Sales rose 37% in April over April of last year at consumer electronics retailer GoodGuys.com Inc., where part that growth stems from a revised search engine designed to upsell products to shoppers, CEO Walt Mulvey tells InternetRetailer.com. "More people are buying high-end products," he says.
GoodGuys.com modified its proprietary search function to better enable the site to direct shoppers to alternate products, resulting in more shoppers opting for high-priced goods, Mulvey says. When a shopper searches for a Toshiba DVD player and clicks on a model that appears in the search result, for example, a "Show me" link also appears to direct the shopper to models with similar or more features. For a Toshiba DVD player priced at $119, the "more features" link brought up a Toshiba DVD/VCR player priced at $159 plus a long list of feature specifications.
But the "similar features" link can produce even more higher-priced options, because it brings up a large number of products from several different brands. When that link was clicked after the initial search produced the $119 Toshiba DVD player, it brought up products priced as high as $599.
Mulvey notes that the search function doesn't necessarily have to result in the sale of a higher-priced product in order to positively impact sales, since quickly showing a shopper a similar product with a lower price can make a shopper more likely to buy. "We can take shoppers from an advertised price to a better price," he says.
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