Nike and eCommerce

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is used to refer to any type of business that is conducted over the internet. It consists of the buying and selling products and services through a website or online store.  An organization's e-commerce website makes it easy for customers to research, choose, and purchase items online.   E-commerce has emerged as a vast revenue stream for companies.

This year, retail sales across the globe will reach $22.049 trillion and eMarketer estimates sales will top $27 trillion in 2020.  Retail e-commerce sales in North America will rise 15.6% this year to reach $423.34 billion, maintaining the area’s status as the world’s second largest regional e-commerce market. These statistics reinforce precisely how important it is for businesses to have an e-commerce website.

For this discussion, we will examine Nike’s e-commerce website.  Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. Nike is one of the world’s largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel.  In addition to being a major manufacturer of sports equipment, its website offers a variety of Nike-branded sporting equipment and apparel for men, women, and kids.  

Customers can register to receive e-mail blasts, receive customer support, manage account information, and design and customize their very own Nike sneakers.   Users can share content to various social media platforms, adding to the company's strong social media presence.  All of these great benefits means Nike has to provide customer support, fulfill orders, create content and special programs, and be able to manage and maintain the effectiveness of the website in order to keep customers coming back and purchasing.  

Executives at Nike Inc. revealed to investors their plans to grow web sales 600% by fiscal 2020 to $7 billion from $1 billion today. While the web currently represents only 2% of its total sales of $30.6 billion, Nike projects that portion to grow to around 14% in the next five years.  However, before the organization can reap the financial benefits, it must ensure that it is utilizing and evaluating its web analytics to the fullest.   

Nike operates its mobile, domestic, and international shopping sites on one platform, which is surprising.  Many would speculate that with the company's various products and services it would possess multiple websites.   Nike uses a mixture of IBM Inc. and Oracle Inc. e-commerce platform technology, which allows it to be responsive and make changes simultaneously across all web and mobile properties instead of multiple changes.. 

Nike has taken a single website approach, hosting all of its domestic and international content on the nike.com domain and redirecting its various content to that one domain.  Having a single website is easier to optimize and will lead to higher rankings in SEO results than having multiple websites.  Also, a single site is more likely to attract links from a wide range of third-party sites. All of these third-party links means better search engine results pages. Even if your site is not attracting many inbound links, a single site with more content allows you to create internal to related content on your site that can also help to increase your site’s ranking.

Liversidge, 2015

Nike is also making a big push to reach online shoppers abroad.   Knowing the location where visitors are originating from helps Nike develop localized and optimized marketing strategies.  The company can produce and target specific ads or messages based on user locations, allowing Nike to capitalize on customers who purchase more than those from other regions.  In addition to tracking users, Nike can capture the data and information from those who visit the website.   The company then utilizes that knowledge to closely monitor those customers, build an online community for them, and build a stronger relationship, leading to long-term engagement.  

Nike fully discloses how it captures and utilizes its customers’ information in its Nike Digital Privacy Policy.  Some key findings are:

WHAT THEY COLLECT

                We collect information you give us or permit us to access. Information may include, but is 

                 not limited to, your name, image, birth date, email and physical address, telephone number, 

                 gender, contact lists, social media information and profile, location (GPS) information, 

                 activity and performance information, and when necessary, credit card information.

                 We may automatically collect information regarding your interaction with, and use of, our 

                  products and services. Information we may collect includes, but is not limited to, your 

                  telephone number, Device identifier and hardware information, IP address, browser type 

                  and language, cookie information, system type, whether you have enabling software to 

                  access certain features, access times, referring website URLs, information about your    

                  purchases and other information about your interactions with us.

COLLECTION TOOLS:

                  Nike automatically collects information within our products and services or stored by your        

                   browser or Device. We use a variety of methods to collect this information, including,     

                   but not limited to, cookies and pixel tags/web beacons 'Collection Tools'.

                   We also work with other companies who use tracking technologies to serve ads on our   

                    behalf across the Internet. These companies may collect information about your 

                    interaction with us, including advertising. These companies may not recognize or 

                    respond to DNT headers from web browsers. If you would like to opt-out of receiving 

                    ads tailored by 3rd party tracking technologies associated with our website, please click 

                    here. Note that if you opt-out from these third party tracking technologies, you may still 

                    see our ads at other websites, but the ads will not be tailored using third party tracking   

                    technologies associated with our website.

What else can Nike do?  Not much.  According to McNew, Nike.com sales increased a full 49% year over year. This follows a 46% rise in fiscal year 2016 over 2015. The surge in online sales comes not only from the growing trend toward online shopping but also from some key investments Nike has made.  The company is a great example of the convenience of online shopping, a variety of products, and high customer engagement.  Nike has been doing a great job building their website and expanding its mobile apps to connect with more consumers and to make purchases from smartphones easy..