The Homa Files

TakeAway: Many companies struggle to connect the e-commerce sites of their various brands, preferring a verticalization strategy instead.

Gap Inc. is an exception, having made it easy for customers to move between its various sites.

As a result, traffic for each site has increased, and so has sales.

* * * * *

Excerpted from Advertising Age, “What Media Companies Can Learn From The Gap,” by Zuobin He, September 28, 2010

For the past three years, Gap’s online commerce has been thriving despite a deep worldwide recession. … Gap’s overall net sales fell 10% in this period, but its online store sales grew 33% … How’d they do it? Well, a superb web site that leverages multiple brands …

In mid April of 2008, Gap’s e-commerce store changed its small font, simple linking header to an eye-catching, bold tab-shaped design. This change has enabled customers to navigate between brands with ease. … Prior to the change, only 25% of Gap.com’s downstream traffic went to company’s other brands. … That percentage increased to 55% by the end of Aug. 2008.

… Gap.com’s referral traffic from OldNavy.com, its sister brand was only 12% with little or no traffic from the other brands prior to its redesign. The same traffic from OldNavy.com jumped to 26%. … In the meantime, Google.com as a Gap.com referral traffic source was down from 10.1% to 8.6% while its downstream traffic to Google.com was also down from 6% to 3%. Gap.com’s reliance on Google decreased substantially. This means customers no longer use a “vehicle” to get to the Gap’s online store. In short, Gap’s smart design not only increased its sales, it also eased the burden on marketing staff’s acquisition and retention efforts because its number of visitors and the time those visitors spend have substantially increased since then. …

One major challenge … is finding ways to leverage their individual brand power and optimize the entire portfolio at the same time. Many executives and producers believe not every brand is created equal. Each has its own appeal to a specific customer base. For that reason, some have been employing a search engine friendly, SEO/SEM heavy “verticalization” strategy to extent its reach. There is nothing wrong with leveraging the power of search engines, but this strategy will only work if the Gap-like cross linking implementation is in place. Short of that, it can lead to brand isolation.

… from an analytic perspective, it is clear that every click is purpose-driven and consumers only reward those who understand their behavior, whether you are a commerce site, or a media-content site.

Edit by DMG

* * * * *

Full Article
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=146146

* * * * *

This entry was posted on November 8, 2010 at 6:04 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.