Ace is the Place For a Web Site Upgrade Wisconsin

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Originally published at Internet.com

Ace Hardware Corp. wants to do a better job localizing its corporate Web presence, to take greater advantage of the relationships some 4,000-plus independent Ace-branded stores nationwide have with their neighborhood customers.

The company last month relaunched a redesigned web site, using the services of e-commerce solutions provider GSI Commerce Inc., to enable its retailers to step up the level of online service they can provide to their local customers.

"Our goal was, that when you think of Ace, you think of your local store, not corporate headquarters. We.wanted to bring that to life online," says Dana Kevish, Ace Interactive Marketing Manager.

On the other hand, corporate does all the marketing for Acehardware.com, so it made sense to leverage the fact that people head to that site when they're looking for information.

The result is that Ace retailers now have their own page linking off the corporate web site, to which they may upload their own images, events, promotions, store history, job openings, or other features in a simple, easily-updated template.

In the past, retailers were limited to providing some basic data on a mini-site - mostly business card information such as location or store hours. But that wasn't making the most out of the fact that 20 to 25% of users to the corporate web site make their way to the store locator page - presumably because they want to buy at a store in their area and may be interested in special services or offers their local Ace outlet may have to offer. Now, even when a visitor goes to Acehardware.com, the site can display an image of their local store based on their IP address.

Ace's upgrade to its web site is a good example of how companies can be smarter about how they leverage technology and the Internet to support the business and meet customer expectations. At one time, for example, customers could research products online at Ace's site, but they'd have to go to the store to make the purchase.

Some Ace retailers who resisted the idea of online purchases now "understand that it's a different ballgame today, and we've got to be there when customers are shopping online," says Kevish. "We'd get tons of e-mails saying why isn't there a click to buy option, which at that point we knew we'd lost them." Not a good thing in the age of the big-box hardware outlets.

Today, corporate aims to service customers through whatever channel they like. But it also makes sure the Ace brand is present across all search and comparison shopping engines, and lets retailers take a portion of an online sale when a customer takes advantage of the option to have a product shipped free to their local store.

"Our competitive advantage online is we ship to the store for free, and we have so many locations so it's extremely convenient," says Kevish. "In a lot of cases we're acquiring new customers for retailers, people who write to say they didn't even know a store was there."

The project started out as an effort between GSI, which hosts the site and runs the e-commerce transactions, and marketing, though IT, when it was brought onboard, had valuable input. For instance, it suggested that rather than creating new web-based tools for retailers to enter information on their pages, that they use the same Acenet tool that retailers use for in-store ordering and product look-ups.

But the trend at Ace is to get better at integrating business and IT groups, and in fact IT personnel dedicated to the marketing team will soon be moving out of another building to sit within the marketing area. IT will be sitting in more often on strategy sessions with GSI and the marketing team to get a better feel for the e-commerce part of the business, and is starting to be more involved in planning and bringing ideas to the table from the business perspective, Kevish says.

"That's very new for Ace," she says, but expectations are high as they continue to make sure the online brand does a top-flight job representing its real-world stores.