Apparel Maker Gets Instant Feedback With Online Survey Tool

Computerworld - When women's dancewear and activewear maker Danskin Inc. created a Web site in 2001, it didn't exactly set the dance world spinning on its toes.

Beginning with only one product line in order to avoid conflicts with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, the company set out to gauge the interest of customers in buying Danskin products online. Less than two years later, in January 2003, the New York-based company made the move to expand its site and online product offerings.

But simply adding more merchandise to a hastily assembled trial Web site wasn't exactly a great sales strategy, says Eric Nadler, the company's vice president of sales operations. "We knew the site was not all it could be," he says. "It wasn't done in an aggressive manner. We were just a Yahoo store, just trying to feel the waters out."

Nadler and another executive were given responsibility for improving the site, and they quickly felt overwhelmed. "We knew we had graphics, search and site problems, but we couldn't prioritize them," Nadler says.

At an online retail trade show last year, they found CS SiteManager, a Web-based customer-satisfaction application from ForeSee Results Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich. With CS SiteManager, Danskin can get instant reactions from customers about what's good or bad about its Web site, and that feedback can be used immediately to make midcourse corrections.

The product runs behind the scenes and gives random customers a pop-up window containing a brief survey to get input about their shopping experiences at Danskin.com.

For Danskin, the information garnered from the surveys has been a gold mine. "What it really does is allow us in an analytical and scientific manner to learn what satisfies our customers and what their needs, wants and desires are in utilizing our Web site," Nadler says. "We can see what changes we can make that will have the biggest bang for the buck."

Using the research data and statistical methodologies from the customer input analyzed by ForeSee, Danskin was able to pinpoint the e-business areas that needed work, Nadler says. "Customers for the most part want to share their experiences and help you build a better site," he says.

Within six weeks of incorporating CS SiteManager, Danskin learned that site navigation was one of the biggest sticking points for customers. After spending 15 minutes making site changes, Danskin immediately began seeing increased online sales. Nine months later, incremental sales increases were apparent, much of which were attributable to CS SiteManager, Nadler says.

"It was looking at customer service from an entirely different angle, and that's what we thought was cutting edge," Nadler says. "We were going to be able to do our jobs better. It absolutely has paid for itself."

Project Payback Customer feedback is now collected instantly. An uptick in online sales was reported immediately after site changes were implemented.