Sites that bring smiles to gift givers and recipients
From fine jewelry to floral bouquets to goofy T-shirts, gifts are the non-essential purchases that provide big returns on shopper investment by bringing a smile to the recipient’s face. This year’s category winners in Flowers/Gifts/Jewelry strive to make the experience of giving a good one for the giver as well as for the gifted, with web sites that make online purchasing easy, aesthetically pleasing and entertaining.
Diamond engagement ring specialist BlueNile.com, for example, has sharpened up its industry-leading diamond search with a new feature that guides customers to more than 150 engagement ring settings grouped by themed collection, to help them more quickly find particular styles. Easy is also the operative word at online jeweler Goldspeed.com, which offers many sorting methods to speed shoppers toward a choice, and also features top-quality product photos to help customers decide.
“We only use photographers who specialize in jewelry. They know what lighting to use and what angles to shoot from to give customers the best image,” says Goldspeed.com chief executive officer Neil Kugelman.
Shoppers out to warm the heart of a collector of premium timepieces—or intent on rewarding themselves—will find a wealth of selection as well as online tools to help them choose at JTV.com, an offshoot of shopping channel Jewelry Television. The site builds on the TV presence with extra content and features geared toward the watch aficionado, with functionality that lets them speedily browse the entire assortment of high-end watches.
Online florist OrganicBouquet.com plays to the societal shift toward “green” products with fresh flowers, fruit and wine that have been produced organically and without pesticides. And it’s honed in on its target audience with a marketing plan that includes the media and venues they are likely to use and visit—blogs and social networking sites such as Gaia, MySpace and Facebook.
Also capitalizing on community is gift site ThinkGeek.com, with a blog and a feature that lets shoppers upload photos of themselves using ThinkGeek products.
Through extended selection, lavish photos and content, and tapping into the increasingly important social component of online retailing, this year’s gift sites distinguish themselves by delivering the complete package. Back to top
Still sparkling
BlueNile.com, an online jeweler and diamond engagement ring specialist, wants to be the best in the world at diamonds and customer care. This year, that message is penetrating international markets, where sales were up 53% over last year to $6.9 million in the third quarter, constituting a bright spot in a market sluggish for luxury goods overall.
“Certainly, one of the growth areas has been international. We opened up shipping to more than 25 new countries earlier this year,” says Diane Irvine, CEO.
BlueNile’s selection shines. Customers shopping the brand’s U.S., Canadian and U.K. sites from across the globe can choose from over 60,000 high-end diamonds that give shoppers a much wider choice than they would find in a store venue. Another distinguishing feature is customization options that allow shoppers to select a loose diamond for BlueNile’s jewelers to place in any of more than 150 ring settings.
Irvine says the site’s formula for success is continuous, incremental improvement, and this year is no exception. BlueNile has boosted functionality on its diamonds search further by organizing the selection of engagement ring settings into four themed collections to help shoppers more quickly find particular styles. The feature also enables customers to search by metal type and price.
Gartner Inc. vice president Gene Alvarez says the site’s “constraint-based search,” which allows consumers to search by multiple attributes simultaneously, is one reason BlueNile stands above the crowd. “It enables you to take a large universe of items and quickly find the ones that meet your constraints,” he says.
Site improvements BlueNile recently rolled out include the addition of live chat to customer service phone support and a diamond e-mail alert notifying customers when diamonds matching their search criteria are added to the site. BlueNile also added Bill Me Later as a payment option, in November, expanding it to include no-interest financing options for defined periods based on purchase price.
“Despite economic uncertainty,” Irvine says, “people are still falling in love and getting engaged.” Back to top
Shop and hang out
Not long ago Lynda Keeler and Tracy Tee were exercise buddies in Los Angeles who shared a love of reading blogs and shopping online.
Yet they believed something was lacking in Internet shopping. “We thought there was a void in being able to discover unique gifts and personal and home accessories online,” says Tee.
They chose to fill that void by launching their own online business—Denver-based Delight Networks, which operates e-commerce site Delight.com.
