Wal-Mart’s Project Impact a Lesson Learned for Publisher’s
Wal-Mart has announced that it is taking another step to crush the competition with something they are calling ‘Project Impact‘. Now we’re not into retail blogging, but the coverage on this most recent uplift step by Wal-Mart sparked some interest with our team and we feel there are lessons in this new strategy that could easily be applied to the way publishers situate their online businesses.
Wal-Mart’s ‘Project Impact’, in summary, will focus on increased customer service, creating a cleaner less cluttered store layout, ease of isle navigation for shoppers and positioning departments of advantage (i.e. the pharmacy) in more easily accessible and visible locations. In essence, Wal-Mart has listened to what its customers have asked and is applying extra energies to its key products, to aid in sell through rates. The lesson here with this Wal-Mart case study for publishers is three fold:
Listening to your customers: as a publisher, when was the last time you held an advertiser or private user focus group or satisfaction survey session? If the answer is a length of time that is older than 18 months, you’ve been negligent. User feedback is necessary for all of a publisher’s products, but more so for their digital suite, as that is the area advertisers are focusing on more. We should also consider that fact digital or online is an area where traditional publishers do not have a lot of experience, and getting that just right for incumbents is critical.
Remove the clutter: how many times have you gone on to publishers Web site and found a mess of information that the print editor felt important to force-feed their online users? This mash up or ‘mess up’ of information display happens far too often. Publishers fail to realize that the Web allows you to link, layout, and strategically place information that avoids the need of forcing everything on to the landing page. Moreover, if a publisher really wants to be savvy, utilizing targeted and ‘relevant information push’ ensures your serving up just the right information to the right user.
Know your vertical of success and opportunity and work it!: just as Wal-Mart made a conscious effort to strategically work their pharmacy department, is the same way publishers need to know which one of their verticals are best suited as a standalone vertical site. Creating vertical sites that operate independent of the print brand, will allow a publisher to maximize on the Web opportunities available to specific vertical advertisers. This targeted focus will also enable a publisher to charge accordingly for a targeted audience base.
So, long story short, there is a lesson to be learned from every successful business, regardless of the sector and Wal-Mart, given their market share and dominance, isn’t a bad organization to model after.
