Jeweler Ross-Simons Inc. is taking steps to improve the efficiency of its e-commerce operation.
The retailer, No. 141 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, recently overhauled its site taxonomy and replaced an internally developed site search engine with a third-party application from Mercado, which is now part of Omniture. The web analytics developer acquired the corporate assets of Mercado in October.
Ross-Simons, which expects its 2008 web sales to remain flat at about $84 million, also is adding more product videos as a way to reduce returns, says vice president of marketing Larry Davis. “We have about 300 product videos on the site and the chief benefit has been to reduce our return rate by about 10%, which is a significant cost savings,” he says.
Most web retailers post videos primarily to educate consumers and sell merchandise. But Ross-Simons is investing heavily in an in-house production studio and posting more videos to reduce fulfillment costs. “Customers return jewelry because it’s the wrong size or the item doesn’t fit,” says Davis. “A product thumbnail can be beautiful to look at, but the size of the images are about the same and they can’t help a shopper determine if an item will fit or not. Showing the jewelry on a model in a video produces a better scale and helps the shopper see how it will look on her.”
Ross-Simons, which expects to add as many 700 more videos to its e-commerce site next year, also views better site search as another way to improve efficiency. For instance, the conversion rate has improved on Ross-Simons.com since the retailer updated site search, although the retailer didn’t break out a specific number. With its old taxonomy, which are the classifications a retailer uses to catalog merchandise categories and individual products, it took a shopper multiple clicks to find a particular piece of jewelry.
But now, with a better online catalog and a faster third-party application, shoppers can search for and find a particular item in as few as two clicks. Individual search results are also now broken down into multiple sub-categories, including style, stone, price, brand and metal. “We now have much better mechanics to guide customers through our 8,000 SKUs,” says Davis.
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