Assignment PostBig DataNordstromNordstrom Web AnalyticsWeb Analyticsweb reporting applicationsweb reporting software
Assignment #5: Nordstrom a Case Study in Web Analytics
Nordstrom: An Introduction
Nordstrom is an extremely successful omnichannel corporation with equally successful ecommerce and brick-and-mortar channels. The biggest factor contributing to Nordstrom’s success is their willingness to mold to the consumer-driven market rather than fight it: “...persistent digitization of Nordstrom’s business has allowed the company to grow revenues by more than 50% in the last five years” (Beath, Ross, Sebastian, 2015). Similar department store corporations like Macy’s and Sears have failed to move with the market as swiftly and efficiently as Nordstrom leading to a game of cat and mouse with the mouse being the consumer.
While Nordstrom is not an isolated ecommerce platform, originating in the brick-and-mortar sector in Seattle, Washington, I feel that Nordstrom is a particularly interesting case that should be examined in this week’s assignment due to their innovative nature and amplified digital strategy that “now attributes roughly a quarter of its sales to e-commerce” (Pasquarelli, 2017) and their ecommerce strategy spend is well over 1B every year since 2015 (Whaba, 2015).
Nordstrom has a comprehensive digital strategy that includes Nordstrom.com, Nordstromrack.com, an innovative mobile checkout system in stores, the Nordstrom mobile application, and a highly effective mobile text marketing strategy. The company also acquired Hautelook.com and Trunkclub.com which are innovative solutions to consumer demands for an easy shopping experience. These acquisitions pushed Nordstrom to relevancy and exemplified a drive for the best customer experience in store and online.
CB Insights. (2015, September 23). Embracing Retail Innovation: Nordstrom’s Dealmaking And Partnerships In E-Commerce. Retrieved from https://www.cbinsights.com/research/nordstrom-e-commerce-case-study/
Social media marketing is also a part of the Nordstrom digital strategy, particularly the use of Pinterest: “Items popular on Pinterest are tagged with a red tag bearing the Pinterest logo and prominently displayed in the store, linking their online and offline worlds” (Ross, Beath, Sebastian, 2015). This allows Nordstrom to diminish the distinct line between the online and offline shopping experience.
As briefly addressed above, the Nordstrom omnichannel business model does not allow for a straightforward acquisition of data, but rather an integration of web data, geolocation data, mobile data, in-store data, and more. However, as ecommerce is a prominent component of the Nordstrom experience, we should next examine the web analytics tools and data collection strategy of this brand.
Nordstrom Web Analytics Tools
Unfortunately, in my research, I could not manage to determine the proper search query to find an analysis of Nordstrom’s use of web analytics tools, but I did pull a website analysis of the shop.nordstrom.com website, which provided relevant insight.
In the web analysis by SimilarWeb, the report analyzed traffic sources to the Nordstrom website, which includes organic and paid search. As you can see in the snapshot, below, Nordstrom leverages paid search to augment their traffic. It is likely that Nordstrom uses Google AdWords to conduct this paid advertising for branded keywords.
SimilarWeb. (2017). Shop.nordstrom.com. Retrieved from https://www.similarweb.com/website/shop.nordstrom.com#search
Due to the nature of this report from SimilarWeb and the strategy of data collection by the SimilarWeb platform, I would venture to say that Nordstrom leverages Google Analytics as a web analytics tool as well.
I did a brief LinkedIn search to find past web analytists for Nordstrom and found that Bryan Galipeau, former Director of Social Media, Display Advertising, and Media Planning, leveraged ads on Bing, Yahoo, and Google (Galipeau, 2017), which leads me to believe that Nordstrom also uses Bing analytics and Yahoo analytics to further supplement their web analysis.
