Lessons from the Ecommerce Behemoths—Williams-Sonoma®
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Friday, June 2nd, 2006
I was browsing the lnternet Retailer™ Magazine Top 500 list and I saw Williams-Sonoma®. Not that this was surprising given the recognizable brand names (Pottery Barn®, Pottery Barn Kids®, and of course Williams-Sonoma to name a few). What caught my attention was I had just read another article on the Internet Retailer website about Williams-Sonoma that said first quarter 2006 sales grew at over 30% and Williams Sonoma was ranked 19th overall in the top 500. Obviously, Williams-Sonoma is doing something right with their sites, because you can’t taste their yummy olive oils online like you can in their retail stores.
So while I don’t think anyone from Williams-Sonoma is going to reveal the secret sauce they use to rack up big sales growth, you’ll have to settle for a few observations I made while looking at their williams-sonoma store. And of course their high-quality catalogs are certainly a big reason behind the strong sales, but baring the major investment that would be for Yahoo! merchants, I’ll stick with changes you can make to your online store to play with the big dogs of ecommerce.
Williams-Sonoma Home page: sign ups and sign posts
Things that work about the page:
- Holiday promotion that links to page with items catered to the holidays (currently Father’s day is shown)
- Email signup field that doesn’t even take users off the page when submitted
You can include HTML with images that link to a special section page which you set up for holidays that you wish to run holiday promotions. To collect email addresses, you can sign up for Campaigner™ powered by Got (see the Email Marketing link in your Store Manager for more details), or you can add HTML and a special script to collect email addresses from interested shoppers. Be sure to include in your privacy policy how you will use email addresses provided by visitors.
Williams-Sonoma section page: seasonal section page for new items
Things that work about this page:
- One easy location for returning shoppers to find new items
- Section link listed at the top of the section navigation to shoppers see it first. Note the features and offers page listed directly below.
You can create a new section to display new or seasonal items and add this section at the top of your navigation links where shoppers are most likely to look.
Williams-Sonoma Gift Ideas section
When you are buying a gift you typically have someone in mind, the reason why you are buying the gift, and a rough idea of how much you want to spend. The section navigation presented in the Gift Ideas area of the site mirrors this by categorizing products thematically by the recipient, by the holiday, and also by the dollar amount. Yahoo! merchants can use custom RTML to perform such groupings with each publish.
However, merchants that do not wish to get into RTML changes can also group products in this manner by downloading their product info to a spreadsheet, sorting items in various manners (price, type of gift, type of recipient) and then uploading their product info to include new thematic sections with all product ids from the various sorts and categories. Learn more about database uploads.
Do you see other things you like about Williams-Sonoma that I didn’t add here? If so, add your comments below.
Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business
Note: Internet Retailer™ Magazine is a property of Vertical Web Media. Williams-Sonoma®, Pottery Barn®, and Pottery Barn Kids® are registered trademarks of Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
Comments
It’s simple, you wont know their name until they buy a product. So until they buy a product you may not be able to address them by their name, but once you offer them something they want (which is easy because they ahve already been to your site) you will know their name and be able to address them cordially.
I like using RSS technology for communication with my clients. That keeps them up-todated.
Comment by Mia, e-shop owner — June 15, 2006 @ 9:20 pm
One of the fundamental rules of e-commerce is that for every dire prediction, there is an equal and opposite upbeat outlook, and vice versa.
I don’t see this feature on W-S website but I’d love to know how to add “email this page to a friend” feature to my website.
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Thanks for the excellent advice. I am still trying to decide whether to collect first names with email addresses for our newsletter as I tend to respond better to emails that address me by name at the beginning of the newsletter. Anyone else have any thoughts on that. Of course the more you ask the less signups you get.
Nathan…
Comment by Nathaniel Freedman — June 6, 2006 @ 5:28 pm