HP looks at nitty gritty details to find out how web shoppers act

HP Home & Home Office Store, the e-commerce arm of Hewlett-Packard Co., will spend even more time in 2008 figuring out what makes its online shoppers tick.

In recent years, HP, No. 5 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has revamped its site taxonomy and navigation by looking closely at the different paths customers take to find, research and make a purchase. For example, HP Home & Home Office Store has added product recommendations to items customers are placing into their shopping carts. Product pages also have been reconfigured with other enhancements such as rich media that allow customers to zoom in and see a notebook computer, big screen TV or digital camera in three dimensions.

But now HP also is devoting more time to looking at specific metrics such as the time consumers spend on the site, how they enter and exit HPShopping.com, the order of pages they list and the time spent per page. “By looking at different customer patterns, we learn who they are and how we can improve the experience,” says Michael Ritter, vice president of merchandising for HP Home & Home Office Store. In 2007, the average session on HPShopping.com was 8 minutes and 21 seconds, compared with 7 minutes and nine seconds in 2006, says Hitwise Inc.

For example, a more thorough examination of how different customer groups were drilling down on product pages prompted HP to rethink how it displays toll-free phone numbers, which in turn has expedited customer service. Now when customers call a toll-free phone number listed on the product page the call is routed to a service rep based on their knowledge of a specific product or group of products. “The deeper into the product pages a customer is they are going to have more detailed questions on operating systems and related topics,” Ritter says. “We now modify the toll free phone numbers so when the customer calls the call is routed to the right representative.”

Closer scrutiny of visitor traffic and site improvements are making an impact, especially during the holidays. On the Monday after Thanksgiving traffic to HPShopping.com increased 28% over the prior year while total web sales were up 40%.