A quick review- after 15 or so years, google decided to add additional characters to their adwords that you see. You will usually see these in the first and second position. Sometimes all of the positions have them. It depends on the device.

Let’s take a look at the search term “buy rings online” on a desktop:

Here you can see the top position is maintained by Gemvara, followed by jensen’s then rarecarat.com. Let’s take a look at Gemvara’s ad. The Expanded line of text is the line “Create Unique Rings on Gemvara.” A year ago, that space would not have been there.

Interestingly, people have gotten so used to the format from years’ past that often it turns out that the best strategy is to drastically shorten your ad so that it appears to be the same length as before. Note the length of the text of Gemvara vs jensenestatebuyers.com. Gemvara’s ad is short and sweet. I would imagine it converts better and has a higher CTR than jensens.

We can’t confirm this but it seems to be the trend across the board the experienced retailers. (Ignore the part of the ad that says ‘free 101 day returns’ and everything after it. Those are features that are tested separately and only shown for position one.)

Here are a couple other examples of retailers using short ads in spite of the expanded ads: Asus is a killer company

Here is an ad for TVs with Walmart and Newegg:

All of these ads are much shorter than jensen’s and I suspect they are the results of more rigorous testing.

One other interesting thing I have noticed in the past year is that you must get rid of old ads that are not in the current format or Google will punish your Quality Score. I don’t know if they have outright said this is the case, but in my experience it is true. Regardless of how well that old ad converts, you have to convert it to the new format or get punished by Google!

Overall I thought the transition was rough at first but things have stabilized after implementing these lessons. Since the short ads seem to convert better it remains to be seen why Google thought we needed these extra characters now, but maybe they didn’t test enough. Or maybe some industries convert differently. Enjoy.

Here is an interesting graph using Google’s financial tools and search query results. The blue line shows searches for phrases like “financial planning advisers”, “fidelity” “smith barney”. The red line shows the trend line of the S&P 500. Note how clearly they correspond to each other! As the S&P500 does well fewer people look for a financial planner.  This seems to be the most closely corresponding vertical.* But negatively.Why?

Imagine a middle class person has a little extra cash and wants to invest it. If the S&P500 is doing well, they can just buy a couple companies they recognize and watch their worth increase. In more difficult financial times people start to look for financial help. I would guess the correlation coefficient is -.8: Strong negative correlation.

You can do this for any vertical you are in or thinking about getting in. So we saw that financial advisers has a strong positive correlation. What vertical do you think has a positive correlation? My guess was luxury but I was wrong. Here’s luxury:

If I had to guess a correlation coefficient for luxury it would probably be .35. Small correlation but nothing I’d bet the house on. So what has the best correlation? It’s Automotive! I would guess the correlation coefficient as .55: Medium positive correlation.

Durable goods and house buying are about the same. So people perform fewer searches in these verticals as the stock market fluctuates. How can you use this to your advantage? Well, if you are a financial adviser I suppose you should be rooting for the S&P500 to go down. Or if you are a financial adviser and you suspect the stock market to go down you can start increasing hiring advisers.  Or for my readers who are search marketing consultants- if/when the stock market goes down expect belt-tightening from your car and housing clients but seek out financial advisers!**

Notes

*Google doesn’t mention which search terms it uses to define a vertical. It just gives examples. I’ll assume they put a little thought into this. It also does not mention every vertical. For example, I don’t see aerospace.

Also, google does not provide exact numbers so we can’t find true correlation we can only use “eye-ball analysis”. I think that is fine.

** One other thing to note that while I implied a cause and effect relationship—or a causal relationship of some sort—I think it is stock prices that are doing the causing not vice versa. I have made this assumption in all commentary.

One other comment. In Adwords editor the destination url and final url should switch places to make life easier. This is more of a request for Google. Good luck:

Upgrade Ads From Destination to Final URL

1. Log into google.com/adwords
2. Go to Campaigns

Shopper marketing is a relatively new idea in the CPG world. The idea is that a manufacturer representative will use her knowledge of the product to help a retailer optimize their site towards increasing sales of that product. In other words, if I am a shopping marketer at Welch’s assigned to walmart.com I would try to increase Welch’s sales on Walmart.com.

That’s the extent of it.

You may be asking “Isn’t that the retailer’s job?” Well yes and no. A retailer wants to sell more jelly, but he doesn’t care if it is Welch’s or Smucker’s jelly unless Welch’s is the highest margin product in that category or Welch’s inventory is getting out of hand. So a retailer wants to sell more jelly, but not necessarily your jelly.

