E-commerce: How Interactive Additions to HP.com Increased Sales, Reduced Exit Rates

By Matt Griffin

As evidenced by the proliferation of shows like eTail, nearly every cataloger and brick-and-mortar retailer has its own Web site. But what does that Web site do for your brand? Is your business on the Web to sell, build the brand or just keep up with the competition?

Prior to a recent redesign of HP.com, Hewlett-Packard defined its online priorities and took steps to address them with Web 2.0 features, such as blogs, podcasts and interactive content, said Stephanie Acker-Moy, vice president of customer experience at HP.com, in a keynote session at last week’s eTail conference in Palm Desert, Calif. Below are her top three priorities followed by details of the redesign’s impact on one portion of HP.com:

1. Sales: “As a manufacturer, return business and continued usage of your product is something that builds the brand and grows the business,” Acker-Moy said. HP’s new site needed to find ways to drive higher conversions, which it hoped to accomplish via its second priority.

2. Content: Acker-Moy and her staff theorized that the more often customers came back and used HP.com for pleasure, the more they’d eventually buy. The site redesign would then encourage site visitors to use HP.com’s photo editing software, printing tutorials and other activities on the site, such as Snapfish, HP’s photo sharing site. Product tips and project ideas using HP merchandise are now featured throughout the site. The theory goes “... if customers use the site, they’ll print more, use more ink, and need to buy more products from HP sooner,” Acker-Moy said.

3. Support. Since HP sells computers, printers and digital cameras, a significant amount of activity surrounding support and troubleshooting already happened on the site. The goal for the site redesign was to use those support pages as a selling point for the brand. “Online support is a huge satisfaction driver,” Acker-Moy pointed out. “It’s a big brand detractor if done wrong and big brand bonus if done right.”