Bass Pro Shops wins by going beyond online merchandising

Moving the needle ever-upward on sales is what every retailer wants to do – but focusing on the sole metric of conversion rates doesn’t always provide an accurate read of sales over time. The web site of outdoor sporting goods retailer Bass Pro Shops made significant design changes so as to better expose content in its outdoor library. But on completion of that exercise it saw an initial drop in conversion rates, says David Seifert, director of operations and direct marketing.

However, Seifert adds, other key metrics such as the average order size and the lifetime value of the customers – the purchases of the customer over an extended time – went up. “Customers are coming into the site more often because they are finding the content, but they are not buying every time they come to the site, so there is a tendency for the conversion rate to go down when you do something like this,” Seifert says. “The customers are coming to the site more often than they otherwise would.”

Seifert explains that in the outdoor sports category, the customer is very interested in informational content connected to the products, such a fishing tips. Yet some retailers tend to shy way from featuring purely informational content online because they believe it interferes with the purchasing process, he says.

“”We have found there is some interruption. But the benefit of the repeat visitors that come to the site at the times when they are not necessarily thinking about making a purchase – in other words, the frequency with which they come back to the site – much outweighs the interruption.” Seifert says.

Seifert adds that viewed in isolation, conversion rate may mislead. “Step back and look at all the metrics involved,” he says. “This is a much more robust way of doing business than just being a shopping site that does nothing but merchandise.”