Nordstrom is a department store that is known for their impeccable customer service.  In addition to their dedication to customer service in their physical stores, they have also extended to various offshoots of the original department store.  These include their discount store, Nordstrom Rack, and related NordstromRack.com and Hautelook, their online flash sale webpage that requires membership.  This online store offers sales on products for a limited timeframe.  Trunk Club is another Nordstrom related platform, where the items are picked out and shipped to the customer’s door by a personal stylist via a subscription service. 

The Nordstrom Instagram account is set with a separate platform with Like2Buy, where users can click on an item and instantly be linked to purchase the item.  With this technology, it makes the purchase process even easier for customers as they admire an item on Instagram.  It also helps the brand’s SEO with multiple links placed in their social media.

With all these various forms of Nordstrom, the brand is able to build a more robust profile of their customers.  They are able to collect data via the web but also combine it with point of sale systems, social networks and various other shopping tools such as the texting.  They did try an experiment of tracking actual customer movements in their store via the WiFi signals, but that got a generally negative response with people feeling that this tracking was too intrusive. 

One unique use for the data that is collected is a project where program manager for product reviews and ratings at Nordstrom Inc. is leading a team that is analyzing the reviews of products, customer questions, surveys, etc. to look for commonality.  The team is, “trying to tie all of this together to get a better understanding of what our customers are saying -- what are the themes and trends in the areas that are working great and in the areas that aren't working great” (Laskowski, 2014) to benefit the customer.   This proactive research is looking to help customers before they even realize that they need help. 

Sales Associates are also benefitting from the data collection with the ability to build the customer profiles.  A Sales Associate can understand a customer based on their behavior shown by the data from web analytics. 

One issue that many e-commerce pages struggle with is truly tracking the customer as an individual.  For example if a husband and wife share a home computer, they could potentially be tracked as one consumer when in reality they are two completely different consumers.  Having the ability to track these two as separate entities would be helpful to an e-commerce page, specifically one like Nordstrom that sells products for males and females.  Additionally, the knowledge of if a purchase or search is for the customer or for someone else would be helpful.  A consumer may be searching for something as a onetime purchase, but may have other interests.  This onetime purchase and search still counts in a profile for them, but in reality does not reflect their interests.  If web analytics systems could have a way of understanding personal purchases versus purchases for others, this would be helpful. 

References:

5 SEO Tips for 2015. (2015). Retrieved November 21, 2016, from https://www.bigfin.com/blog/5-seo-tips-2015/

Beath, C. M., Ross, J. W. & Sebastian, I. (2015). Why Nordstrom's Digital Strategy Works (and Yours Probably Doesn't). Retrieved November 21, 2016, from https://hbr.org/2015/01/why-nordstroms-digital-strategy-works-and-yours-probably-doesnt

Laskowski, N. (2014). Nordstrom digs into 5-star customer reviews and finds a shipping problem. Retrieved November 21, 2016, from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/feature/Nordstrom-digs-into-5-star-customer-reviews-and-finds-a-shipping-problem

Van Rijmenam, M. (2013). How Fashion Retailer Nordstrom Drives Innovation With Big Data Experiments. Retrieved November 21, 2016, from http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bigdatastartups/140826/how-fashion-retailer-nordstrom-drives-innovation-big-data-experiments

Wolfson, R. (2013). Retailers Using Big Data: The Secret Behind Amazon and Nordstrom’s success. Retrieved November 21, 2016, from http://www.bigdatanews.com/profiles/blogs/retailers-using-big-data-the-secret-behind-amazon-and-nordstrom-s