After a seven-year hiatus during which it outsourced online retailing to Amazon.com, Borders is again selling online beginning today. A major element of the company's turnaround effort, the new Borders.com aims to convey online "the warmth, inspiration and sense of discovery people have in our bookstores," as senior v-p of e-business Kevin Ertell put it. "We want people to feel surrounded by books." (Ertell gave Shelf Awareness a preview of the new Borders.com earlier this month.)
Among other things, the revamped site offers more than two million book, music and DVD titles, fulfilled by Baker & Taylor; sells used books, music and DVDs on Borders Marketplace through a partnership with Alibris that offers more than 60 million titles; consolidates some online promotional initiatives like Borders Media, now allowing users to buy the books featured; ties in with Borders Rewards, the company's 26-million member loyalty program; and is linked with the Borders Search in-store kiosks.
To aim to "re-create the experience of our bookstores," the front page of Borders.com features the "Magic Shelf," which Ertell called "a metaphor for the book tables and displays in-store that people like to see and browse." An important reason for the approach: more than half of customers coming into Borders stores "don't know what they want to buy," Ertell said.
The Magic Shelf includes new fiction, music and other categories as well as a shelf for staff picks from one Borders store, including information about the store, a display that rotates weekly. "Every website has faceouts," Ertell said. "But many crowd the page with so much text. We lay out just covers. To get the text, you hover over the cover. You can get to it when you want, but it doesn't muck up the experience."
As on other sites, readers can browse via category, format, large print, price, bestsellers, new and upcoming releases, and more. The Magic Shelf also offers music and DVDs and can be customized based on a customer's preferences.
The new website is being linked closely with the kiosks in Borders stores that have mainly been used by customers to find inventory in the store. As of today, those in-store customers can find and order books online, view all the information on the site, including reviews and videos, check and add to gift registries and wish lists. "Now people can come into the store and leave happy one way or another," Ertell commented.
Customers can also do online reserves, and in another kind of website-store interaction, they pick up books bought online at stores. This could be a popular option because deliveries to stores are free, and in many cities, "people don't want to have packages left on doorsteps," Ertell said.
The new Borders.com is also hosting Borders Media. This includes a range of programming developed over the past several years that now has a purchase option. Among the "shows": Live at 01, which offers videos of authors and musicians appearing at Borders's Ann Arbor, Mich., store; Borders Kitchen, which features cooking lessons and book club style discussions with chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali; Borders Open Door Poetry, which includes discussions and readings by such poets as Mark Strand and Robert Pinsky.
In addition, the new site links with the Borders Rewards loyalty program. "We've definitely heard that members would like to use the program online," Ertell said. Now they can make redemptions and earn rewards online.
The new site will also promote customer reviews of books, which have been "difficult to have in store." Now they will have a home that is permanent and searchable. In the same vein, Borders.com will highlight staff reviews, which are among the most popular sections in the store. Currently such recommendations "exist in one store for 30 days and then are gone," Ertell said. Now Borders's 30,000 employees can write reviews on the site and "they will exist in all stores and online forever." The site also has "designated experts," a group of some 30 especially knowledgeable employees whose reviews will be highlighted so customers can follow them.
Borders buyers will be responsible for online selection as well as in-store sales. "They are the voice of who we are and what we stand for," Ertell said.--John Mutter