20 October 08
Differentiating Online Retail Experiences
A blog I frequent published an article that, with a simple quiz, brought into high relief the lack of brand differentiation in online retailers. The author removed the logos of a dozen or so e-commerce websites from brick and mortar retailers such as Sears, Macy’s, and Kmart and challenged you to identify who’s site was who’s. I got most of them wrong.
While this exercise is quite powerful, there is a critical piece of the equation that the author left out. Many of the retailers that she cited don’t have distinctive customer experiences in the the real world. Yes, I could tell the difference between whether I’m in a Kmart, Macy’s or Sears, but how memorable and engaging are these customer experiences? What does the JC Penny brand really have to leverage in-store that they can extend online? The fact that Penny’s has consistently scored high on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index isn’t enough to truly set them apart online — especially when competing against companies like Zappos.
So who does do a good job extending their brand and differentiating itself online? Let’s take a look at a few examples…