Who’s got the fastest-changing retail home page on the web? Qvc.com is a contender. The front page of the web site of home shopping network QVC-TV changes as many as 40 times a day, senior vice president of merchandising Bob Myers tells Internet Retailer. QVC-TV now reaches 84 million homes, an opportunity and a challenge for QVC.com. “Our home page is probably the most dynamic one out there. We change it 20 to 40 or more times a day to keep up with merchandise that is selling out on TV, because we pull from the same inventory,” says Myers.
QVC.com has nearly 1 million products online, an assortment that towers over the 1,600 items presented on the TV channel each week. To move the merchandise online even faster, QVC has recently increased its use of timed promotions to create excitement and a sense of shopper urgency around the site, adds Myers, who says the web site will be exploring additional timed events in the future. QVC.com has already imported the concept from its TV channel with features such as “lunchtime specials,” products available only online and only between 11:00 a.m. and 3 p.m. That’s driven both sales and new traffic.
“When it sells out, it’s gone. It’s addictive-–people check every day to see what’s on,” Myers says. “We’ have a competitive advantage there because it’s something a brick-and-mortar store or a catalog isn’t set up to do.”
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