A shopping marketer works with (or without) a retailer to increase sales at that retailer. The question is-How do we do this? There is a lot written stating that is beneficial for manufacturers to do this, but not a lot of practical advice. So I will provide some advice on this here blog.

Shopper Marketing Tactics
The best techniques are methods that we can use without the retailers knowledge. (Again-this is web only). It is not that we are trying to be devious; the reason is that I don’t want to have to go plead with Wal-Mart to make the changes that I want and/or negotiate terms for every change. I want what I want now. If I can get this, that is best! Let’s take a look at what that my look like:

It turns out Smucker’s is killing it. We have a lot of work to do.

When I say Smucker’s is killing it, I am not looking at sales numbers, so how do I know Smucker’s is winning? Because I know the way that online merchandisers think and how merchandising algorithms work. The “best” products get put at the top UNLESS retailers are trying to get rid of excess stock. Smucker’s has the top 10 spots…it is winning. I don’t need to request sales numbers. (Though maybe walmart provides them. I am not sure).

Our Welch’s Strawberry is in about spot 10. In spot 9 is Smucker’s strawberry. Let’s see what we would have to do to get the Welch’s above the Smucker’s. That is, what can I do on my end without even talking to Wal-Mart to increase sales.

Analysis
Why is the Smucker’s strawberry above the Welch’s strawberry? It is a culmination of things. Let’s take a look at them:

1) The total price for Smucker’s is lower but the price per/unit for Welch’s is better. I don’t think it is the price. Next.
2) Smucker’s has double the reviews. That is an issue. Whether we can do anything about this is another issue
3) The Smucker’s product has the word “jelly” in the product title. Welch’s says “spread”. This is a search for jelly! Advantage Smucker’s. We could change this in our feed.
4) There may be another issue-I’d just have to ask my team. If Smucker’s is stocked by Wal-Mart but Welch’s is third party, I am in trouble. Most companies will try to get rid of what they stock first. If I had to increase sales of Welch jelly on Wal-Mart I’d tell someone to sign a contract with Wal-Mart getting inventory in their warehouse or we might have just hit a wall. This is not the case here, but for Amazon or Newegg it might be.

Let’s Compare the Two Product Pages: *all pics click-able*

and…

1) Note the URLs-The come from the product titles. So again, the word “jelly” gets left off another field in our product. We need to be more careful on product titles.
2) Not shown- Smucker’s seems to import reviews of their product from their own site…that is bound to increase reviews. We could do this.
3) The Smucker’s packaging is nicer. This isn’t really immediately fixable, but the packaging makes it look better. One of the ranking metrics is probably click through rate. So we should make cuter packaging.
4) Inventory levels- Ours could be low in stock..if we are using a feed I would know if this the case. Also, Wal-Mart may favor brands that offer more variety..we could try to offer more variety.
5) I could also link-build to my product. I haven’t heard much about this, but it would increase sales.
So let’s review the “free” tactics we have at our disposal: Product title optimization, changing price-(mostly if we are a third party provider), change picture/packaging, increase reviews, use seo e.g. use jelly in product copy, play with assortment. That is a pretty good about of tactics to use without interacting with the retailer. Imagine the results if I hoped on the phone!
The paid tactics don’t involve interacting with anyone at Wal-Mart. I can buy ads on Wal-Mart that advertise my jelly, not Smucker’s:

Those circles are ads I can buy. I can write ads on the Smucker’s products that says “did you hear Smucker’s is being recalled for Salmonella, try Welch’s instead.”

Or maybe something like “Welch’s tastes better”. This would increase sales of Welch’s on Walmart.com which is the goal of the shopping marketer.

Conclusion
In conclusion, manufacturers should think about the tactics an internet retailer uses every day to increase sales. Then use those on your product. The less you involve a retailer, the faster you can move. If you have the highest margin product in your category look for the retailer to be more likely to work with you that if you are a discount product.

Exhaust all free methods before trying the paid methods so as to achieve the best ROI. If you have a huge budget use the paid methods first so you can see results faster. It is possible that your product just doesn’t belong in that retailer and nothing you do will increase sales. If this is the case why waste a ton of time on it? Fail faster.

