Juan Tornoe

Juan's Talking Latino Marketing on NPR

I had the honor to share my thoughts on Hispanic Marketing on NPR's Tell Me More, with Jennifer Ludden. You can listen to it on NPR's site.

Home Depot’s Spanish Outreach: in Their Own Words

By Juan Tornoe

Curiosity did not kill this gato (although it almost drove him crazy!). I’m alive and kicking, thank you very much (and borderline sane). Honestly, I was going berserk because I did not have access to the whole scoop regarding the sudden closure of Home Depot’s Spanish website. Yes, I did read what was said in the news; cathartically posted my own POV on the subject, and interviewed another big box retailer who’s maintained a Spanish online presence for quite some time… Through it all I did gather some insights, but there is nothing like hearing the story first hand from those directly involved in making these complex decisions.

So I reached out to Home Depot’s Corporate Communications, who promptly replied and in no time set up an appointment with Leonard Wortzel, their Multicultural Manager, who stepped into this role just 7 weeks ago. Leonard has been with The Home Depot for 4 ½ years, working in various advertising and marketing roles. Prior to that, he spent several years working mostly creative side advertising, with a small agency in Dallas, as well as with the BBDO and Grey affiliates in Costa Rica.

Following, please find the interview/conversation I had with Mr. Wortzel…

Juan Tornoe: What was your U.S. Spanish online presence prior to the launch of the now closed site?

Leonard Wortzel: We had some minimal how-to content on a secondary website.

JT: Why the closure of your Spanish Site only 4 months after turning it on?

LW: When we launched the site, our research told us that this was the right thing to do. The reality was, it wasn’t; not in this current environment. It just simply did not perform the way we thought it would. Because of the very robust solution that we adopted, maintaining the site would require a good amount of manpower behind it. It would have not been simple to just maintain a piece or portion of it, technically it just didn’t work that way.

JT: Why not leave up general company info, store locator info, How-To guides, etc… and lead people into buying in English OR visiting their nearest location for some “Skin time” with a bilingual associate?

LW: The landing page that is there takes you to the store, takes you to our online site, or it takes you to apply for a job. There are a couple of resources that we still have out there: You can shop our online circulars in Spanish and a bilingual employment site. What we’ve heard and learned from our customers is that we need to engage them in the stores, person to person. So right now that is where every ounce of every type of effort is being placed; serving this customer where they told us they want to be served the best, right there in our isles. 

JT: It was cited on the Wall Street Journal that one of the reasons the site was closed was that half the visitors came from other countries… Only 33% of Univision.com’s traffic comes from the U.S. Although we’re talking about completely different business models don’t you believe there could’ve been a way to keep at least a part of the site up and running – referring specifically to the How-To guides?

LW: Again, it wasn’t a simple transfer of data. The amount of resources and effort that would have been required at this particular point in time to keep that part of the site live led us to making a decision on where do we want to put our efforts right now; is it going to be in the digital space or are we best served serving our customer in the place they want and need our help the most, which is in the isles every day?

JT: Was a good chunk of the international traffic coming from México?

LW: Without getting into specific numbers that is pretty safe to say.

JT: Couldn’t you have redirected that traffic to your Mexican website and/or stores?

LW: Although Mexico has a pretty robust site, it isn’t an ecommerce site.

JT: Could you comment on your Spanish site’s conversion rates and customer satisfaction?

LW: Again, without getting into any specifics, we made the decision to shut it down because it wasn’t performing anywhere near where it needed to be.

JT: Is there a future for Home Depot en Español online? If so, what is it?

LW: Without talking about specific plans, we are always looking for the best way to serve our customers and we are always researching and developing new ways to fulfill our Hispanic customers’ needs. To say that Home Depot is done with the digital space for the Hispanic customer, or that we dipped our toe in the water and said, “No, we are done with this”, is absolutely untrue.

JT: Excellent! That is really comforting to learn. One final question… By the way that your current Spanish landing page addresses the Latino community, it seems that The Home Depot is assuming that all Hispanic clients are Spanish-speaking clients. What about Bilingual and English-dominant Latinos? Don’t you believe that specifically addressing Spanish-dominant Hispanics on that one landing page would be more appropriate?

LW: I think that is a valid point; I am going to get back with Vidal [The Home Depot’s Hispanic Agency of Record] and have them take a fresh look at that.  One last thing, I enjoyed discovering your blog, I think you’ve got a lot of good content on it.

