About
With 2M members, Fab tips the awareness scale as direct traffic passes emails:
We believe that the rise in direct traffic is because of 3 reasons:
- Mobile visits now account for nearly 1/3 of all visits.
- More and more people are just typing in www.fab.com into their browser at 11am ET / 8am PT each day instead of waiting to click on our emails.
- With 2 million members now, growing by 450,000 in January 2012 alone, we’ve reached a bit of a tipping point in general awareness of Fab.”
Stepping up
Making its outdated e-commerce system flexible enough to handle new, advanced features was a top priority for Frye, a maker of boots, shoes and accessories since 1863 and an online retailer since 2001. For a decade Frye used an internally designed e-commerce platform that included a basic shopping cart and an order management system that supported an inventory of about 1,200 products. But the platform’s content management system was outdated, its site search engine rudimentary and there was no easy way to roll out social media or advanced features such as product recommendations, says Frye digital director Andrew Tarica.
Frye’s biggest priority was replacing its five-year-old internal infrastructure with a new commercial e-commerce platform. In particular, Frye wanted an e-commerce platform that could utilize web services, a technology that lets disparate applications, often from different companies, communicate without a lot of custom programming. Frye also wanted to make better use of custom application programming interfaces, or APIs, the connectors between applications, to roll out social media, richer site content and more tightly integrated systems. After eight months of working with its new e-commerce platform provider, CreateThe Group, a New York e-commerce application development and Internet marketing company with expertise in the apparel and accessories market, Frye rolled out an overhauled platform in August.
The new e-commerce platform features advanced site search that lets consumers narrow their product search by style, size, color or heel height, and a product recommendations tool that targets shoppers with specific types of merchandise based on their past shopping history and other relevant data. More important, Frye’s new e-commerce platform is now better integrated with the company’s other information systems: its enterprise resource planning software for accounting and other business functions, and its warehouse management, customer relationship management and call center systems.
Better e-commerce technology enables Frye to quickly post new promotions to its Facebook page, lets shoppers share their product comments and wish lists with friends and family using Facebook and Twitter, and send personalized pre-order and back-order e-mail messages to shoppers. “A better e-commerce platform means we can now communicate with customers across a host of touch points,” Tarica says.
“We have the ability to add social media and really target the shopper with our deep understanding of the Frye brand or with personalized promotions,” Tarica adds. “As an online retailer, we are no longer hindered by an outdated e-commerce platform.”
The new system has led to a big jump in several key e-commerce performance categories, Tarica says. Since the new platform went live, the number of monthly visits year over year to Frye.com has increased by about 200% to 1 million from 333,000 and monthly gross web sales have increased by 90%, although Frye wouldn’t disclose a specific amount.
Shop our clients for the Holidays! Debeers… “A Diamond Is Forever” www.DeBeers.com
Expanding to new global territories carries with it a mix of big rewards and high risk. Branching out into new corners of the globe requires heavy research into laws and customs as well as detailed logistical planning. Here are six key factors to consider before taking your e-commerce operation worldwide.
Online sales Monday are expected to top last year’s total of $1 billion, with many retailers seeing double-digit increases.
The Details Make the Dandy.
createthe group launches its first global ecommerce project. Featuring multilanguage support, 6 currencies and partnered distribution centers in US, Europe and Asia.