Official News–

I would like to see an official news feature in the adwords admin that keeps me up to date with all the feature releases and betas. I don’t want to scour the internet for adwords updates. Just tell me when there is something I need to know…or may want to know. Put it in the notifications.

I Hate The Notifications.

(Note the scroll bar).

Our bosses read these. They don’t know what they mean. When you send us a red highlighted error message that states that one of my 10k ads had an error my boss might think that is an actual problem that needs immediate attention. It doesn’t. You know it.  Especially since I am testing 5 other ads for the same keywords. AND most of the campaigns are paused. Why do you do this to me? I have dealt with this issue with every boss and every client so I know this is not an issue of my bosses simply being crazy. Well…regardless…it still needs to be addressed.

Other red error messages that are worthless: “Your campaign has ended”…no kidding, I wanted it to end. I don’t mind a reminder but come on.

“Your campaign can use campaign optimizer”…yeah, I know that too. I don’t want to use it. Is that an urgent message?

“Keyword conflicts”…thank you…this is an important one.

The lightbulb sign on every campaign that tells me how to improve my campaign is annoying. I realize that if I “add broad keywords” “raise the bid to the first page” and “add more keywords” my campaign may “improve”. Ill also be spending more money…that’s not mentioned. Almost every campaign has a lightbulb…it makes it look like I am not doing my job. Trust me- you want to please me just as much as the executives or I will stop singing your praises and start spending my money elsewhere.

Think of all the time I have to spend re-educating my bosses every month. I could be spending that time optimizing my campaigns. And when my campaigns do better, we’ll probably spend more money. Help me help you.

The Adwords Editor Needs To Report ROI

The editor shows all sorts of information, but why not revenue and ROI? I won’t spend much time on this because there must be some bizarre technical reason this isn’t being done. It would be very valuable to have this info. Please make it happen.

Adult Content and Ads

Currently the Adwords team reviews ads to see if they are family material. If they are not, they restrict the content to show only to adult audiences. For example, if I use the word “sexy” in an ad it is likely to get marked as adult. But not always. When something gets marked adult it limits the audience. Impressions go down and my reach is significantly lower. Sometimes I actually DO WANT my ad to be marked as adult. If I am selling something for an audience of 18+ year olds, sometimes I do not want kids to see my ads. Otherwise my CPA goes crazy and I can’t afford to bid on these keywords.

Currently there is no way to mark an ad as adult by myself. I have to try to get you (Google) to flag it. It is very inefficient trying to guess what will get pass your automatic filters so that your human screeners can mark this as adult. Here is an example of me trying to get something flagged as adult, but I got flagged before it got to the human screeners:

Oops.

See my problem? I am selling bikinis for women and I don’t want people who are looking for bikinis for kids using a keyword like “bikinis” to see my ad. A great solution would be to allow me to check a box to only show a particular ad to an adult audience. Does that make sense? I have tried to explain it to three people on your team but they didn’t seem to get it.

And yes, I would consider employment as a product manager for adwords.

Tractor Supply Company sells to the rural handyman and the small farmer. Interestingly, they don’t sell tractors (online anyway). Imagine a walmart merchandized for the Midwest- but without the human food. They compete with the homedepots and petcos. Keep in mind that huge farms buy wholesale, so they wouldn’t buy bulk supplies from TSC. Most of TSC’s business is done through their B&M stores.

The Creative & Branding

The creative for Tractor Supply Company is solid; that is perfect for its brand. The space on the sides is used well- it is the side of a barn and it is light-almost white. Nice. Right away, I get that I can buy “country-living stuff”…but that is mostly because of what the word “tractor” conveys, and the slight barn feel from the side creative of the website. There are products on the site, which is good.

If I have any concern it is that the category is not completely defined for me in a 3 second glance. Can I buy hunting supplies here? Camping supplies? Maybe a tagline like “everything you need for the farm, except the land”. A better-defined, pared-down top navigation might go a long way to helping the creative and brand too. (More on this later).

The ‘know how’ section has a lot of good pics that shows off the vibe of your brand. You have to incorporate that into the site better. You could even use these as a homepage banner for a couple of days and see how it does. A manly-man picking up hay pushes your brand just as much as instructions on how to redeem your giftcards.

The primary color of TSC is red which is appropriate. I might check out other brands that are red (like target) and see how they used red on their website. You want to try to use your reds and greens judiciously, our eyes gravitate there.

