 ERA AWARDS

E-COMMERCE LARGE-SIZE RETAILER

DO IT YOURSELF, ONLINE

Home improvement retailer enjoys
digital success story
CONSUMERS crave a differentiated experience
from the retailers that they shop from. They
want ease and convenience, whether they’re in
your bricks and mortar locations or online. And,
they want their shopping experiences with their
favourite retailers to be seamless across every
channel that they interact with them through.
Realizing this, in October last year, Lowe's
Canada launched Lowes.ca—its first foray into
the e-commerce channel in Canada. It was also
recognition by the company that there were
some improvements to be made to their offering
to really satisfy the desires of its consumers.
“We understood that our website was one of
our biggest gaps as we continue to expand in
Canada,” says Stephen Taylor, vice-president,
merchandising and store support at Lowe's Canada. “That gap is now closed, and we’re having
success in our efforts to better meet our customers’ emerging needs.”

Making the online experience easy with more than 50,000 skus.

Online success

36 |

A complete effort

Lowe's launched its e-commerce site in early October 2012
after nine months of preparation to ensure that all kinks and
bugs were worked out of the system.
The company has experienced early success with its e-commerce initiative posting sales ahead of projections and more
than 95 per cent growth in unique visits to the site since it was
launched. Just as importantly, it has seen increased sales in markets that it has traditionally underserved with close to 10 per cent
of total sales on the site coming from its non-trade zone areas.
At least part of this success comes from the optimization of
the site and enhancement of its functionality and usability. Prior to launching Lowes.ca as a transactional website, customers
complained about challenges related to navigation and search
capabilities. With the new site, the company is able to offer a top
level navigation coupled with lower level categories. It also created
faceted navigation offering users the ability to use attributes and
refinements to narrow down product selection. This allows customers to locate products faster resulting in increased conversion.
Alongside the launch of e-commerce, Lowe’s Canada also
launched its social communities in late November 2012. Though
the company is admittedly a late arrival to the social network
game, the brand has quickly grown to 89,000 Facebook likes
and 30,000 Twitter followers in a mere eight months.

The success that Lowe's has enjoyed, says
Taylor, is the result of a company-wide effort to
ensure that every facet of operations was considered when developing the e-commerce site.
“This could only have been possible with the
efforts of all our employees; from the stores to the
front office, many processes had to be changed
and systems needed to be integrated for this project to be successful. We had a dedicated team,
their focus on working on all sides of the business was important in getting this launched.”
Now with 35 store locations in 4 provinces,
Lowe's is well positioned to ramp up its e-commerce efforts and omnichannel experience for
its customers—a trend that Taylor believes will
only become more pervasive.
“It will continue to be critically important for
us to offer our customers a compelling, customer-focused website that's integrated into our
core business,” he says. “Customers want to see
a product catalogue, they want to buy online,
they want to shop in their preferred way while
enjoying a consistent Lowe’s experience.”

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Canadian Retailer - Store 2013

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