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When PC Universe Inc. redesigned its web site last year, the company knew that just giving the home page a new treatment wasn’t enough to energize sales or take market share from competitors. It wanted a site with better features and functions that would grab shoppers’ attention and turn browsers into buyers. “Just redesigning how the site looked wasn’t going to help us stand out,” says PC Universe director of e-commerce Patrick Colletta. “Building better features and functions would increase our cross-selling capability.”

To achieve that goal, PC Universe, retailer of computers and related gear, added intelligent shopping tools and reduced the steps to checkout by 50%. The result: PC Universe’s average ticket has grown by 25% to more than $400 while the sale of computer accessories has jumped by 22%. “The new design gets shoppers more quickly to product pages, but it’s the advanced features that really boosted sales,” says Colletta. “Our advanced features separate us from the competition.”

As the entire online retailing industry becomes more competitive, adding faster and more sophisticated tools has become a top priority not just for PC Universe, but for many other web retailers. The main focus of web design used to be on using different fonts, elements and images to create a unique look for the home page as well as for category and product pages. Now retailers are responding to consumers’ greater sophistication about online shopping by making features and functions planning an integral component of the design process. Put a different way: Looks matter, but more retailers realize that better site performance and usability count for even more.

In the early days of web retailing, features and functions planning was straightforward. At the same time designers were creating new page templates, webmasters and programmers were implementing better search, a faster shopping cart and some rich media. Today consumers still want fast site search and expedited checkout, but they also expect web retailers to provide them with advanced tools for comparison shopping such as customer reviews or product videos and more social networking features such as customer forums and wikis.

“Planning advanced features to incorporate into a new design should be as fundamental as creating the new look,” says Johanna Murphy, senior director of user experience and design at GSI Commerce Inc., a third-party provider of e-commerce technology and web design services to about 80 large chain retailers and consumer brand manufacturers. “When a retailer is making over a web site, performance and usability should matter as much as a distinct design.”

Group effort

Today most established online retailers have about two dozen basic web site features or functions that visitors use to find merchandise and complete a purchase. But rather than make changes piecemeal, more retailers are implementing their new advanced features and functions as a group at the same time they are redesigning their sites.

For instance, in tandem with its newly recreated home and product pages, PC Universe, which generates annual web sales of more than $13.5 million, launched an updated version of its e-commerce platform with several new features such as improved site navigation, expanded product information and one-click checkout for returning customers.

One new application in particular, a product recommendation program developed for PCUniverse.com by CNET Networks Inc. now automatically selects and places accessories such as the right printer and cables into the shopping cart as a customer completes the purchase of a new computer.

“We carry over 250,000 individual SKUs and shoppers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and perform two separate transactions just to buy the right combination of gear,” Colletta says. “Our customers wanted quicker ways to assemble a computer package and we followed through.”

High expectations

During the start-up phase of business-to-consumer e-commerce, the chief design priority for many merchants was creating a web site that reinforced the company’s brand. Retailers often devoted their time and resources to designing the home and product pages with elaborate images and snappy copy, but with limited functionality. Today consumers expect more than just static pages.

As broadband access has penetrated more than 60% of Internet homes, more merchants are designing web sites with highly interactive features. They’re also designing their next-generation shopping applications to meet specific performance objectives.

Scholastic Inc., for example, developed detailed objectives for most advanced features and functions prior to redesigning Scholastic.com. As an established source of content for teachers, parents and students, Scholastic.com is one of the most frequently visited education sites with more than 2.5 million unique visitors each month.

But Scholastic, which generates annual web sales of about $370 million, needed to rework major sections of content and add features that made it easier for its more than 1 million registered teachers to download lesson plans and other materials. To increase revenue, Scholastic also wanted to build a subscription-based digital library that would give teachers access to more than 10,000 items such as student practice pages, awards, flash cards and learning games.

“We had to find better ways to marry content and commerce,” says Seth Radwell, president of eScholastic, the company’s e-commerce and Internet business unit. “Grade school teachers are our historical sweet spot; we had to redesign our site with the advanced features and functions they expect.”

Doing homework

Scholastic used focus groups, targeted e-mails and other tools to solicit feedback in planning the new site features. Scholastic also studied web analytics reports and individual visitor sessions to break down how teachers and parents were navigating the site.

With better information, Scholastic next redesigned Scholastic.com and launched the new site in July in time for back-to-school planning for teachers. Teaching materials, including lesson plans and unit plans, are now organized by grade and subject matter. For an annual fee of $34.95, teachers also can access Printables, a new digital library that gives subscribers options to customize content, make and label digital files, and search by different combinations such as quick find, grade, subject and keyword.