Let’s take a peak at where they miss on creative…on the clothing:

Clothes Look Good on Models

This picture shows that they are somewhat inconsistent about how they display their clothing. Some clothing is on models, some isn’t. I’d imagine that the ones that are are vendor shots. Here is a good rule of thumb for people selling clothing: Always show your clothing on models. It looks better, the quality looks better, and it converts better.

Secondly, when TSC uses a model, they make the creative decision to cut off her face. Presumably this is to show more of the product in the pic or so that the customer can concentrate on the product not the model. This is the wrong decision. It is distracting. Test it…

Several years ago a competitor of mine used this same logic-they photoshopped the heads off all the models. Well, one day they must have hired a new creative director and they reshot every pic on their site to include the model’s faces. They gained marketshare. Will this always work? I am not certain, but I would test it.

The Navigation

I don’t think “horse” should be a primary category on any site unless you are selling live animals. I could see “Pets & Livestock” or an “animals” section. I might make my nav- Hardware, Lawn/Garden, Animal supplies, Clothing, Vehicles & Parts.   Then everything would be a subsection of those…I think you could fit almost everything into one of those things and it would make it much quicker to find on the site. Now I can quickly know, “do they sell guns”? No. “Do they sell tents?” No.

Multichannel

The site is adaptive, but not responsive. For a multichannel retailer I would use both. At the top of the homepage you can see it tells me where my closest store is. It also looks like they are just testing out “free ship to store” or in-store fulfillment. I am not sure I would test that during q4 but whatever.

Here is a pic of the category page:

The biggest problem I have with this display is that both online and in store welders are in the default view. Online-only should be the default and “all” should be the alternative. I would also set rules so that when all is selected, online always appears first. Get the bosses to agree then set the attributes correctly.

The only reason you need these additional attributes is for in-store fulfillment, and I am certain the customer doesn’t need to see those 5 options (just online and all inventory). On the backend I am not even sure you need these attributes to fulfill orders at the store anyways (if this is what we are going for here).

The Product Page

See the alternate pics that are available to view? These are fun, and they do not cost a lot extra to produce. The vendor shots that come with the staged families are great, but for your other products just shoot two different angles so I can get a better feel for the product. Most of the products don’t have them.

Again, like The Vitamin Shoppe, TSC has an active community that likes to talk about their products…you need to have the default view display these reviews. (At least on the desktop…hide them on mobile devices if you must).

You also have the product manual on this page…that’s a cool feature that is kind of hard to find.

There is another cool thing that is going on here, but it feels like it is still in test phase…you can click the “check store availability”:

This didn’t appear to perform any calculation…either that or their erp system is lightning fast. I am not certain whether it is saying “Yes we carry these here” or “Yes these are currently in stock at this moment”. If it is checking inventory, you could automatically check the inventory of the customers cart with your local store and offer them options like at checkout:

• Want to pick it up at the store today for free? (if everything is in inventory at the local store)
• Want to pick it up at the store in 5 days for free? (if you need to ship stuff to local store)
• Just ship it to me now and ill pay.

That would be cool!

Conclusion:

There is a lot going right. I think we could help the branding on the site by pushing the manly men pics and also tightening up the nav. Let people know instantly that they are in the right spot. Also, spend a little money for models and extra angles of product photos.

I am not certain what their multichannel capabilities are, but given the hints in the website, I have provided a couple applications to make it smoother for the customer. Make sure the customer experience on the web is solid then worry about them getting to the store. Either is hard to do well.

Also, celebrate and feature your customer reviews. They differentiate you from competitors and that helps conversions and increases engagement.

Two last tangential notes: It appears it is trying to install Silverlight and/or use an adobe plugin my cart. I am not sure why, just tell me what it is for. (I also would have another question- why not sell guns and camping gear? But this is a true question, not a suggestion based on any data…I would need to see analytics to see if your customers want that).

To contact me: eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

The Vitamin Shoppe is a multi-channel retailer that sells vitamins and supplements. They have a brick and mortar and an ecommerce presence. I’ll only be talking about their website, but the effects the website have on the B&M are important.

Again, standard disclaimer-this writeup probably sounds more negative than positive, it isn’t meant to. This isn’t a SWOT analysis, it is the “how I’d improve my favorite stores” series. Also, all comments are based on desktop, because, well, this analysis has to end sometime.

Brand

There are a ton of vitamin companies. Since the B&M came first…before the web, lets try to get a feel for what the brand is about by taking a look at the aesthetic of their stores. This might be a good place to start. Here is their logo above. (I believe this is their most current one).

