The Answer Den doubles online sales for PETCO.com

August 18, 2008

When PETCO engages their customer community, they get a huge response - and great business results. They created The Answer Den, a microsite that combines all their Ask & Answer content, to enable customers to ask and answer questions at the category level, and customer response was overwhelming!

To jump-start their new Answer Den, PETCO ran an "Answer This!" contest from May 30 to June 27, 2008. They promoted this via email and splash pages on its site, offering daily prizes of $5 in PETCO Dollars, with grand prizes of up to $500 in PETCO gift certificates. Customers were awarded for being the first person to answer the question of the day, which was posted by PETCO, but they were also encouraged to comb through other questions to answer anything they could.

During the promotion, PETCO saw...

358% increase in average daily answer volume, far beyond expectations
49% increase in average daily question volume, showing that, once introduced to Ask & Answer, PETCO customers wanted to use it to learn more themselves

The Answer Den

Those who used The Answer Den are very engaged, valuable customers. We compared browsers who utilized The Answer Den with browsers who visited any category page and did not interact with Answer Den.

Those who visited The Answer Den had...

100% more orders per session

90% more page views per session

72% higher conversion rate

28% more items/order
9% higher average order value
-6% item abandonment rate
-6% shopping cart abandonment rate

Contest, awareness bolster overall Answer Den results

On top of the existing results from The Answer Den, after their "Answer This!" contest ended, PETCO saw an additional...

69% increase in its conversion rate
172% more views per visit (on top of already-elevated page views due to The Answer Den)
150% more orders per session

These increases are on top of previous Answer Den performance, indicating that more answers and questions drive even higher client engagement and sales results, and that PETCO.com customers respond well to contests - and stay engaged!

The bottom line

PETCO found that their community members want to help one another, and when they do, their most highly engaged customers become even more loyal, valuable PETCO customers, and they encourage other shoppers to engage as well.

Download This Case Study (PDF)