In the second and final part of this interview with Beth Guastella, the recently named president and COO of giggle, a specialty retaile
I had the opportunity to chat recently with Beth Guastella, the recently named president and chief operating officer of giggle, an omnichannel specialty retailer of upscale baby products and resources. In part one of this two-part blog post, we discuss what attracted Guastella to giggle; what specialty retail is; and how giggle’s catalog business works.
It's not for a tablet. That's what you should be thinking about when you're designing your tiny little product page, with its tiny real estate to work with on the tiny screen. "Tiny" is relevant here because you have an important internal decision to make, one that many other companies are dealing with right now with budgets, short-term tactical implementation and long-term strategy. Should you have different product pages for smartphones and tablets?
With the help of The Dingley Press, we conducted a study to determine how many catalogs it prints that still include some type of order form. We found that almost half of our fairly large sample size have no inside ink-jet or order form insert, but they do have an order form printed on-page in the catalog. Another 18.5 percent use a bind-in order form. In summary, 71.5 percent of the catalogs we surveyed use an order form; only 28.5 percent have eliminated the order form entirely.
The printed catalog is the main driver of traffic to the web. However, with all of the other touchpoints available to consumers today, how do we really know the impact of catalog mailings on web sales? And why do we give so much credit to the print catalog? There are a few reasons why:
One of the universal truths I see is a lack of understanding by many marketers, from newbie to experienced, of what their website is really for. I know, I know, marketers always say the right thing: It's about conversion. When I look at their website and ask them what their site conversion rate is, I hear them proudly state, "I convert 2 percent, look how good I'm doing!" (And of course some marketers don't even know what their site conversion rate is.)
It's official: J.C. Penney scrapped its every-day-low-price strategy for the rollercoaster world of markups and markdowns. Merchants, marketers and graphic artists waited with bated breath, hoping J.C. Penney could make this strategy work. Imagine the time it would save! Price changes and errors would be a thing of the past.
Merchants and marketers need each other. On the most brilliant days of brand building, they share a brain and become united as one to create and deliver the very best offer to consumers. When this happens, they become "merchketeers."
The honest answer is that they're all right, and that’s a very frustrating answer.
When you evaluate customer spend on an incremental basis, you quickly find that new channels provide little incremental value in the early stages of development. What happens is that brand loyalty counts for so much more than does the excitement of new channels.