Simple, classy. I notice the distinct looking “V” and the spelling of “shoppe”. I also note the blue and orange.

Let’s take a peak inside a store:

I am not a visual merchandiser, but I certainly note the blue and orange. The pics on the wall are of healthy, happy people and the “V”. Note, not all vitamin companies go for the “healthy, happy people” vibe. Beachbody.com and bodybuilding.com go for “ripped and hot…and healthy”. Note the two big sections on the wall mentioning “Vitamins and Supplements” and “Herbs and Homeopathy”. And of course, they carry tightly displayed vitamins. I don’t see any sales mentioned.

So I think we have some idea of the branding. At the very least it is orange and blue, healthy happy people are important, and the products they sell are vitamins, supplements and herbs”. I would recognize another Vitamin Shoppe if I saw it. If I were a vitamin shopper, I’d know this was a reputable brand if I walked past it in the mall and I’d go shop.

The Website:

I see the logo in the top left. Good. But I don’t see any other instances of those oranges or blues. (The links don’t count…I don’t think they are the same color blue). On the sides of the website, that is not tire tread or walkway tread, it is a series of “V”s. But not The Vitamin Shoppe V’s. It is clever but it misses. Not because you can’t instantly tell what it is. These “easter eggs” can be fun. The reason it is a miss is because I feel the vibe is “urban” or “trucker” rather than happy and healthy. Also, it should incorporate orange and/or blue.

The Creative

The creative is busy. I mentioned in my review of party city that the creative was too busy. That is a stylistic choice that their brand has chosen. I questioned whether toning it down a bit would lead to higher conversions. In this case, The Vitamin Shoppe’s brand is “simple and classy” were the words I went with.

In the next pic we come closer to the vitamin shoppe vibe. Notice what the only difference is. There is orange in the banner and it is less busy (but still busy):

A couple notes on the creative. Our eyes go to red use it once on something important. One more note on the creative. I have found that creative gets worse the more people that get involved. It is usually the creative and the acquisition people have conflicting performance incentives or instructions. While I am an acquisition guy first, I have found that nothing makes my life easier than a nice looking site. So I tend to be a mostly silent advocate of the creative team.

The Navigation

I don’t have the aid of analytics but I am pretty certain what the nav should look like. Vitamins, Supplements, Herbs and Food should be the four primary categories. (I am assuming that supplements are different than vitamins?) Those four categories should be bold and on the left. It appears people must search by brand and health concern.

Those are two great categories, but they still need to be to the right of those other categories. It just makes sense. I’d need more space to prove why, if this is not apparent. I like weight being in the top nav since I imagine most people are here for that reason, but I would try to limit the others. Make it a feature on the homepage.

The SEO & The Category Page

The technical SEO is a strength of the site. In one sense that is fantastic because you get free traffic, but sometimes your seo is so good that you don’t want to touch your site for fear that Google will wipe out your work. Free money really is that good!

One aspect of the SEO is puzzling. The lack of the use of the words ‘weight loss’ or ‘diet’. That has to be purposeful. Perhaps to get around child-blockers or google adwords restrictions? Hmm.

I have a feeling this (the good seo results) explains some of the decisions regarding the top navigation. You can see the benefits and the power of the top nav and how it can influence google’s rankings. Remember though, the point of making adjusting the site-including the top nav- is to improve customer experience and hopefully conversion rate.

Knowing this what would I do?

Ugh.

It would 100% depend on the analytics, and even then I am not sure the analytics could tell you everything you need to know. You would have to do a test which would involve redesigning your site and sending half your traffic to the new temporary site and seeing if the conversion rate improves well enough to justify making radical changes. Most companies can’t afford that. Or you could take a leap of faith. I don’t know if I’d do that either.

What I might start off with is removing one of the top nav sections (lets say the ‘kids and pets’) and moving it somewhere else…maybe a feature on the homepage. I’d wait three months and see what the damage is…concentrate on off-page SEO. If organic traffic remains flat, I’d pull the next section. The downside to this approach is that I do not think you’ll see a corresponding increase in conversion until the top nav is completely sorted out and pretty.

The Product Page

I think this page could be improved. It’s cluttered. But I want to draw attention to one huge missed opportunity. It turns out there is a huge community here that is participating in talking about this product and I really have to stumble upon it to notice it. I have circled it above. There have been 4 questions and 52 answers about this product! That is a big deal. Where are the comments? I want to see those and the stars when I come to the page. This should be the default view.