Teachers and parents like the new site. Since the web site was redesigned, traffic to Scholastic.com has increased by 20% and more than 8,000 teachers have signed up for the new digital library. “The site redesign gives teachers, parents and students what they want most: deeper content and faster features and functions to access and use that content,” Radwell says.

Sweat the details

The process of redesigning an e-commerce site, especially a site with advanced features, takes time. A small or medium-sized retailer will take about six months to implement a new design; big web merchants with large inventories and multiple shopping tools can take up to 14 months. Designers and marketing managers look closely at the different paths visitors take as they arrive and leave the site and the amount of time and money shoppers spend on product pages. With a better understanding of how visitors are navigating and shopping their site, designers then complete a detailed features analysis of their competitors’ e-commerce sites, rank their priorities and write a formal implementation plan. The plan usually includes a 12-month timeline for the features and functions the retailer expects to add each quarter.

“It’s tempting to want to have every new bell and whistle, but an implementation timeline helps retailers focus on adding only the most pertinent new features that will positively impact their business,” says Betsy Emery, founder and chief executive officer of Tellus, a Cincinnati retail web site design firm. “Retailers must know in detail how customers are using their site and then implement only the best new tools that will hook shoppers and increase traffic and sales conversions.”

Due diligence and market research help retailers do a better job of meeting customer expectations. For example, L’OrČal USA Inc. used competitive analysis and feedback from cosmetics professionals as the foundation for re-launching Lancome-USA.com. When L’OrČal USA re-launched the site in May, a top priority was developing features and functions that made it easier for customers to find products and mix and match different shades of cosmetics.

Prior to the redesign, L’OrČal USA spent six months studying the key features and functions of cutting-edge sites in retailing and in other industries such as automotive. The company, which carries about 1,100 SKUs online, then designed site architecture based on feedback from top sales associates that sell cosmetics to customers at leading department stores. L’OrČal USA also hired professional artists to analyze color palettes and hues and make sure that the same shades that customers could see at a cosmetics counter were also online.

“Beauty products are constantly changing, but if a customer has a particular shade of lipstick that they’ve had in the cabinet for a while and want to see if it’s still available, or what’s replacing it, they can now do that task online,” says L’OrČal USA vice president of e-commerce and customer relationship management Sarah Williams.

Today the redesigned Lancome-USA.com features a top-of-the-page and left-side-of-the-page layout that enables visitors to shop by category and topic and choose colors. Another new site feature, Quick Shop, gives customers the ability to mouse over a product and see a box that presents the viewer with information on quantity, item and price. The pop-up box also allows shoppers to add the item to their wish lists or complete a transaction. On each page a visitor can also see a list of recently viewed items.

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To make it easier for customers to compare and find products, L’OrČal USA added another feature that enables customers to type the name of a discontinued cosmetic or fragrance into a search box, select the proper shade or scent, and see suggestions on new products that are similar. “Buying cosmetics is complicated,” says Williams. “This new design and the tools we’ve built in enable shoppers to make a purchase from anywhere on the site.”

Spending time on the fundamentals of good features and functions planning is paying off for L’OrČal USA. Since the redesign, the site’s shopping cart abandonment has been reduced by about 10% and monthly sales are up by a similar percentage.

Sticking to basics

With proper planning and attention to detail, web merchants such as L’OrČal USA are minimizing the chance that a poorly designed feature or an ill-timed site redesign can hurt performance. Early on in the start-up phase of Internet retailing, many merchants upgraded their e-commerce sites with sound, video and animated graphics only to find that shoppers using a dial-up connection couldn’t access the site or clicked away from the site because pages took too long to load. Now more retailers are avoiding features and functions implementation problems by paying closer attention to the fundamentals of proper data management and site navigation.

“If a merchant wants to design a web store with features and functions that operate smoothly and meet a customer’s expectation they need to concentrate on the basic blocking and tackling of organizing their product information,” says Riccardo La Rosa, director, emerging interactions at Molecular Inc., a Boston e-commerce consulting and web design firm. “There’s no sense in implementing a faster search engine if the site taxonomy isn’t properly organized or the product data isn’t organized in ways that make sense to shoppers.”

Taxonomy is how retailers structure the dataóparticularly the products, product details and categoriesóthat a site search application uses to return answers to a visitor’s query. A good taxonomy that supports a site search application should contain sufficient product detail, which, in turn, supports parametric navigation and sorting and the filtering of products by attributes such as price. “Well-described metadata and a good taxonomy are essential ingredients in designing features and functions that reflect how customers actually use the site and not how retailers think they do,” says GSI’s Murphy.

