Do It Wrong Quickly: Converting Consumers to Customers

The last point in Moran’s book that I want to elaborate on is conversion because this was one of the key takeaways for me from this book.

Why are companies doing Internet marketing at all? They want to convert potential customers into real, actual customers. As a result, Internet marketing is not only about increasing brand awareness, it is about getting new customers and retaining current customers to increase offline and/or online sales. This again shows how important result measurement is. Moran gives the reader a great framework for tying offline sales to the web. One way to track online conversion is to offer discount coupons on the web site asking customers to bring a printout to the store. H&M is using this method several times throughout the year in most of its markets. Here is one example:

H&M's way to get fashion blog exposure

H&M is another fashion retailer that is successfully using e-marketing to its advantage. The Swedish company is using global online experience involving social media applications to help push its Autumn Fashion collection. This social media application was developed as part of the new website concept. This application, which is available globally on H&M’s website is called ‘Blog This’ and includes an easy to use tool that allows the user to create a collage out of their favorite clothes in the most recent H&M collection.

This is an example how it could look like:


Once the collage is done, the user can click on 'Post To Blog' and receives an image that can be posted on the fashion blog:


I see this social media application as a highly innovative and creative idea that will help H&M to increase its blog exposure. Besides that, users can put together their favorite outfits and automatically receive the total purchase price of the outfit. In countries such as Germany this seems to be an important feature, as customers can use the webshop to buy their favorite outfits right away. Good job H&M!