Petco.com recently added The Answer Den to their highly successful ecommerce site. The Answer Den enables customers to talk to customers, to ask and answer questions about their pets, pet care and pet products. This open dialog between customers helps customer deal with issues in an area they are already passionate about—their pets.
That’s great for the pet owners, but what does it do for Petco? Well, people who consulted Answer Den bought at a rate 72% higher than other site visitors. Answer Den users generated 90 percent more page views per visit, bought nearly 40% more items per order and had a 10 percent higher average order value.
Notice that there was no mention of items being discounted. Several very important principles are at work. For one, people trust their peers, even if they have never met them face-to-face. A second is that Shared experiences allow people to more comfortable make purchase decisions because they learn about the experiential value they will derive, before they buy. In addition, learning about the positive experiences of others is motivating.
You could say that Petco.com is using social media technology to facilitate one of the most powerful sales and marketing vehicle around, word-of-mouth.
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