Conclusion

I’d like to see more orange and blue. Simple. Give the creative team the instructions “classy and simple” from now on…and fewer words. No one reads on the internet. And more pictures of healthy people. Simple.

The navigation is tough. I really think there is opportunity here but it would take a lot of study to determine how much to change it. I bet we could improve the product page with a little TLC…and money. And if your community is that big you have to show it off.

contact me at eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

Party City is a multichannel retailer that sells party goods. They have a brick and mortar and an ecommerce presence. I’ll be talking about their website. Again, standard disclaimer-this writeup probably sounds more negative than positive. This isn’t a SWOT analysis, it is the “how I’d improve my favorite stores” series. Also, all comments are based on desktop, because, well, this analysis has to end sometime.

The Creative and Site Merchandising

I think the biggest challenge for “party sites” like Party City is to find the right balance between conveying ‘fun’ while still maintaining solid design practices. For example, does anyone ever want to party this hard?:

(click all pics to zoom)

There is a physical limit to how much information I (or anyone) can process when I look at an image. I think Party City is pushing the boundaries towards “too much fun”. (Though I am a boring person)

Obviously this isn’t a technical website problem, but my stance is if I see it or it affects my web sales it is a web problem. I might want to discuss what works on the web and what doesn’t with the creative team. Is it possible I am wrong- that the extremely busy look is just what the party crown wants? Maybe. The biggest issue here is that there is a 50% off offer that I did not notice until just now, after looking at it for the 20^th time. See it there?

On the whole, the physical merchandising displays too are very busy. I understand that this is the style for this type of store but I wonder if we are still going overboard. We don’t need to show every item in a collection on the homepage. We can tease it by showing a few items and getting the customer to click through to see more. Remember, people can only buy by adding things to the cart, so lets try to move them that way.

To sum up, more blank space in all online creatives.

The Homepage

If we take a look at the homepage of any business, what do I want the customer to see? First, I want a customer to quickly know what we sell. I get that they sell party supplies. Good. Can you tell that Party City sells costumes? It seems kind of hidden there. It is not apparent to me that every party supply store would sell costumes, so we either have to point that out or create a new web business for those alone. (Or both). It is possible that this is a new throw-away category that they are testing out. But if not, I think we need to highlight it better. (more on this later)

The Navigation

What are some types of parties I might have? A birthday party, an anniversary party…okay so “Occasion” should be a category in some way. They have a “special occasions” section, but birthdays are not under that section. I think birthday is a really big occasion. So they tried to make it its own category. Your primary nav is not the place to do this. Your primary nav must be functional by categories. It appears that they may have separated things out how they do in the physical store (I am guessing).

Continuing on, theme is another way I might want to look for supplies. Gender might be another. Or gender can be an attribute we use to sort once they get to the category page. (Or is gender a theme?)

So I think we could narrow down the nav to “Search by Occasion”, “Search by Theme”, Costumes & Supplies. Once they click on search by occasion, then I’d show them all the options like birthdays and weddings. I just discovered they sell candy too. That should be one of the top tabs. One tab should be “candy”. One could argue that it is a party supply and put it under there, but that is not what we want. When people arrive on the homepage we want them to know we sell candy-it is a pretty big category. Thus it belongs in the top nav.

Party Supplies, Costumes, Candy are the three primary categories I would go with as well as two supplemental “search by occasion” and “search by theme”..and maybe sales. See? It is tough to keep the number of categories low. Each of these would have many subcategories.

Category Pages:

It is easy to miss what is happening here. Maybe that means whatever party city is doing it working?! First I want to draw a quick distinction. I call the category page the (usually) dynamic page that lists your products. It is sortable and filterable. You should recognize it. Here is Zappos‘:

This is different than what I call a “category landing page”. These are not sortable and usually maintained similar to how you manage your homepage. You’ll recognize it. (Some companies call them the “category page” and the “subcategory page” respectively. I don’t think there is universal agreement on this point. Whatever.) Here is REI.com:

Some companies ignore the category landing page- usually smaller companies due to time constraints- but I have never seen a company not use a category page. Party City does sometimes. For some of their party supplies they use solely a category landing page categorization while for their costumes they use a traditional category page.

