Borders plays up social networking, personalization on the new Borders.com
Borders Group Inc. isn’t letting the latest social networking trends dictate the building of its new e-commerce site. But the book retailer is certainly embracing social networking and personalization as a big part of the newly retooled Borders.com, which Borders says is still on track to make its debut sometime in the first quarter.
In October Borders launched beta.BordersStores.com, which includes a number of new features Borders will incorporate into its new e-commerce site. The new Borders.com will replace the bookseller’s existing e-commerce site hosted by Amazon.com Inc.
By clicking on beta.BordersStore.com, visitors can see Magic Shelf, a three-dimensional shelf of actual book covers displayed as they would be shown in a Borders store, and Picked for You, a similar digital shelf of books that will be displayed after users have conducted a product search.
Borders is now putting the finishing touches on the new Borders.com, though the retailer still isn’t disclosing a launch date. The company is making modifications to key applications such as the Magic Shelf by making it more intuitive and speeding up performance. “The reaction to the beta site has been very positive and we are heading full speed to the launch,” says Borders vice president of e-business Kevin Ertell. “The beta site is giving us a good chance to road test all of the coding.”
When the new e-commerce site debuts, it will do so with social networking and personalization tools that appeal to its 23 million loyalty club members. For instance, the Magic Shelf will become personalized for the shopper based on past purchases and will display books that the customer may be particularly interested in exploring.
On the beta site, there is a related Magic Shelf feature called “Picked for You.” Customers simply indicate the subjects in which they have an interest, and Borders will stock the “Picked for You” shelf with books on those subjects. Other new personalization tools include customer and employee reviews for all BordersStores.com products and a new wish list feature, which allows customers to mark items they’d like to buy or receive as gifts.
Borders is also adding more e-commerce vendors. The company has chosen Omniture as its web analytics provider, CyberSource Corp. for payments processing and ForeSee Results for monitoring customer satisfaction. Eventually Borders will have 100 employees dedicated to supporting e-commerce, Ertell says.
Ertell will speak at the Internet Retailer Web Design ’08 Conference, Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in Miami, in a session titled How to get feedback to help with your redesign.
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