ZULILY
Zulily
is a great choice for me as an analytical case study for several reasons. The
most obvious being that I’m a female with children, which compensates for
nearly 80% of the Zulily user base. But also that the company has done a
tremendous job of using analytics to grow a small, very niche e-commerce
website into a company that easily raised $253 million dollars in an initial
public offering only a short four years after the website launch. Shares began
trading at $34 a share, and the online-only retailer is valued at $4.2 billion (internetretailer.com, 2013).
Zulily is a ‘membership-based daily deals site featuring up
to 90% off apparel, shoes, toys, décor and more for moms, babies and kids. Each
visit to zulily offers the chance to discover unique brands, products and
reasons to smile. New sales launch every day and typically last 72 hours
(Tableausoftware.com, 2014)’.
Based
in Seattle, Washington, Zulily is pioneering the change in the retail market
with a member-only access business model that offers great deals on the most
unique and sought-after children's boutique brands. Zulily is a daily deal
website that offers top-quality apparel, gear and other goodies for moms,
babies and kids at up to 70-90% off retail prices. Every day, members can log
on to expect a new deal, or a different brand or updated product line.
Everything offered is considered trendy and hip, and is not likely to be found
for a better deal anywhere on the web. Zulily events last 72 hours then they're
gone and the new brands move in and get their three days on the site
(LinkedIn.jobs.com, 2014)!
Since
zulily sends out daily emails on new deals, and emphasizes that these daily
‘events’ don’t last long and the good deals are gone wicked fast, their email
subscription list is their prized possession and it pays off for zulily to
understand their conversion rate based on these daily emails.
For me, choosing Zulily was also cool because I have
personally had a growing interest in Tableau software, an integrated analytics
software that compliments Google Analytics as well as other Web Metrics
software. Tableau was my choice for my IMC post on integrating and outsourcing
other analytics software to piggyback the Google Analytics measures of a
website.
I would estimate that we saved at
least two weeks of implementation time, and the program definitely increased
our confidence with our initial launch of Tableau.
Aaron Duke
zulily
(Tableausoftware.com,
2014)
Zulily utilizes Tableau Server to
enable data-driven decision-making while continuing to safeguard database
integrity. To meet their aggressive, four-week deployment schedule, the zulily
team turned to Server Rapid Start from Tableau Professional Services
(Tableausoftware.com, 2014).
There’s no doubt that zulily’s
attention to web metrics has paid off as it brought in $331 million in retail
sales last year from the internet alone. This gave zulily the label of 2nd
largest retailer of kid’s gear, second to Toys ‘R’ Us Inc, which also has
physical retail sites in all major cities, with several physical retail stores
in many of the major cities and their suburban areas. This number in sales was
nearly 50% higher than its nearest competitor, The Children’s Place, which
followed in behind zuiliy to take the third place slot. Not to mention that
zulily’s sales were more than seven times more than onestepahead.com, a catalog
driven website retailer that has supplied the children’s market for many years
longer than zulily.
Zulily has paid attention to
conversion over all else, which has brought more and more brands eager to use
their site as a selling entry point. With a conversion rate of 4.0%
(internetreailter.com, 2013) and 6.9 million unique visitors per month on
average, zulily is seeing some high numbers in rankings and metrics. Despite
that their average order number is lower than some lower ranking sites (due to
the high discounts), the volume makes up for the difference for this rapidly
growing e-commerce site.
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Zulily’s success has certainly been
impacted by its employees and their dedication to sourcing great products to
meet the niche market demands, according to Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali,
e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research (internetretailer.com, 2013). With
over 300 employees and 39 in-house photography studios to aide in getting
product onto the e-commerce site, zulily utilizes a team approach and vendor
cohesiveness to get the results desired from the website’s approach.
“By sourcing a large number of
vendors and providing them with strong support, we are able to offer our
customers a broad and unique selection of curated products that is refreshed on
a daily basis,” zulily says. “Of the vendors we featured for the first time in
2011, 75% have returned to sell again at least once on our sites through June
30, 2013. Our vendor base is highly diversified with our largest vendor in 2012
accounting for less than 1.5% of our net sales.” Net proceeds from the
merchant’s IPO were $140 million, which will be used for possible
acquisitions of “complementary businesses, products or technologies,” as well
as for general administrative purposes, zulily says (internetretailer.com,
2013).
Something zulily also can learn from
their metrics are demographics and geographics, which both can be a large
determining factor the of the types of products zulily strives to offer in
their ‘events.’ For example, a quick metrics search reveals that the United
States consumer base is driving zulily’s sales and visitors.
(image
courtesy of Alexa.com, 2014)
The
United States is currently clearly the market zulily wants to continue to
provide products to based on demand, despite if their goal is to cater solely
to the United States or not, especially with just going public, understanding
what the US customers are desiring is a key metric for zulily to understand.
(Image
courtesy of Alexa.com, 2014)
This was likely one of the more
surprising metrics I saw on zulily, maybe because as a customer, I am aware of
the high-quality brands they offer. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t so
surprising. The highest internet average is female, with no or some college,
who browse mostly from school. This would be a metric I think zuiliy could
really take to heart. These are women who either understand quality/value, or
are working to have better lives and want to get the most value out of their
money while striving to make a good life for themselves. The biggest surprise
to me, and the most eye opening was that most browsing (and by a lot I must
say) was at school. Women pursuing education that are likely already mothers
and understand the value of a good product that is offered at an undervalued
rate. This is clearly zulily’s biggest niche and standing ground and they’ve
done an outstanding job identifying this market.
References:
How popular is zulily.com? Alexa.com, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/zulily.com.
Zeroban, Stefany. How zulily built a $500 million e-commerce business in four years? Internetretailers.com, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.internetretailer.com/2013/11/26/how-zulily-built-500-million-e-commerce-business-four-year
LinkedIn.com/Jobs. Zulily Jobs-LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn, 2014.
Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/12453573.
