StORES Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 32) EXECUTIVE SUITE / COVER STORY SMALL SCREEN, BIG BUSINESS and reviews debuted in April. In the first month, more than 80,000 reviews were launched on QVC.com, making the retailer the largest client of Bazaarvoice almost overnight. QVC has shipped more than “We’ve done testimonials on air for nearly 21 one billion packages domesyears now, so we knew that product ratings and tically in the last 20 years. reviews would be meaningful to our customer base,” Myers says. “We didn’t advertise it or QVC.com achieved sales of promote it; we just put it out there and shopover $1 billion in 2007. pers instantly began sharing. It’s part of the inIn terms of revenues, QVC is teractive community.” the nation’s second-largest Blogs and live chat sessions also keep the diatelevision network, trailing log going among QVC shoppers, merchants, only CBS. hosts and product representatives. Leveraging Source: Broadcasting & Cable QVC’s multiple channels to connect with shopQVC introduces more than pers, the presenters often discuss questions that 1,600 products every week, came up in the course of the live chat during of which 250 are brand new their next “on air” appearance. to the QVC customer. QVC is one of the most technologically adOver the past 13 years, QVC vanced retailers in the world, yet executives shy and the Fashion Footwear away from spotlighting advances on that front. Charitable Foundation’s The company relies on systems that are largely “Shoes on Sale” event have home-grown and has layered on applications, sold more than a million including Endeca for search, Coremetrics for pairs of shoes and raised more than $24 million for web analytics, Scene 7 for rich media and Combreast cancer research and merce Hub for drop shipping. education. “We have lots of high-tech infrastructure and we operate in a digital environment, but it’s not Connecting with shoppers QVC’s worldwide warehouse because we have some great affinity for high ven as store-based retailers dabble in space is the equivalent of 85 football fields; its DCs can technology,” Rose says. “It’s because we’ve digital signage and video, Rose feels pack up to 300,000 packages found that there are certain technologies that that QVC and QVC.com retain a condaily. customers like. siderable advantage. “What we do is build “We don’t care to be cutting edge: we care trust through live television in a way that preQVC.com (U.S. site only) about being customer-driven,” he says. produced video can’t replicate. If all we were receives an average of five million unique visitors each Case in point: late last year a customer exwas a video retailer then all we would do is month. pressed difficulty in determining the size of a pre-produce everything and it would be like a handbag and how it would “fit” her height. 24-hour infomercial. The QVC representative monitoring that community forum “You only need to watch for a short time to know the callers presented the problem to Myers and his team: Within two are real people expressing real feelings and opinions,” he says. weeks they came up with a solution — silhouettes of models “That’s what people connect with.” of varying heights that provided shoppers with a better idea of It also goes a long way toward explaining the out-of-the-gate size and “fit.” success QVC.com has experienced since online product ratings The first major step toward achieving the ‘one brand’ vision was the launch of the live stream broadcast. Since it debuted more than five years ago, the number of shoppers watching QVC from their PCs has grown by double digits every year. “We did over $1 billion in sales just on QVC.com in 2006, which makes the site bigger than most of the top 400 online retailers,” Myers says. The online side is now leveraging QVC’s video archives and tapping into the social power of its shopper base to introduce new features intended to lift the retailer’s entertainment and education value and shift the emphasis from being a shopping website to an interactive shopping community. “Where else can you watch a product presentation given by the CEO or the designer or the entrepreneur who developed the product?” Myers asks. “The whole idea of being able to demonstrate how to operate the latest camcorder, for example, and giving shoppers the ability to watch a broadcast over again to pick up additional tips, is an incredibly powerful differentiator that can change the way people shop online.” QVC reaches approximately 96 percent of all U.S. cable homes and nearly 25.3 million satellite homes. E 32 STORES / SEPTEMBER 2007 WWW.STORES.ORG http://QVC.com http://QVC.com http://QVC.com http://QVC.com http://QVC.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.