When Peter Harris took over as CEO of West Marine Inc. in January one of his first initiatives was to commit more resources to e-commerce and grow the Internet as a significant sales channel.
Now, almost a year later West Marine, No. 83 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, has several new initiatives up and running that are driving web traffic and converting sales, says Tony Gasparich, vice president of direct sales.
West Marine recently added a site search application from Endeca Technologies Inc. that gives customers additional ways to shop the boating supply retailer’s online inventory of more than 150,000 products. With improvements such as guided navigation, customers landing on WestMarine.com can now shop for specific products more quickly and sort through the results by brand, price, sale items, new items and most popular products.
The company is also improving its search engine marketing capability with a new relationship with Did-It.com LLC, an interactive marketing agency. Initially, West Marine and Did-It are concentrating on growing West Marine’s keyword inventory to more than 4,000 words and phrases. “We are looking to improve our advertising return on investment with more precise search results," Gasparich says.
With better internal and external search, West Marine will also expand its multi-channel retail efforts in 2006 with a new buy-online, and pick up in-store policy. “We are expanding our commitment to the web,” Gasparich says. West Marine operates about 400 stores in 38 states.
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