The sprightly and colorful site, just 20 months old, sells a tightly edited inventory of gifts, accessories, and home décor and kitchen items targeted at its core shopper—women like Keeler and Tee looking for nicely designed and unusual products that are affordable. “We ask, ‘Is this something that we like, that we would use, and that we would offer as a gift,’” explains Tee.
Appealing to the environmental instincts of its customers, Delight.com also sells eco-friendly products made of reusable materials.
Besides offering eclectic items unlikely to be found at the typical mall, Delight.com also tries to involve like-minded shoppers in expressing their views on the merchandise.
“We look at Delight.com as an e-commerce community,” says Keeler. “Come to shop and stay to hang out.”
The site helps nurture that feeling of shopping with friends. It has a “What do you think” meter that invites visitors to rate items. “That’s really smart,” says analyst Scott Kincaid, vice president of usability practice for Usability Sciences, Inc. “It gets people hooked into a community feeling. It keeps them engaged.”
Delight.com also tries to attract shoppers to the site every day by offering a daily special at a discount rate. “It has made Delight an everyday bookmark,” says Keeler. Delight puts out a weekly newsletter and encourages communication among its customers through a blog and customer reviews and comments.
The company also takes advantage of social networks to market itself. Delight alerts bloggers to new products and offers on the site, has attracted more than 1,000 members to its Facebook group and says it has a growing following on Twitter. Back to top
Picture perfect
Comparison shopping for diamonds or gold jewelry isn’t easy. And when customers are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for an item, they don’t just want something that fits their needs. They want something they can cherish.
“Jewelry is a romantic item; it’s something you fall in love with,” says Neil Kugelman, CEO of Goldspeed.com
But it’s hard to fall in love with an image on a web site. And it’s equally hard to clearly see all the facets of a piece of jewelry from a web snapshot.
Goldspeed.com does its best to let its customers know just what they are buying by using top jewelry photographers and paying attention to detail. “We only use photographers who specialize in jewelry. They know what lighting to use and what angles to shoot from to give customers the best image,” Kugelman says.
“Their framing is also appropriate,” says Jessica Jourdan, senior research scientist for Perceptive Sciences, which specializes in user experience testing. “A lot of retailers don’t pay attention to the framing, but Goldspeed.com knows that how you frame a watch is different than how you frame a diamond.”
In-depth product descriptions are also vital. “We go into a lot of detail describing our products so that customers can shop intelligently and within budget,” Kugelman says.
Because so many customers are cost-conscious, Goldspeed knows it has to be able to justify its price, even when selling 75% below retail. “If we are offering an item for $2,000 and someone else has something similar for $1,500, we have to be able to explain what is different about our item,” Kugelman says.
And customers can’t fall in love with an item they can’t find. Goldspeed.com applies advanced navigational tools to move customers to the products they want. For instance, a sort by price feature presents men’s and women’s items in several price ranges.
“Our navigation is very fluid,” Kugelman says. “We watch how people get to our products and we apply that knowledge to our internal search and navigation systems to make sure customers find what they want with as few clicks as possible.” Back to top
Shopping for time
Timepiece lovers will find a lot to like about JTVWatches, an offshoot of Jewelry Television that the company uses to test new ideas. Those who like to shop by brand, for example, can look at one Baume & Mercier watch while others wait in a “filmstrip” above, making it easy to toggle back and forth among the possibilities.
“Our customers love that,” says James Thome, senior vice president of e-commerce for Jewelry Television. “It lets them browse an entire collection at once.”
The selection is huge: 2,000 watches from more than 100 brands, with prices ranging from $30 to more than $1,000. Visitors can sort items by features like strap type or suitability for diving. “On TV This Week” lets shoppers quickly find models they spotted on the air, and another tab lets them view any of the 10 most recent editions of “The Watch Show.” Or they can click to watch a live show if one happens to be on.
“The site was put up to cater to the aficionado,” Thome says. “We felt the mothership didn’t have the functionality or flexibility we wanted on the watch category. When you get to the product level, you see the forefront of user interface design.”
Thome is particularly proud of the site photography. “Our images are world-class,” he says. “I’d put them up against any retailer out there.”
Chicago-based retail consultant Keven Wilder compliments the site’s usability. “It’s easy to navigate, and the terrific zoom features give customers the ability to really see the watches up close from several views,” she says. “There’s also a nice synergy with the TV program. It would be nice, though, to see some lifestyle shots of watches on models, rather than having just product shots.”
