CompUSA Uses Coremetrics to Increase Checkout Completions, Improve Customer Service, and Boost Revenue by $2.2 mm

CompUSA, Inc. is one of the nation's leading retailers and resellers of technology products and services. CompUSA helps customers unleash the power of technology through a unique blend of products and highly knowledgeable sales staff as well as technology support and service. CompUSA's retail web site offers an assortment of more than 80,000 products and the ability to schedule technology services and training sessions.

CompUSA’s Challenge
Changing the way America experiences technology, CompUSA serves both consumers and small-to-medium businesses, delivering best in class Technical Services and Technology Training. CompUSA.com constantly strives to improve the quality and efficiency of its sites. However, until Coremetrics Online Analytics was utilized, improvements were based on imperfect information and did not always effectively reach business objectives. Coremetrics afforded CompUSA visibility into their web site customers’ shopping experience, identifying checkout inefficiencies and revealing areas where shoppers would benefit from expert advice. With the help of Coremetrics, CompUSA improved the checkout process and drove increased conversions through a live chat facility and an easier to use Product Compare facility.

Checkout Completions Increase 32%
While CompUSA.com realized their checkout process had problems, it was unknown where those inefficiencies existed. During the Holiday Season, CompUSA desired to make certain improvements to their checkout process in order to improve customer experience and boost holiday sales. Any implemented solution would have to be relatively small and rapidly implemented because of the proximity to CompUSA’s critical holiday season.

Within a matter of weeks, CompUSA’s team performed analysis, tested hypotheses, and implemented key changes required in the checkout process to boost conversion rates.

Coremetrics Online Analytics’ versatile clickstream reports were critical in giving CompUSA the ability to identify problem areas in their checkout process. They found that they could minimize points of departure by clarifying the steps involved in the checkout process, specifically in the form of a persistent graphic that continually reminded consumers how far they had proceeded. CompUSA also realized that high departure rate pages tended to be complex, long and intimidating, and therefore, they simplified forms and added auto-fill form features where possible. All user interface and process flow improvements were developed and launched during the holiday season.

At each and every step in the checkout process, CompUSA witnessed an average 10% increase in customers advancing through to the next step. The aggregate changes resulted in a 32% improvement in the entire process’s completion rate.

Live Chat Improves Conversion Rate Tenfold
CompUSA staffs its stores with knowledgeable salespeople who help customers evaluate and compare thousands of products. To bring this same personalized experience to its web site, CompUSA implemented a live chat solution from InstantService, a Coremetrics partner. This solution enables online customers to connect immediately to a skilled agent for assistance. As with all of its new technologies, however, CompUSA wanted to be sure that its investment was delivering a positive return.

CompUSA has used Coremetrics online analytics and precision marketing solutions since 2002. So naturally the CompUSA team turned to Coremetrics for assistance in integrating and measuring the impact of the new live chat solution. By integrating InstantService within the Coremetrics Content Categories report, CompUSA was able to gain visibility into how live chat was influencing conversions on its site.

The team started by investigating when customers are more likely to chat – while browsing or while engaged in the shopping/check-out process. Coremetrics reporting showed that approximately two-thirds chatted while browsing product pages. The availability of live chat made it easy for these customers to get the information they needed to continue through the shopping experience.

With Coremetrics, CompUSA was able to quickly calculate conversion rates of online sessions that included chat interactions. The chat session conversion rate was ten times that of the average site conversion rate. Coremetrics LIVE Profiles also showed a higher incidence of return customers among those who had chatted, as well as higher average order value. As a result of these impressive statistics, CompUSA hopes to expand the number of agents and extend the hours of operation for its live chat service.

By providing greater visibility, Coremetrics is also enabling CompUSA to be proactive in improving the customer experience. For example, nearly one-third of chatters chatted during checkout, a higher number than expected. Based on this information, CompUSA may investigate the possible need for enhancements to the checkout process.

CompUSA can also look at chat sessions from a product perspective. If a particular product page triggers high demand for live chat, then investigation may indicate that the information available online is insufficient. If so, CompUSA can work with the product vendor to remedy the problem.

