How HSN.com is searching and finding higher web sales
HSN.com, the e-commerce arm of Home Shopping Network, is making customer satisfaction and better search engine marketing the centerpiece of its 2005 merchandising strategy. With access to more than 80 million U.S. households through the Home Shopping Network and a conversion rate of about 9%, HSN.com already has an established base.
But to drive sales–and keep shoppers content—HSN.com is putting in place new strategies to deliver better search engine results and using ForeSee Results Inc., an Ann Arbor, MI, customer satisfaction measurement and management company, to get a better handle on what’s driving current customer behavior.
For instance, HSN.com is surveying both site browsers and buyers and using ForSee Results to measure satisfaction levels with various web site elements and ongoing marketing campaigns. The goal is to tie even more closely together HSN.com’s multi-channel strategy and ensure that the right marketing and merchandising messages are reaching the company’s core shoppers: women in their 40s and 50s with a higher household income.
“We want to be consistent across all channels,” says Frank Han, executive vice president and general manager of HSN.com. “We are doing that by benchmarking our customer satisfaction levels.” To improve the return on investment in search engine and e-mail marketing, HSN is also implementing programs that improve natural search results by making sure that the HSN brand is highlighted in the first 250 characters of text appearing on a search page and by sending more targeted e-mail messages to its opt-in list of about 2 million names.
“We are looking at ways to optimize search,” Han says. “75% of what consumers react to happens in the natural section on a search page.” The e-commerce plan is paying dividends: 2004 web sales for HSN.com increased 20% to $303 million from $251 million in 2003.
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