STORES Magazine - March 2009 - (Page 44)

NUTS AND BOLTS / ONLINE MARKETING best equipment in his area of interest, but not on a tent for a weekend outing. Sun & Ski tapped Baynote Product Recommendations to optimize the recommendation end of the site, which boasts 15,000 SKUs from 100 brands. Baynote collects data on similar shopAdaptive solution helps pers and then tailors the recommendaSun & Ski custom-fit tions based on their search behaviors. “Allowing the site to dynamically and online recommendations automatically adapt its links and strucBY SANDY SMITH ture is a much more scalable approach,” says Scott Brave, Baynote’s chief techhere’s no one better to give nology officer. “You’ll find some webadvice to would-be advensites coming up with homegrown algoturers than those who are rithms to do this, such as ‘people who also passionate about skiviewed this also viewed that’ or ‘people ing, camping or hiking. That’s why who bought this also bought that.’ Sun & Ski Sports employs sales “While they do offer some help, algoassociates who also happen to be rithms based on views and clicks alone experts in adventure. can end up being pretty random. If it’s purchase-based, it’s more accurate, but It works easily enough in the retailer’s very limiting. You want recommenda17 stores, but transferring that same tions to tap into the entire shopping level of knowledge to an online shopprocess and really help a person think ping experience has been an adventure through their purchase,” says Brave. all its own. Because of the seasonality of Shortly after implementing the proits product line, it was extremely diffigram in fall 2007, Sun & Ski saw an imcult to offer suggestions mediate 59 percent lift in the based on previous pur- Sun & Ski reported average order on its website, chases. Seasonality also an immediate and that figure held steady at can alter a shopper’s level 59% increase 36 percent through the holiof interest. A passionate in the average day shopping season, accyclist may be willing to website order cording to Scott Blair, Sun & spend top dollar for the Ski’s director of e-commerce. Seasonal Help An observer tag is deployed on all the web pages, which catalogs everything that users do on the site. All of the information is anonymous, with no IP address or specific demographic information collected. “We watch for key behaviors: what users search for, what links they click,” Brave says. “We don’t just watch whether they went to the pages and what they bought; that’s not enough. Did they scroll through the whole page? Did they add it to their cart? And we’re looking for connections between products and user interests. We do that for the thousands of users and we discover the patterns. “When a new person comes to the site and starts exhibiting behaviors that we recognize, we can immediately connect them up with like-minded peers who have shared the same interest and recommend what they ultimately found of value,” he says. More flexibility Blair investigated a number of potential solutions, “but the big difference I saw with Baynote … was the ability to manage those recommendations to a certain degree.” For instance, if Sun & Ski adds a new product, “we can give it a bump for a little while to get it started. If we don’t like how a product recommendation is working, we can blacklist it. If someone’s looking at a jacket and we have a black pant that will work across the whole line, we may establish that as a recommendation for all the jackets. “It really offered us a lot of flexibility inside the system that we can manage ourselves,” he says. At Sun & Ski, the aim is to use the information to identify trends early in each of the distinct adventure seasons. “It’s hard to know what’s going to be the hot item for the season,” Blair says, “but if we can spot a trend that’s happening early, it may give opportunities to go back to the vendor and hit some home runs out of it.” StORES Sandy Smith is a Nashville, Tenn.based freelance writer. WWW.STORES.ORG T 44 STORES / MARCH 2009 http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - March 2009

STORES Magazine - March 2009 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Movers and Spenders What Shoppers Think Take Your Laundry Online 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Luxury for Less Q & A CONCEPT2WATCH Checkout Management Online Entrepreneurs Sustainability POS Online Strategy Online Scheduling SaaS Online Marketing Merchandise Security PCI Compliance LPinformation Supplier Directory Exception Reporting Industry Perspective Theft Research LOEB Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar End Cap

STORES Magazine - March 2009

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