The book specialist will move off the Amazon e-commerce platform and onto a site that will let customers buy online directly from Borders for the first time.
The site is being designed to compete against Amazon, Waterstone’s and Play.com and will list 1 million titles.
Borders plans to use its huge customer database and 70-store chain, which had 30 million customer visits last year, to promote the new site.
The site is being built by Tangent on its Taoshop hosted e-commerce platform, which Tangent said will provide Borders with the flexibility it needs to create something distinctive.
Borders commercial director David Kohn said that there is a lack of understanding of how search should be used on retail sites and that the search, navigation and merchandising on Borders’ relaunched site will address this.
The site will also allow customers to interact with each other and staff through community tools. Store customers have an average dwell time of an hour and Kohn said that the site aims to create this kind of non-commercial meeting-place environment too.
Kohn also feels that there is an opportunity for the site to deliver a level of entertainment around books, using rich content such as author interviews, clips and spoken-word segments to complement what happens in stores.
Overall, the site aims to strike a balance between portraying Borders’ and its customers’ point of view on the products it sells.
However, customers who have preferences set on the existing site will find that they have to start from scratch on the new site, because these will not be migrated.
No comments yet