So, there you have it. Don’t know about y’all but I am quite satisfied with Home Depot’s answers. They do clarify many of the questions I had written on my initial post on the subject. Hey, I even got a chance to do a bit of free consulting for Vidal… You are very welcome guys! I’ll make sure to add it to my CV. :-)

Christine Webster Moore on BestBuy.com en Español

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.

Cinco de Mayo Thoughts on Nevada's News 88.9 KNPR

Listen to Nevada Public Radio's 5 de Mayo coverage, where I had the opportunity to give my two "centavos".

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Source: KNPR.org

Online Latinos say Adiós to Home Depot

By Juan Tornoe

A good friend sent me a quite disturbing message late last week: “Home Depot is shutting down their Spanish language website”.

I was quite perplexed given that just a couple months ago Home Depot was announcing with much fanfare the site’s launch, “a replicate of the English language e-commerce site, with 40,000 products available to online shoppers”.

I agree that maintaining 40K plus pages up to date can be a Goliath-sized feat, especially in the midst of this economic crisis, but completely eliminating all Spanish language online presence is quite a radical shift. Wasn’t there a middle of the road compromise? At the very least they could have kept (as they had before) a basic Spanish language online presence, sharing, in their own words, “know-how information for home improvement projects”. From there they could have clearly redirected people to buying online IN ENGLISH or to visit any of their convenient locations where bilingual personnel would be willing and ready to serve them in their own language (ad jargon intended).

It has been reported that the main reason of shutting the site down was “that half of the visitors to the site were from other countries”, which is not the same information that Spanish speaking do-it-yourselfers now encounter when visiting espanol.homedepot.com: “Hemos escuchado a nuestros clientes hispanos y lo han dicho claramente: el lugar más importante para centrar nuestros esfuerzos son nuestras tiendas”. Paraphrasing in English: We have listened to our Hispanic clients’ voices loud and clear: Our stores are the most important place where we should center all our efforts. Hmm. Can someone please tell me how these two statements relate? It is a well known fact that many U.S. Spanish language sites get a fair amount of traffic – to say the least – from Latin America. Given the lack of quality information currently available from South of the Border websites, Latin American web surfers are attracted, like flies to honey, to U.S. based sites, especially if they are in Spanish. Just check Univision.com in Alexa and you’ll see that only 33.1% of their traffic comes from the United States… Wow! They are even in a worst position than what Home Depot en Español claimed!

To say the least it is quite disappointing to see one of the largest retail companies in the U.S. take a step back on this arena. I've always said that giving Latinos access to INFORMATION in their language of choice is of primordial importance to any company in America. Also I have said that companies should not expect to get the same results they are getting from their English site on its Spanish counterpart. Traffic will most likely be lower; visitors will be mostly looking for information, rather than to buy online, but those who do end up buying will be delighted (if the experience is a good one) to be able to purchase right there and then in their own language, from a brand they’ve come to know and trust. Thankfully, there are other major retailers, like Best Buy, who are still committed to maintaining a Spanish online presence.

Having a Spanish language section of their website is now part, from where I stand from, of a company’s  cost of doing business. If the largest minority in the States were from Denmark, I’d say they’d have to also have their sites in Danish! Bottom line, it is all about dollars and cents. If early on you manage to turn some of those visitors into paying customers that would be some very sweet icing on the cake. At this point in time you are mostly establishing a relationship with, and gaining the trust and goodwill of, the small but growing number of online Spanish dominant Latinos, knowing that they will become more sophisticated online consumers as time passes and they will have your company’s name right there at “Número Uno” when they are ready to purchase online whatever product or service you are offering.

Then there’s the emotional aspects involved with establishing deeper, more emotional and profitable relationships with English-dominant Latinos who will see your company as one they want to do more business with, given that it openly recognizes, through – among other things – the investment in the Spanish language site, that the entire Latino market is important to you. 

As far as getting traffic from outside the U.S., it is actually an opportunity. Through geo-targeting you could sell advertising on your information pages while at the same time develop partnerships with similar companies in Latin America, with whom you could service clients in the region. Doesn’t Home Depot own stores in Mexico? They do! And even have a website for it: http://homedepot.com.mx BTW, it is (drum roll please) En Español!

Giving credit to part of Home Depot’s strategy, indeed it is important to cater face to face to Spanish dominant Latinos at your place for business, and it is good business practice doing it through the use of signage and the hiring of bilingual staff. That said, not all Latinos are Spanish dominant and you must never mistake Spanish outreach with Hispanic outreach. The Latino community is way too diverse to try simplifying it that way.

I truly hope that Home Depot reconsiders its decision.