Kelly Mulroney, GameStop‘s GM and VP of e-commerce discusses the social networking aspects of e-commerce.
Q: Online gaming has really taken off in the past few years. How can your company take advantage of that on the website? ?
A: Online gaming is a really big concept. We’re very interested in the different and newer modes of game play. We acquired Jolt Co., a social gaming content creator, and Kongregate, a premier website in the broad dimension of browser based gaming. ?We offer digital extensions of console game play. We’re always thinking comprehensively about the gaming experience.
Q: Gamestop’s e-commerce plan?is clearly dedicated to selling. What types of online branding and community building do you engage in??
A: Driving conversion is a key performance indicator that we use to ensure we’re investing dollars wisely in marketing and feature development. We’ve started to do more in terms of social commerce and engagement. ?We include features like reviews and user-generated content where users can embed photos and videos. We also run marketing campaigns that encourage our customer base to share experiences and insight outside of the construct of a product review.
Q: There seems to be a heavy ?investment on your site for reviews and recommendations. How important is word-of-mouth for your brand? Is this even more ?important because of your younger demographic??
A: Our demographic is broader than one would think. Teens are a terribly important gaming audience, but it goes up to people in their mid-30s and mid-40s. We see a great number of parent buyers. That being said, we’ve definitely placed more priority on social features. ?We’ve integrated Facebook and Twitter feeds. We’ve done some fun things in Facebook to announce special deals and to inform customers about announcements. We use it for feedback by showing new designs and asking the community to comment.
Q: What does the rest of GameStop’s marketing mix consist of? ?
A: We do a holiday printed gift guide, though we don’t do a tremendous amount of direct mail. We have a strong email program that reaches out to 8 million customers. We do a fair amount of display media. We’re big believers in paid and organic search. We also do a lot of television advertising. We will be releasing mobile apps mid-year. That will include an m-commerce site.
