Lamps Plus Gives Customers a Searchlight, Online and Off

Like so many of his cataloging colleagues, Dennis Swanson, president and owner of multichannel merchant Lamps Plus, originally thought his company’s Web site would serve customers only as an information portal. With 44 retail stores, Swanson figured customers would browse for lighting products online, but then buy them in his stores. Yet buy online they did.

Still, Swanson suspected that the number of online orders would increase if customers could more easily navigate through his site’s 4,000 SKUs.

The clincher came when he put a group of in-store sales reps online to offer live customer help. Sales doubled after a month. He realized the site was missing an important in-store element.

“When customers walk into a store, a good sales technique is to ask them what they’re looking for,” Swanson explains. “In an online environment, you have to emulate that process.”

So he went on the hunt for a good search solution.

From Retail to Online and Back Again

Swanson did his homework and implemented a search and navigation platform from solutions provider EasyAsk. Rather than simply matching a customer’s search query, EasyAsk results offer other product attributes the customer can use to refine his or her browsing.

To determine the most effective attributes to offer, Lamps Plus’ Webmaster spent some time with EasyAsk, testing a set of attributes fed to them by Swanson and his merchandising team. The collaborators found, interestingly enough, that broader search cues yielded better results than more narrow ones.

Swanson gives an example: Previously, if a customer had entered “bronze table lamp” into the search field on

lampsplus.com, about 400 results appeared.

But after implementing EasyAsk, the same query brings up additional attributes, such as name brand, price range and style, from which customers can drill down to find specific products that suit their tastes. Swanson notes this is exactly the process carried out by salespeople in Lamps Plus’ retail stores.

The integration spread further than just online imitation. Because its licensing agreement with EasyAsk covers hardware usage across all Lamps Plus’ channels, the company installed it at its in-store kiosks (six in each store). Retail salespeople then can formalize the drill-down process for customers who want to immediately find a product rather than browse. The system also allows customers to order online from the store if an item is out of stock.

Results

Within six months of implementation, Lamps Plus and EasyAsk had compiled a fairly impressive set of results including a 15-percent increase in sales and a 15-percent decrease in calls to its contact center.

Additionally, both companies report that Lamps Plus quickly paid for its overall investment in one month, while its kiosk investment was paid off within six months.

Lamps Plus also gleaned valuable channel insight from the implementation. For example, its online “Build Your Own Ceiling Fan” program now is available to store customers via the kiosks. In fact, it’s such a success the company now is developing a program enabling customers in both channels to build their own track-

lighting systems.

Looking Forward and Back

Lamps Plus intends to take search one step further by analyzing which product attributes customers are most interested in. One recent evaluation found that in one product category, customers were most interested in style — more so than even price. Within that category, they were most interested in “contemporary.” Considering that 50 percent of Lamps Plus’ products are designed and manufactured especially for the company, this information helps in crucial product-buying and product-development decisions.

Swanson looks forward to studying these and other results, and exploring more synergies between retail and the Web. “Our business is growing rapidly, mostly driven by repeat sales,” he affirms. “Good search builds repeat customers.”