“We’re one of the few brick-and-mortar retailers that has online chat,” said CompUSA’s Analytics and Business Development Manager. “Technologies like this allow us to take the one-on-one customer experience that works so well in our stores and extend it to our online customers. Coremetrics lets us understand where in the sales cycle customers are using chat and whether or not it’s fuelling conversions, increasing average order value, or otherwise helping us increase revenue and profitability.”

Product Compare Drives $2.2mm Revenue Increase
Coremetrics afforded CompUSA visibility into a critical group of their web site customers: Product Compare users. Using Coremetrics’ Segmentation and Clickstream capabilities to isolate that group of users for deeper analysis, they found that buyers who compared products side-by-side on the site had a 33% higher average order size. Only 13% of buyers used the Product Compare functionality, but those high-value customers constituted 17% of site revenue. CompUSA hoped that fine-tuning and augmenting this valuable functionality would result in increased usage of Product Compare and higher revenues as a result.

Analysis performed through Coremetrics determined that the Product Compare functionality was not broadly accessible throughout the site, and therefore bypassed many customers. Additionally, best-practice research prompted CompUSA to recommend augmenting the tool with:
• A printer-friendly page
• Ability to enlarge product images
• “Find a product in a store” feature
• Adding a product to the shopping cart form anywhere in the compare process
• Viewing available rebates

Once these improvements were developed and new Product Compare functionality launched, CompUSA re-analyzed the value of the changes through Coremetrics.

Within a matter of weeks, CompUSA completed the entire process of initial measurement, hypothesis formation, prototyping, implementation, and post-change measurement. CompUSA observed an 11% increase in Product Compare traffic and a 16% increase in buyers. In addition, departure rates from the Product Compare pages dropped by an amazing 56% as a result of the changes. Most importantly perhaps, Product Compare improvements resulted in a $2.2mm increase in annualized revenue.

“Coremetrics gives us a powerful customer analysis platform which helps us identify and optimize for high-value customers, said CompUSA’s Director of eCommerce. “Through Coremetrics, we learned that Product Compare users represented a key customer group for us, kicking off an initiative to improve access to that function as well as its capabilities. Through these changes, Coremetrics helped us increase annualized revenues by $2.2mm.”

Result
CompUSA’s Director of eCommerce summarized the results of their thorough analysis and the resulting changes: “Coremetrics gave us the critical tools to identify our checkout process problems, form credible hypotheses, and measure the result of changes. We used Coremetrics Online Analytics to first identify problems at a high-level, and then drill down into specific areas to identify the causes. The result was a 32% improvement in our checkout completion rate and a $2.2mm increase in revenue directly attributable to improvements in Product Compare. Without detailed insight enabled by Coremetrics LIVE Profiles, such dramatic improvements would not have been possible.”

About CompUSA
One of the leading retailers and resellers of technology products and services in the U.S, CompUSA, Inc., offers customers a broad range of computer hardware and software, home electronics, technical services, training, and consulting. Its www.compusa.com web site features more than 80,000 items. Founded in 1984 and based in Dallas, Texas, CompUSA currently operates more than 240 stores in major metropolitan markets across the United States and Puerto Rico. CompUSA serves consumer retail, small-to-medium businesses, corporate, government and education customers. CompUSA, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S. Commercial, S.A. de C.V. which is indirectly controlled by a common shareholder. U.S. Commercial trades of Bolsa (the Mexican stock exchange) as USCOMBI.MX.

About Coremetrics
Coremetrics is the leading provider of on-demand web analytics and precision marketing solutions, offering the industry's only web analytics platform that captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles. Representing the single most accurate and comprehensive source of online customer data, LIVE Profiles serve as the foundation for all successful eBusiness initiatives. Leading online brands rely on Coremetrics LIVE Profiles to monitor and optimize the performance of multiple marketing campaigns, improve cross sell and multichannel initiatives, and precisely target customers through intelligent marketing campaigns. Coremetrics services more than 600 brands and has delivered over $300 million in documented ROI in the past two years. The company is privately held with funding from Accel Partners, FTVentures, and Highland Capital Partners and is headquartered in San Mateo, California with offices in Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas and London, England. To learn more about Coremetrics, visit www.coremetrics.com or call 877-721-CORE.