Is this a next-level marketing technique? Probably not. While I do think that the traditional category page will continue to evolve, I am not certain this is the best choice. It was probably made because they believe their items are not easily categorizable (I am guessing). But everything is categorizable. For example, I may want to search to see what Hershey’s Candy they sell, or what red licorice they have. You can’t make a category for everything. That is what the traditional, sort-able category page is good for.

Using the Site: UI/UX

Say I want to look at all their balloons:

I click under party supplies>balloons and arrive at a category landing page above. So far so good. I don’t see an option for all balloons (that’s fine…some companies do that) so I’ll click on the first link because I just want to get to some balloons. So I click on girls birthday balloons:

Hmm…another landing page. Okay, not my favorite way to go but some of the companies I admire most seem to put you in an endless maze of landing pages sometimes (zappos, victorias secret) so Ill go with it. I’ll click on the Frozen Balloons banner because I want to buy some balloons:

Hmm…another landing page. One more time? I’ll click on those cute purple balloons:

The Product Page

Not what I was expecting, but I have seen companies I admire use this quick view default as their product page setup (lane Bryant did this at one time though you had to add to cart from a traditional category page, if I remember correctly). Usually this “quick view” option is not the default on desktop computers. I would only use this after a lot of testing. Even if it converted better I’d still tell my analysts to run the tests again just to be sure.

Conclusion

So, I think the big problem is the categorization. People can’t buy if they can’t get to the product page. Also, we want to reduce the number of categories in the top nav so that we can quickly communicate to the viewer that we sell candy and costumes.

Usually we want to reduce the amount of steps to get to the cart. We also want to utilize the category page more often than the category landing page. I’d default to the traditional product page, but I could be convinced otherwise. I would also explore toning down the creative but we could hammer this out in an A/B testing environment since I am least certain about this conclusion and it can be easily tested. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached.

To comment contact me at eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

Zoro Tools Homepage (Click all pics to zoom)

The Branding
The fox is a good branding tool. Kind of like the Travelocity gnome. I would like to see a universal look for the fox. That might require hiring 1 designer to do all the “fox-art”, or spending some time making a cool logo with the fox peeking out behind the letter “O”. Then just have the fox in the logo.

The current logo could be improved by making all of the letters some sort of tool…not just the two “O”s. Like ladders and a hammer? A designer would love this assignment.

The Creative
On the whole, the creative on the site does not match the intended audience. On the homepage the sections (or aisles in a hardware store) are represented by cartoon art. I am not certain if that is meant to be a differentiator or a placeholder. I would go with real photos of tools when possible rather than drawings for this company.

The creative for the promotions is great if the target audience was my grandmother. She loves snowmen! The problem is that men shop here. Not just any men…masculine men- men who use tools. These men don’t like frilly and hippy things- they like metal, tools, cars, sports and women. The vibe of the site should be more like that (though I’d leave off the women). The site needs to look sleek, not hokey. And the homepage needs pictures of tools on it!

Navigation
Let’s talk about the navigation, because I think it is a miss. There are two ways to go with navigation. One is to try to simplify everything for ease of use and understanding. The other is to try to artificially inflate your navigation so as to potentially improve your SEO. For a category this large (hardware) you must choose number one. We have to make sure we can simplify the navigation while retaining the seo. But how?

On the homepage, there is some seo value in the blue text links under the category. E.g., if you look under the category “gloves and safety apparel” there is a link “work gloves”… that has seo value.

The problem is that this section is a mess. There is too much information for me to parse as is. How I would solve this is to hide the blue links and only have them appear once you hover or click the “gloves and safety apparel” section.

This would free up so much room to merchandize the homepage better and I would not be so overwhelmed with options on how to find my stuff. If I wanted a safety helmet I could hover over the “gloves and safety apparel section” see and if it is in there. If not, maybe I could hover over safety equipment and the gloves section would collapse. This seems a lot cleaner.

Top Nav

The “all categories” dropdown goes for seo again. When I select it, all I see is a wall of text. Ideally, this would list the exact 16 primary categories that are listed on your homepage with a similar visual icon next to it.

A secondary flyout could popup showing the subcategories once you select the primary category you want to explore further.

The SEO links on the secondary flyout can be a little longer, but for the primary nav I would aim for trying to communicate the category in as few letters as possible.
Category Page

The category pages are mostly good. I might try to incorporate more attributes. E.g., maybe some products have an attribute like color or size. Zoro Tools carries a lot of products so that would help.

