May 7, 2009
By Juan Tornoe
Two days ago I had the opportunity to have an interesting conversation with Christine Webster Moore, VP of Business Initiatives at Best Buy. Christine is part of BestBuy.com and works with the Latino initiatives team, helping support their Latino customers across all their channels: Online, in their stores, in their call centers, as well as being responsible for BestBuy.com en Español. I believe that given the recent shutdown of another major U.S. Retailer’s Spanish language website, it is important for you to get inside the head of one of the decision-makers at Best Buy, a big box retailer which actually is putting all its chips on the growing Hispanic market.
Juan Tornoe: When and why did Best Buy launched their Spanish Website?
Christine Webster Moore: We soft-launched in September of 2007 and the intent was and is part of a holistic strategy to better serve our Latino customers, and especially those Latino customers who were interested in engaging with us in Spanish. We felt that it was important to be able to have an in-language experience for these customers whether they were walking in our stores, whether they were going online, or whether they were calling our call center. We believe that an in-language approach is of particular importance when people are dealing with products and services that are more complicated; they need to be able to understand what they are, how they work, and if they meet their needs.
JT: What has been your experience with the Spanish site?
CWM: We have learned a lot! We measure the success of the Spanish site in three ways. One, it is important that the kind of relationship we have with our customers, from an overall standpoint, is one in which we are able to say that we reach out to them in-language across our channels; this is something we believe our customers recognize positively. The second way are the transactions done on the site; we are continuing to see progress in this particular area and will continue to improve our efforts in growing the business specifically for the channel. The third area is what we see in terms of the online space and specifically the Spanish site as an initial step to going in the store. We know that our Spanish speaking customers are going online, and doing research, looking at products, looking at our store locator, comparing different products, and then going into the store to actually make a purchase or to have more a conversation with one of our sales associates in the store. We feel that all three of those together are huge benefits to the dotcom business and to the whole company.
It is hard to track exactly what percentage of business online drives into the store. Still, we hear employees telling us more and more that people are coming in with printouts from the Spanish web page and/or employees are using the kiosk inside the store as a way to access the Spanish site and get more information or deepen the conversation with a customer.
JT: What feedback have you received from visitors to the Spanish Site?
CWM: On a monthly basis we track customer satisfaction and we find that the feedback continues to be overwhelmingly positive and is higher actually than what we see on our English site. We think we are getting a little lift because there are not many retailers out there with a fully translated site. We hear that customers like the translation; they are able to find what they are looking for, and that they have a really positive experience on the Spanish site.
JT: Conversion...That's the name of the game. How do the Spanish and English site's conversion rates compare?
CWM: The Spanish site has lower conversions and some of that is due to the fact that a good chunk of our traffic is from outside of the U.S. and we are currently not able to fulfill outside of the U.S. So, obviously the conversion will be lower. But what we are doing, even though we cannot ship outside the U.S. we are trying some different things that would allow customers who are shopping from outside of the U.S. to make easy payments using international credit cards and/or shop from outside the U.S. and then pick up in the U.S. if they are planning a trip; which would be essentially in-store pickup that originated internationally.
JT: Do you have information on what percentage of the visitors to your Spanish site come from outside the US?
CWM: Without sharing any specifics, we can say that a good chunk comes internationally. We are seeing a lot of traffic coming from Mexico, Venezuela, Spain and Brazil; these would be the principal sources of traffic outside the U.S.
JT: So, what's the future of Best Buy.com en Español?
CWM: We will continue with our commitment to the Spanish site as part of our holistic strategy to better serve this customer. We will continue to build awareness around the site and the capability that it offers customers. I think that’s the focus right now. We think we have a great capability that when customers find it, are really happy with it. So we are staying the course!
Well folks, don’t know about you, but I am a happy camper after learning Best Buy’s commitment to serving Spanish dominant Latinos.
Juan,
Its great to see that Best Buy remains committed to reaching the Hispanic market via online even given the challenges and also the distribution of trafic from outside the U.S. Its clear that they are seeing this as an investment and learning experience for them and not just looking at the immediate returns.
The closure of HomeDepot.com en Español was extremely puzzling - especially after such a short run as you pointed out Juan. I'd be interested to know whether they will continue to reach out to Hispanics online in other ways. For example, they recently ran a campaign promoting "El Hogar Perfecto" sweepstakes on a micro-site on Latina.com (http://www.latinaspecials.com/homedepot/) as well as "Es Tiempo de Celebrar con Home Depot" Sweepstakes on Univision.com (http://www.univision.com/contentroot/uol/10portada/content/jhtml/homedepot/holidays2008/NOMETA_homedepot_sweeps.jhtml).
Juan, have you had an opportunityt o speak to the Home Depot folks? Maybe this strategy (micro-site/sweepstakes on major portals) will pay off better for them - at least in the short run - than a stand-alone web presence for U.S. Hispanic?
Carlos Pelay
http://www.media-economics.com
Posted by: Carlos Pelay | May 07, 2009 at 08:49 AM