Stage Stores E-Commerce Investment Improves Customer Experience and Back-End Performance
Stage Stores has investing in its e-commerce capabilities to both streamline back-office functionality and improve site performance and bolster the user experience.
At Oracle Industry Connect 2017 Subha Balasubramanian, VP, IT applications development, merchandising and supply chain systems, Stage Stores and Kristen Brown, senior director of omnicommerce operations, Stage Stores discussed how the brand has redefined its e-commerce offerings in their presentation entitled “Stage Stores: Inspire Customer Engagements Across All Brands, Stores, Commerce, and Mobile.”
Stage Stores was late to the e-commerce game, opening its first online store in 2010. But since then both the retailer’s e-commerce assortment and its site traffic have grown considerably, prompting Stage Stores to reinvest in its digital capabilities.
“When we first started with e-commerce we put up 700 products in six months,” says Brown. “We drove so much business that we had to grow it fast. We engaged our merchants to bring in more SKUs. We had a ton of SKUs that had to go online, but didn’t have the platform.”
Stage Stores’ merchants were faced with the task of scaling up the assortment with antiquated solutions that could take upwards of eight weeks to get products online. The cause of the slow process was due to the duplication of work in disparate systems, low visibility into product attributes across the enterprise, and a spreadsheet based data interface.
To address the problem Stage Store implemented Oracle Commerce to capture and share product content. In addition, the retailers new information architecture ensures new attribute assignments are flat instead of hierarchal, created consistent nomenclature and organization, and supports improved product findability. The new solutions have helped trim the eight week window for the posting of new products to around two weeks.
The ability to search for and successfully find products online is a cornerstone of a successful e-commerce business. Stage Store’s legacy systems were not only difficult to manage and work with for merchandisers but they created a choppy experience for end users.
Stage Store’s online shoppers can now enjoy a state-of-the-art search and navigation solution that allows consumers to locate what they are looking for quickly and easily as well as browse related items they were unaware even existed.
The e-commerce platform new navigation taxonomy features simplified language of top-level categories, allowing for additional categories to be shown; leverages landing pages to accommodate browsing shoppers; creates categories based on customers browsing and shopping language; and the mobile menu allows for greater navigation and access to more relevant products.