Juan Tornoe

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.