Data Collection
In an effort to collect more valuable data in-store, Nordstrom attempted two separate “experiments” with collecting anonymous mobile data through wifi enabled geolocation from their users in store using sensors located inter-departmentally to determine what departments shoppers were most interested in, how they moved in the store, and how long shoppers stayed in a particular department. Needless to say, this (Cohan, 2013). Needless to say, this strategy emerged in the spotlight as a borderline unethical acquisition of data and the Nordstrom “experiment” was halted.
While WiFi tracking data collection efforts from Nordstrom did not fully come to fruition, Nordstrom has continuously optimized their data collection strategy to gather relevant and powerful data to drive their marketing and sales strategies. Just last year, 2016, Nordstrom unified their data collection among all platforms including their acquisition platforms using Adobe Audience Manager which allowed Nordstrom to “hit more tangible goals, like moving customers deeper down the sales funnel, or to actually acquire new customers” (Liyakasa, 2017). Prior to the implementation of this DMP, Nordstrom was collecting separate data stashes from each channel, which, as we learned in this course thus far, can lead to businesses understanding only half of the customer picture rather than its entirety.
Nordstrom leverages their Fashion Rewards Program (Nordstrom, 2017) to further develop customer profiles on their site, through their mobile application, and in-store. When shoppers use their rewards number (or the phone number associated with the account), Nordstrom can collect data including: what the shopper bought, when they bought it, where they bought it, whether they returned the product, how much they spend on average, etc. This data is invaluable to a department store as it can drive sales promotions, in-store marketing efforts, and general marketing strategy.
Suggestions for Improvement
In my analysis of the Nordstrom website with the help of the Website Grader application powered by Hubspot (Website Grader, 2017), I found that Nordstrom could improve on the following SEO categories:
- Load time
- Meta descriptions
- Headers
It looks like there is not much copy on the Nordstrom website, so there is a lot banking on the image titles and descriptions to keyword optimize the site for a group of targeted keywords. With a low score in meta descriptions, based on the Website Grader analysis, this is not helping with SEO efforts.
Though the aesthetic for the Nordstrom website is clean, makes great use of blank space, and has stunning visuals, I would suggest adding headers onto the homepage to break up the images and help the user navigate the website with more ease.
The navigation bar is very comprehensive and the sub nav bar breaks down the major categories into very comprehensive sub categories. It is very evident what the CTA is on the homepage with the top banner listing the Fashion Rewards Program, which is Nordstrom’s heavy hitter for data collection.
Overall, I think the Nordstrom website is very effective both in SEO and UX and it seems that they are actively collecting data for UX optimization, which is a very positive contribution to Nordstrom’s future in the ecommerce and brick-and-mortar sector.
References
Beath, C. M., Ross, J. W., Sebastian, I. (2015, January 14). Why nordstrom’s digital strategy works (and yours probably doesn’t). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/01/why-nordstroms-digital-strategy-works-and-yours-probably-doesnt
CB Insights. (2015, September 23). Embracing retail innovation: Nordstrom’s dealmaking and partnerships in e-commerce. Retrieved from https://www.cbinsights.com/research/nordstrom-e-commerce-case-study/
Cohan, P. (2013, May 9). How nordstrom uses WiFi to spy on shoppers. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/05/09/how-nordstrom-and-home-depot-use-wifi-to-spy-on-shoppers/#534266924362
Galipeau, B. (2017). Bryan Galipeau. [LinkedIn Profile]. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryangalipeau/
Liyakasa, K. (2017, March 27). A DMP boosts nordstrom’s business transformation. Retrieved from https://adexchanger.com/advertiser/dmp-boosts-nordstroms-business-transformation/
Pasquarelli, A. (2017, January 30). How a millennial mindset is helping this 116-year-old retailer. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/a-millennial-mindset-helping-116-year-retailer/307734/
Website Grader. (2017). Shop.nordstrom.com. Retrieved from https://website.grader.com/results/shop.nordstrom.com
Whaba, P. (2015, February 20). Nordstrom’s multi-billion dollar plan for e-commerce domination. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/02/20/nordstrom-ecommerce/
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