JTVWatches has served its purpose as a testbed for new ideas and the watch category will be integrated into JTV.com as the main site moves to a new e-commerce platform next summer, Thome says. The retailer will incorporate many of the clever features of JTVWatches across all its product lines. Back to top
Defining eco-elegance
Serving a retail niche based on social consciousness is a natural challenge on the Internet, where Organic Bouquet Inc. is building on the web’s role as a merchandising and communications platform to reach fans of its organic and fair-trade products.
“The Internet enables us to develop and execute an in-depth content strategy that informs and educates our customers about social and environmental issues, and helps them understand the story behind our products,” says president Claudio Miranda. “Green businesses can engage in active and prolonged dialogue with audiences and can leverage their web site and social media to serve rich and engaging content.”
A visitor to OrganicBouquet.com is likely to be drawn in at first by the site’s attractive images that display flowers and other gifts like fruit and wine developed organically without unnatural materials like chemical pesticides.
“OrganicBouquet.com is a great gift site,” says Danielle Savin, former head of e-commerce at Frederick’s of Hollywood and now a vice president and retail specialist at online retailing consultants FitForCommerce. “The imagery is excellent, and the item content is rich and doesn’t leave the customer guessing as to what she is purchasing. And OrganicBouquet gives the customer the ability to order now and deliver later, a great feature for a gift site.”
Organic Bouquet defines its retailing style as eco-elegance, but it also strives to engage the passions of its customers for sharing information on environmentally friendly products as well as on goods produced under fair-trade guidelines. Fair-trade is designed to provide fair compensation to farmers and artisans.
The retailer also produces online magazine Organic Style, with topics ranging from “green” cities to organic food recipes to eco-friendly ways to travel through Europe. The magazine also links to OrganicStyle.com, where Miranda is expanding his eco-friendly reach with merchandise lines in home furnishings, baby products and pet supplies.
Organic Bouquet will continue developing its product lines and building exposure through blogs and social networks including Gaia, MySpace and Facebook. “We’re aggressively ramping up our social media,” Miranda says. Back to top
The beauty of the geek
Not everyone can see the humor in an Annoy-a-tron that generates a pestering beep at random intervals or the draw of a Shrinter that prints documents directly to a shredder. But that’s okay with ThinkGeek.com. It’s not marketing to everyone. It’s marketing to geeks.
Finding a niche and sticking to it has helped ThinkGeek, a unit of SourceForge Inc., grow from an idea conjured up by self-professed nerds into a $33 million company in less than 10 years.
“We are our own target market,” says Jen Frazier co-founder and director of design. “We try to make plenty of geeky references to make customers think ‘Hey they are talking to me!’”
Consumers at ThinkGeek won’t find Flash or rich media, but they will find witty copy and concise product descriptions—no easy feat for a retailer that sells such items as the The Wi-Fi Detector T-Shirt.
Quirky is the theme at ThinkGeek. Shoppers don’t type a query in a search box—they ask the Robot Monkey for help. Instead of Contact Us, the information link says Bug Us.
“The presentation is rudimentary, but ThinkGeek understands its customers and gets them involved,” says Mara Devitt, a partner at retail consulting firm McMillan Doolittle LLP.
The retailer involves visitors with features like Customer Fortunes, bits of wisdom submitted by shoppers, such as, “Elvis is everywhere, man.” Consumers can refresh for a new fortune as often as they like.
Other community aspects include the Bounty Program, which lets shoppers submit ideas for T-shirts, and Action Shots, photos of customers using ThinkGeek products. The ThinkGeek blog features offbeat posts, such as one on geeky wedding rings.
ThinkGeek also generates buzz with its annual April Fool’s homepage, which showcases fake products. This year’s selection included Captain Buzz’s Spazztroids Cereal, with a healthy 180-milligram dose of caffeine per bowl.
While ThinkGeek is adamant about staying with its niche, it is trying out new product lines. It just added camping and car gadgets. And it plans to add a kids section soon.
After all, there’s a little geek in everyone—even the little ones. Back to top
