Competitor Analysis - Demo Video

I wanted to let you know about a product I built two years ago and am re-launching this holiday. This product, DragonVista, powers the many screenshots on this blog.

The product enables marketers like you to stay on top of their competitors changing promotion and merchandising strategies.

For most marketers the holidays are your busiest time of the year.

It’s hard to keep up with competitors’ websites for changing promotions and merchandise. But, can you afford not to?

It’s hard to stay disciplined about surfing your competitors sites when you have so much else going on. Our application does it for you. For $11 per week we will track your competitors’ home pages and provide you with a weekly summary (sample).

In addition, you get access to our online archive dating back to Fall 2006. Check out our two-minute demo video. (Click on this link for a better resolution video than the Blogger video below.)

At only $99 for the nine week holiday period, if we help you save one sale each week, our tool has paid for itself. We are so confident that you’ll find value, we offer a 7-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.

Back-to-School Specials

The Back-to-School season is in full swing. My daughter starts school next Monday, and this week's Sunday paper was littered with FSIs promoting back to school.

It's striking how different the paper design of an FSI is compared to a web site. I always new this (web vs. catalog for all retailers), but the images are even more contrasted in the office supply space. Staples website looks like a dictionary compared to their jump-out-at-you circular. OfficeMax.com looks like an indexed binder. I'm sure these sites serve them well, but I expect that the coming years will change how we can interact with sites with an enormous amount of SKUs.

Office Depot's idea of back to school was free pizza.

Wal-Mart added College 08 ad. Target added a text ad on the left navigation and a college tab to their top navigation. The Target FSI focused on college dorm furnishing.

Amazon was another focused a variety of college oriented themes. JC Penney addressed both college (dorm life) and apparel for school. They also have a very interesting video advergame.

The visuals follow. (You can click on any image to see full screen.)

Stores Magazine President's column focused on back-to-school this month.

===================================================================

Advertisement: Free Holiday Snapshot for Retailers
My company is offering a free Holiday Snapshot for qualified retailers. See
http://thisweekinetail.blogspot.com/2008/08/review-your-competitors-2007-holiday.html

===================================================================


OfficeMax FSI


OfficeMax Website


Staples FSI



Staples Website


OfficeDepot Website


Target FSI


Target Website


Wal-Mart Website


Amazon Website


JCPenney Website


JCPenny Advergame Splash Page

Review Your Competitors 2007 Holiday Strategies

I've been on summer holiday, and haven't posted for quite a while. As the holiday season ramps up, I plan to get back to posting every week or so.

For those of you who are interested, I'm making available a piece of our website archive that supports this blog.

As the holiday season approaches, I imagine you have a lot of planning activities going on. An important foundation to this planning is competitive analysis. I believe I can help enhance your planning by giving you insight into your competitors’ web sites from last year’s holiday season.

As part of my software company, DragonVista, I have a compiled an archive of the Top 500 Internet Retailer home pages for the past two years. My gift to you is a 2007 Holiday Snapshot for one of your competitors. Click on Macys-Holiday-Snapshot-2007 for a sample. If you are interested, simply let me know the name of the website you would like to see. If it is in the archive, I will send you a Holiday Snapshot for free.

A review of your competitor's website from Holiday 2007 can provide

- insight into promotion strategies (e.g., when did they start to offer free shipping, and at what threshold?)
- information on their changing merchandising
- inspiration for new ideas of your own

If you are interested in your custom snapshot, just write to me via the "Suggest a Topic" box on the right. Please include the URL of the site you are interested in and your email address so I can send the Snapshot to you.

One Week Until Mother's Day - Websites from 05/03/08

Macy's & J.C. Penney have prominent Mother's Day sale events. (Screenshot below.)

Another 27 sites are quickly viewable in the Picasa album below or on flickr. Everything from ShopBop "haute mama" celebrity mom inspired theme to sweets and flowers.

Unsubscribe: You want to break up with me, you HAVE to tell me why

I often advise people to create a dialog as part of the unsubscribe process. Typically, the topics are
1. Frequency Reduction. Ask people if they really want to leave, or if they just want less mail.
2. Survey. Ask them why they are leaving, so that you can get better.

ProFlowers (not someone I've worked with) got it all wrong in my opinion.

I clicked the unsubscribe link. They presented a survey. I was busy, so I didn't feel like answering and just wanted to unsubscribe. But they wouldn't let me. It was early in the morning, and so it took me a while to figure out that unless I answered one of their questions I could never get off their list. It annoyed me and I'm sure it annoys others.

It would be interesting to have a legal perspective on whether this meets the letter of the law and the spirit of the law for CAN-SPAM.

Phone Dead? Send an Email.

I recently canceled one of my phones, and GoDaddy tried to reach me. When they couldn't they sent me an email.

I thought this was simple, clever way to get channels to work together. For how simple it was, I'm surprised I haven't seen more people do it.

A member of our Outbound Support Team recently called to thank you for doing business with GoDaddy.com, Inc. and to either advise you of an opportunity to save money on products you already have in your account, or because you have a product that is expiring soon. Unfortunately, the phone number we called appears to be incorrect.



For a related tactic, see my earlier post on pop-ups for dead emails.

AA goes mobile, Hilton caters to groups

A couple interesting events in the travel industry this week.

AA Goes Mobile
American Airlines sent an email on Wednesday announcing their new mobile capabilities.



Hilton Caters To Groups
Hilton launched a website where groups can plan travel.



You can view a demo of what they are calling the Personalized Group Web Page. Click Here for Demo.

Hilton let's you choose from three templates (Business, Wedding, leisure) then allows for some further customization through banners, fonts, and personal photos. One clunky feature is the need to put HTML style tags [bold] to modify fonts. But they will also create the page for you if you don't want to use the Internet to do it yourself.

For a company as big as Hilton, I would expect the demo would include audio.

Overall, a good idea, and something I suspect more will do. Look for others to raise the bar in their execution of the idea. Better tools for greater control and creativity of the website, and integration with email for functionality beyond Evite.

Modern Agent has a brief review of the features of the website.

Hilton Personalized Group Web Page FAQ

BusinessWeek Article