How A&E's Online Store raised Conversion Rates by 50%


The A&E store team has the unenviable task of running three stores
in one, supporting the network's main brands: A&E Network, The
History Channel, and Biography.

To add another layer of complexity, their customer base is a diverse
and vocal lot, covering everyone from Thunderbird fanatics to
history buffs.

Though conversion rates were good by industry standards in 2003, the
team had two nagging doubts about the store; was a tri-branded site
confusing visitors? And were they losing sales because the
storefront couldn't serve all brands and customer segments equally?
According to a lab-based usability project, the answers were yes and
yes. Here are four steps So Young Park and her team took to tackle
the problem.

-> Step #1. Introduce dynamic storefronts

Park says, "In the past, if you went to the store, whether you typed
in shophistorychannel.com or shopbiography.com, you'd get the same
storefront and it was tri-branded with A&E Network, The History
Channel and Biography logos at the top."

Now visitors still reach a single store - with a multi-brand
navigational menu and product database - but the branding and
content on the front page depends on the URL they followed.

For example, clicking on the "store" link at the Biography site gets
you to the store and access to all 5,500 products from across the
various brands. But the store displays Biography-only branding
(logos) and the products and promotions featured on the front page
also only reflect the Biography brand and offerings.

o Brand consistency:
Park says matching the logos to visitor expectations isn't really
about immediate conversions..."People are more concerned about the
show, series or product...they don't come into the store and say,
'I'm going to shop for an A&E title'."

"But from a brand perspective, we do want to be consistent. It was
important to negate some of the confusion around being in a (single
brand) content site and then coming to a tri-branded store..."

o Better integration with TV:
Since storefront content is now brand-specific, it's easier for
Park's team to do more integrated promotions with on-air marketing.
She explains, "We might host a sweepstakes in the store for The
History Channel on-air. It's much easier to do these brand
promotions on the network side when we have the ability to have
"different stores", even though we're all one site."

Dynamic storefronts also let the "store" better promote viewership,
as much as sales. Park says, "The different networks are premiering
big shows in the same week. It's hard for one storefront that has a
generic look to be able to communicate three different premieres on
three networks."

She adds, "Consistency of messaging that supports viewership as well
as product sales - that's very valuable."

o Targeted content and promotions:
"Whenever someone sees something that airs and they want to buy it,
they can go to the store. But you can't on one storefront possibly
display what you think someone might be most likely to buy."

Dynamic storefronts means better targeting..."so if you're coming
from A&E, what's displayed to you on the storefront is going to be
A&E specific. The rest of the store is still merchandised smartly,
but not necessarily by brand."

Do dynamic storefronts impact on online promotions? Park says they
just have to be more careful about plugging in the right landing
pages for brand-based keyword buys (PPCSE buys drive 10% of the
store's revenues).

-> Step #2. Modify site architecture and navigation
The usability tests also found some problems with site design, so
Park's team took the opportunity to introduce some layout tweaks
into the new "stores." Here are a couple of the things they
learned...

o Some people ignore Javascript dropdowns:

Previously, the store menu had a "shop by show" link with a dropdown
menu list of all the relevant shows. Park says, "People would
sometimes not notice the dropdown. They weren't noticing it, were
not clicking on it and were not shopping that way."

Now clicking on the "shop by show" link takes you to an actual page
with an alphabetical show directory.

o More people ignore graphics:

The previous storefront featured a huge center-page graphic
highlighting, for example, a key premiere-related product line. It's
a common tactic on many online stores.

Park notes, "People came to the storefront and would completely
ignore the thing. And we were really surprised because if you look
at it objectively, no way could you miss it, right?"

So why did they? "...because they think they're advertisements,"
says Park.

The same applied for smaller navigational graphics representing
product categories in the menu. "People were spending time
internally creating them and making them look nice - it was a big
waste of time."

The new storefront has barely any graphics that aren't actual
product images.

Park adds, "It's amazing what comes out when you see real people
using your site in the context that they would if they were really
shopping."

She warns that usability tests have to involve people using the site
in the most natural way possible..."not a fake setting where you sit
someone down in front of a computer, start them at your store and
say, 'can you find Pride and Prejudice?' They go to search, type in
'Pride and Prejudice', and you go, 'Great, my site worked fine'."

-> Step #3. Start collecting customer profile data

Park's team want to extend the dynamic content concept, so that
website and email content alike automatically adjusts to the profile
of the visitor.

Customers can now, for example, select up to 22 genres of interest
when they open an account. And opt-ins to the email newsletter can
also select their preferred TV brand and media (DVD or video) during
registration.

Park's already sending targeted emails out based on brand
preference. Unsurprisingly, they perform much better than the
generic tri-branded store newsletter, converting at over 10% and
making a big contribution to the 12% of store revenues driven by the
email list.

-> Step #4. Test, test, test

Park's team are using the dynamic storefronts to fine tune their
understanding of effective promotional offers, copy and presentation
through a self-styled "marketing deathmatch."

Essentially this means A/B testing to "figure out what sorts of
creative and messaging work better in which situations and to which
segment of people."

Park explains, "Let's say we do an A/B test on a piece of creative
that normally resides in a certain spot on a page and we keep the
offer identical, and the messaging identical, but we make the
creative different (one's blue, one's green). We run it for a while
and see that green is really performing much better in that spot."

"But let's say we try that same green creative on a different page
with a different segment of people - it doesn't perform so well.
Over time you start to build up information like people build up a
profile about a customer. In our case, we're building up a profile
around different spots on a page and different ways that we display
offers or products."

And how have all these changes and initiatives worked out? Park
says, "We saw a conversion increase of over 50% on our branded
storefronts versus the default."

She concludes, "About a year ago, it was 'personalization is dead.'
What we're not trying to do is one-to-one personalization - it's
hard to manage and costly. But with the right technology, there are
smart ways you can segment and do things more dynamically."

Note: A&E is a member of Shop.org, a forum for retailing online
executives to share information, lessons-learned, new perspectives,
insights and intelligence. More info at http://www.shop.org

http://ShopAETV.com (A&E Network storefront)
http://ShopBiography.com (Biography storefront)
http://ShopHistoryChannel.com (The History Channel storefront)
http://store.aetv.com/html/home/index.jhtml (actual store)