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 Industry: Furnishings & Decor Solution: eCatalogs  Rhodes Furniture Increases Multi-channel Sales using Scene7’s eCatalog Full Service Hosted Solution Challenges:
Rhodes, Inc. is one of the largest multi-channel furniture retailers in the US, offering a wide selection of quality home furnishings for today’s lifestyle. Rhodes has over 90 stores across 13 states with three distinct store brands: Rhodes Furniture, Marks Fitzgerald, and John M. Smith’s Homemakers. From its beginnings over 125 years ago, Rhodes has been a forward thinking company, pioneering new ways to improve the buying experience for its customers. Rhodes is using Scene7’s full service hosted eCatalog solution to increase multi-channel revenues and deliver an interactive online shopping experience for its customers. Best Practices:
Rhodes had been working with another full-service provider to create HTML-based versions of Rhodes’ print ads and circulars. Although Rhodes experienced positive business results using this vendors’ html-based services, Rhodes became dissatisfied with its customer service and support. In addition, Rhodes sought to add more sophisticated imaging features that would better show off the quality of its merchandise and enhance its customers’ online shopping experience. After evaluating competitive offerings, Rhodes selected Scene7 to create and publish its online catalogs for its customer service reputation and one-of-a-kind eCatalog offering. Using Scene7’s full service hosted eCatalog option, Rhodes turned the task of publishing and hosting its Web marketing materials over to Scene7. Rhodes delivers PDF versions of its printed regionally-based ads and weekly circulars to Scene7, and the dedicated Scene7 project team takes care of the creation, linking, versioning, and publishing of fully interactive online advertisements. Unique to Rhodes’ implementation, Scene7 creates multiple versions of each advertisement based on region and store code. Each regional version of the ad with the appropriate store code and brand is uploaded into Scene7’s Dynamic Imaging on Demand network, which automatically orders each page properly. Then, Scene7 maps and links highlighted products directly to the Rhodes Furniture Website. Interactive features such as zoom and pan are automatically added during the creation of the advertisement. Unique URLS that contain the product SKU, manufacturer, pricing, availability, and regional store code information are created for each catalog that will enable Rhodes’ customers to view only the catalog that corresponds to their particular region and store chain. Each regional version is then published to Scene7’s hosted network for final review by the Rhodes Furniture team, and once approved, is linked to the Rhodes Furniture Website. The entire process typically takes less than 3 days. As these advertised specials are very time sensitive, (with offers typically lasting only a week or so), turnaround time is critical. The Scene7 workflow enables Rhodes to preview each catalog and make recommendations or changes that can be implemented by the Scene7 service team within minutes. Once published, Rhodes Furniture customers can type in their zip code, and view the Online Circular that corresponds to their region and store. Customers can then interact with the products directly from within the Online Circular, zooming in to view product detail, or clicking to either purchase the products directly from the Website or print out the product information and take it with them to their local Rhodes store. Results: The addition of Scene7’s eCatalog solution has resulted in a 20% increase of online sales in the first month, exceeding Rhodes’ expectations and prior eCatalog business results. Early results have showed that Rhodes’ Online Circulars have been a top performer in driving multi-channel sales, and the conversion rates from these Online Circulars have so far doubled that of its direct email campaigns. Customer interest has been positive as well – a recent email promotion featuring the Online Circular garnered a 16% click through rate – making it the top performing link in the promotion. Rhodes Furniture is looking to the added zoom and pan capabilities to differentiate its products from competitors. “In our business, showing the furniture’s details up close is very important in distinguishing your products from the competition’s,” said Erin Hake, marketing specialist for Rhodes Furniture. “If you have brass rivets on a leather couch you need to make sure that your customers can inspect the detail and see the quality of the merchandise. Adding these features has dramatically improved the way we can display our products online and will further instill consumer confidence in our product line.” Scene7’s eCatalog solution is helping improve the online visual representation of the Rhodes Furniture line and deliver a cost-effective way to expand its multi-channel reach. Rhodes is also pleased with the service it is receiving from Scene7’s dedicated project team. “Everyone on the team has been very responsive,” said Hake. “Our first catalog project went late into the night, and they were with us every step of the way to ensure that we were happy with the outcome. We looked at other companies, but felt we would get the best level of service from Scene7 – and they consistently exceed our expectations.” Rhodes Furniture currently publishes 20 to 25 Online Circulars per year. Rhodes also plans to implement Scene7’s “sticky notes” annotation feature to the Online Circulars later this year. In the future, as Rhodes increases its use of print circulars, they expect the number of online circulars to increase as well. Rhodes plans to continue to use Scene7’s eCatalog full service hosted solution to cost effectively deliver personalized, segmented online catalogs to drive multi-channel sales and deliver a world class online shopping experience for its customer base. To Clients Overview > |
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