Product Page

The product page is interesting. It is very functional IF you take the time to figure out what is going on. The problem is that nobody does that. The problem that Zoro has is that some products have multiple features and sizes and you have to communicate if you carry that option and if it is in stock. This problem is hard enough to simplify for the customer, though I think they do a good job.

What I would do differently is hide the “buy in bulk” grid when someone first arrives at the page so that customers are not so overwhelmed. Have a link that says buy in bulk next to the ‘add to cart’ button and then the grid can display. Even if the majority of customers are buying things in bulk, I think this is the way to go. Again, this is a lot of information to process. Here is how it would look “hidden”:

Better?

Conclusion:
Great store, but everything can improve. Also, most of these ideas can be safely tested. To comment, email me at eric (dot) zwickler (at sign) gmail (dotcom).

This is a common problem for small and medium size businesses. Often the HIPPOS (Highest Paid Person In the Organization) will insist that there is a lot of “feel” involved. There isn’t. It is math.

Don’t tell them. They get upset.

Today we’ll be talking only about re-ordering products we already carry. We are not addressing buying products we have never carried before. In accounting it is called “merchandise inventory”.

Calculating Ideal Stock Levels

The basic equation you need to know is:

Ideal inventory= (sales/day) (time to reorder) +(safety stock)*

The first thing I need to do is to calculate how many Hammer1234 I sell per day. Obviously every day I will sell a different number and every week I will average a different number but for now I just need “the number”. I can look at the last 90 days and see that I have sold 400 hammers. Not bad. I sell about 4.4/day. But I remember that I was out of stock for a lot of that time, so that number must be low. We will have to error on the high side. I probably sell closer to 5/day. (Days where I don’t have stock don’t count as days I can sell).

So in the past 90 days, it turns out that I have been out of stock 9 days. Now I will redo the math: (400/(90-9))= 5/day

“That is great, but how does that tell me how much stock I should buy?”

Patience.

The next thing we need to know is how long it takes from the time you reorder the hammer till the time you are able to sell it again. In this case we buy Hammer1234 from China. It takes 30 days to reorder. This includes all of the following:

1. Place phone call to vendor
2. Vendor makes product
3. Vendor loads products
4. Vendor ships product and travels to your warehouse
5. Your receiving team unloads.
6. Your inventory team counts them, enters them and puts them in warehouse.
7. Web team marks it as available on website.

The total amount of time from step 1 to 7 is 30 days for Hammer1234. Other products are different.

What this means is that if I run out of stock today it will take me 30 days to get a new supply. Since I am selling 5/day that means I will have lost 150 sales (30×5). 150 is also an important number because that tells me the minimum amount of hammers I must have in stock at any one time to avoid being backordered if I sell 5/day from this vendor.**

A Little More Depth: Safety Stock

Most companies would not keep 150 in stock. You probably need more to make sure that you have a hammer for everyone, or to cover any eventualities. Usually losing a sale is worse than carrying too much inventory. So, you might want to add some “safety stock”. Some companies just carry a certain extra percentage of each sku. There are more advanced ways to determine the best number just like there are more advanced models to determine the amount of hammers you sold per day. That is for another discussion. For this, I’ll recommend 5% safety stock: (5%x150=7.5). Obviously I can’t order half a hammer so Ill round up and buy 8 Hammer1234 of safety stock.

Ideal Stock = (sales/day) (time to reorder) +(safety stock)

Ideal Stock=(5) (30)  + 8

Ideal Stock= 158 hammers

Conclusion

At any one time I need to have 158 hammers in stock to avoid backorders. As the orders/day changes I can raise or lower my inventory levels to accommodate. The more often I make this calculation, the better I am able to know what my ideal inventory level should be! You can also see what variables you can use to be more efficient with cash flow: choose a vendor closer to home (or someone who ships quicker), carry less safety stock and take inventory as often as you are able to order. I suppose selling fewer is always an option, but that is rarely ideal.

*There is one more factor that we didn’t consider, as most products don’t have to worry about it-shelf life or “freshness”. For example, those who sell flowers or fish have an added layer of complexity since their products spoil. This will effect inventory level calculations quite a bit, but this would take it beyond an intermediate level.

**This is obviously a simplification for ease of understanding. It assumes you can only count inventory 1/month or that you are only able to re-order 1/month. Reasonable assumptions, but not always true. I could reorder from China every day and keep 5 hammers in stock and pay a lot of shipping costs.