Kohl's
Online sales are becoming more important than they ever have
before. A total of 96%, YES 96%, of Americans in some way shop online (Kelly,
2017) This means online sales are becoming more and more important to
retailors. In today’s world you can even buy your groceries online. In order to
stay in the game, retailors are having to make sure their websites are running
at top notch and their analytics are set up correctly to receive all the vital
information coming from their online users.
However, with 96% of Americans shopping online, 65% of their
shopping budget is still spent in an actual store (Kelly, 2017). A company that
I think is utilizing this situation well is Kohl’s. How do I think they are
doing this well? Kohl’s offers buy online and pick up in store. Why is this
great? People do not have to pay a shipping fee.
The problem with buying online is the horrible fee called
shipping. In fact, 58% of Americans neglect to buy something online if they
have to pay for shipping (Kelly, 2017.) I personally do not buy online for
shipping costs. To me, that ten dollars I just paid for shipping could be
another shirt in my closet. Some stores will offer free shipping after you
spend a certain amount, but this can still be a turn off. This is why being able to purchase online but
not have to pay the shipping fee is a nice set up for people. Kohl’s has a
pretty high number of $75 to reach free shipping. I would assume they looked at
their web data to help make that decision. I would say they looked to see how
much their average customers would spend online to make the shipping rate seem
reasonable to most of their customers.
In 2015 web sales for Kohl’s was 14.7% of their annual sales
(Enright, 2016). The national average for online sales in the United States verses
in store purchases is 8.5% in 2017 (Y Charts, 2017). This makes Kohl’s to be
almost double the average percentage for the nation. Also, 28% of their
customers that ordered online, but picked up in store, purchased addition items
when arriving at the store to pick up their purchase (Enright, 2016)
With the goal of customers purchasing online and picking up
in-store, I would believe Kohl’s would be tracking this goal conversion for
their web analytics. They would have the basic sale for a conversion, and then
a sale that required an in-store pick up. They would have funnels set up to
track the differences in users that used shipping or in-store pickup. I think a
lot of their analytics would revolve around this besides the basic, how many
users purchases shoes than shirts.
When on the Kohl’s website, you would think that since
in-store pick up seems to be a good money maker for them, that they would emphasis
it more on their homepage. It is seen on the subpages where you can purchase an
item. It is mentioned at the top of the screen and the left of the screen. One
the product pages themselves, it also mentions “free store pickup” right beside
the generic shipping option. This is great, but for me, I am not going to even
bother to look at your site if I don’t know first hand that I could pick up
in-store. I think they could add some type of a larger button on the homepage
and measure it’s metrics to see how well it performs.
(Kohls, 2017)
As far as Kohl’s web analytics go, by viewing their metrics
on Similar Web, Kohl’s has 31.32% of their traffic coming from paid advertising
(Similar Web, 2017). What’s interesting is their top four organic keywords,
match their top four paid keywords. I think it is crazy that as a company you
now have to pay for your own name as a keyword. However, it makes sense that
you want to stay #1. Just because you are #1 organically, does not mean you
will win #1 in paid. Kohl’s does not someone being in front of them for using
their own name.
(Similar Web, 2017)
What is also interesting is only 1.37% of their traffic
comes from social sites (Similar Web, 2017). I think that with the growth of
online sales and millineuals being so social centric, Kohl’s could step up
their social media referrals. Facebook is their main social site that they do
they best from which is not surprising being that it is the most used social
media platform. I also think to help Kohl’s with SEO traffic, they could start
a blog. I know that stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s have “How To” blogs. Kohl’s
could do some type of fashion blog. They could then post their blog stories on
social media to help get more social media referrals.
Overall, Kohl’s page visits have been pretty steady over the
last 6 months. I think they could pay attention to what funnels are doing the
best and really try and emphasis those particular pathways to users the most.
It is great to be steady, but you want to try and see an uphill rise as much as
possible. Kohl’s also would need to pay attention to if these users are new or
returning.
As far as looking at location, 98% of Kohl’s users are from
the United States (Similar Web, 2017). They probably don’t pay much attention
to other nations, but really what states and cities they do the best in. This
would help them in their decision on where to build their next store. I would
assume they keep most of their paid advertising based in the United States
because that is where they generate the most traffic.
The bottom line is all retailers need to be at their best
when it comes it collecting data from their websites. Shopping online is
clearly the future of this world. Kohl’s seems to be doing well at the online
game, but everyone can still improve by utilizing the results of the web data.
References:
Enright, Allison.
(2016 Nov. 11) Kohls focuses on e-commerce efficiency and in-store pickup.
Retrieved from
Kelly, Leanna (2017, May 25) How Many People Shop Online.
Retrieved from
Kohls. 2017. Retrieved from https://www.kohls.com
Similar Web. (2017) Retrieved from https://www.similarweb.com/website/kohls.com
Y Charts. (2017)US
E-Commerce Sales as Percent of Retail Sales:
Retrieved from
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