Know the customer

Site search and page designs can also be improved if web retailers think of organizing their information based on how visitors use the data and navigate the site. For example, ShopPBS.com knows that taking the time and making the effort to get content organization and the site taxonomy just right can deliver better results. When ShopPBS.com, the business-to-consumer e-commerce unit of Public Broadcasting Service, and GSI Commerce redesigned the PBS web site, a top priority was developing features that matched the needs of affluent older shoppers.

In some months ShopPBS.com receives up to 700,000 visits, particularly after PBS airs a much-anticipated program such as “The War,” a new documentary by Ken Burns. But on the old site, which PBS last redesigned in 2003, it took the organization’s core customers too long to find products and make a purchase.

If, for instance, a shopper wanted to search for a movie or TV show on British drama the internal search engine would return all 360 titles in the ShopPBS.com inventory. “The old site search was confusing and one of the features we wanted to improve,” says PBS vice president of home entertainment and partnerships Andrea Downing.

ShopPBS.com was originally built in-house using Oracle hardware and software and later moved to a GSI platform. But after years of using outdated technology, it was clear that ShopPBS.com needed better technology and improved features that would make it easier to showcase products and reduce the time it took shoppers to find a product.

In conjunction with GSI, PBS marketing and merchandising managers spent eight months crafting a new design plan. Today the new design has reduced by 50% the time it takes visitors to locate a product and complete a purchase.

The new ShopPBS.com now filters video products by attributes such as price, production year, title and whether or not a program has already aired on PBS. This is particularly helpful when shoppers want to see lists of videos only in DVD or only in the older VHS format. PBS and GSI also introduced advanced shopping tools and product pages with more detail. Most product pages now feature advanced zoom, video clips and an e-mail a friend button. Other buttons let visitors and shoppers check on product availability and view previously purchased items and product recommendations. “We spent a lot of time making sure that what should be in the history category is now there,” Downing says.

Restructuring product content and building a better taxonomy from the ground up can be time consuming. It took ShopPBS.com about eight weeks to reclassify its product information and merchandising categories. But with better organized content, the pay-off can be immediate and longer term.

“If a retailer will spend the time to learn how customers shop the site and organize their content around those characteristics, they can implement features and functions that don’t have to be rebuilt each time another redesign comes along,” says Dayna Bateman, senior strategic analyst at web design, development and managed services provider Fry Inc. “Look at how Amazon.com built its recommendation application or how Blue Nile built its ring building tool. These are two examples of earlier generation features that were designed right the first time and are working just fine today with only periodic updates.”

With a strong foundation of already well-planned and executed features and functions, retailers are also in a better position to implement site upgrades. For instance, HP Home & Home Office Store, the business-to-consumer e-commerce arm of Hewlett-Packard Co., was an early believer in designing web site features and packaging content around a family of products.

As early as 2004, HPShopping.com

featured pages and tools that enabled shoppers to compare digital cameras and related accessories. Recently, using its existing site taxonomy and page categories as the foundation, HP Home & Home Office Store added more advanced features.

Visitors to HPShopping.com can now fill out a questionnaire that targets their interest in specific printers. The questionnaire asks visitors to narrow their selection to specifics such as black and white or color features, preferred features, how many pages they print each month, price, and other metrics. The completed questionnaire then leads them to an enhanced product page laid out with zoom technology, a product comparison table, detailed features and functions, and related products.

HP has also refined site search to allow customers to search by different criteria such as price after rebate, megapixel size, display size and optical zoom for a digital camera. “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to give customers better shopping tools,” says Michael Ritter, vice president of merchandising for HP Home & Home Office Store. “We’re evolving the page designs and site features to reflect the new ways our customers are shopping online.”

Formal plan

With a clear design strategy, HP Home & Home Office Store no longer implements new features and functions on an ad-hoc basis. Instead, it adds tools and applications according to a defined timeline or when it makes sense to improve a particular area such as site search. “A development timeline based on a current analysis helps us avoid falling into a rut and keeps the site fresh and up to date,” says Ritter.

With a central design plan in place, other online retailers are also implementing site features that create new and ongoing business opportunities. For example, having already rolled out a full suite of updated features and functions, PC Universe is using its new web site design and e-commerce platform to introduce one final element: a technical services wizard. The wizard, which PC Universe rolled out in November, guides the shopper through a series of questions about the equipment to be purchased, the number of end users, and the customer’s computer environment and business processes.

Once a shopper answers all the questions, the shopper can schedule an installation or other technical services at the same time he is completing the purchase of a new computer. “We centralized the process for introducing new features and functions and now we are seeing a payback on our planning,” says Colletta. “We now have a solid foundation for adding tools that customers want and in ways that will make us different from our competitors.”

mark@verticalwebmedia.com

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