McGuckin's four-digit growth story
There have been some big numbers tossed around recently to describe sales growth in the hardware and building supply industry. But here’s one that jumps out exceptionally glaring: a 1,320% increase in web sales at McGuckin Hardware.
That number is the result of a project described as a digital commerce overhaul with curbside pickup.
Bill Harrison, technical operations manager at McGuckin, led an early adoption of Orgill's Integrated eCommerce program, which included Unilog’s cloud-based eCommerce solution and a subscription to Orgill's Industry PIM product catalog.
The platform, with its inbuilt product information management tool, would enable McGuckin to unify their sales channels and create an online shopping experience to mirror their store, while the massive product catalog would provide a virtual endless aisle of products for their customers. With new items added and updated daily, the Industry PIM catalog currently offers Orgill dealers more than 800,000 items with enriched product content including images, product descriptions, specs and attributes, related documents, and more. “In the past, I’ve had numerous people working on enriching data and it’s been incredibly time-consuming,” said Harrison. “So, to have a single entity come in and enrich all our product in a timely manner was huge for us."
With the launch of their new McGuckin.com site, the retailer is now able to provide a stellar shopping experience for customers with a host of new products, features, and tools. McGuckin, as a result, is seeing more site traffic, increased customer engagement, and a surge in online sales.
Online shoppers can now choose from 80,000 enriched products which represent nearly 95% of McGuckin’s in-store items. The catalog is maintained and updated to ensure the retailer has the most current product information available for their customers.
Grant Morrow, eCommerce Program Manager at Orgill, says “Working with the McGuckin team has been fantastic. They are an extremely savvy bunch. McGuckin took on a whole lot of change in a short period of time.” McGuckin not only converted their eCommerce site to the Orgill Integrated eCommerce program during a critical time of the coronavirus lockdowns in early 2020, but they were also simultaneously converting loyalty programs from Ace Rewards to be an early adopter of the Orgill built FanBuilder customer loyalty platform, which McGuckin has branded “McGuckin Rewards.”
The rewards program is integrated with both Epicor Eagle and the eCommerce website, so McGuckin customers can get rewards online and in-store and customers can have an online dashboard of their status towards getting a reward. “McGuckin’s brand is strong and we are excited how eCommerce and loyalty combined together could empower McGuckin and other future dealers to new heights,” says Morrow.
Harrison says “the added product content has definitely been a game changer; it’s made a considerable difference to our customers."
Harrison says they are impressed how well the Orgill and Unilog platform has integrated with their existing ERP, Epicor Eagle. The backend system synchronization enables them to display real-time pricing and availability on their eCommerce site and automate order processing. “The further we go along in this process, the better it gets.”
While in-store and curbside pickup options trend with local customers, McGuckin also offers Ship to Me delivery to anyone in the U.S. Harrison says their number of Ship to Me orders is comparatively lower than their local pickup orders, but they are typically bigger sales because they are purchasing high-ticket items like power tools. He adds that McGuckin gift cards are also a popular Ship to Me item, especially during the holidays. “The Ship to Me capability is a big advantage for us because we get a lot of people who order gift cards and have them shipped to another party. If the alternate shipping address feature wasn’t possible with the platform, we wouldn’t be able to offer this value-added service,” remarked Harrison.
In less than a year, the Orgill customer's site has already delivered impactful results. In the first month of their site launch, web traffic numbers more than doubled compared to the year prior and web sales jumped 1320%. Harrison attributes this, in part, to the high demand for online ordering at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, but also because of their more expansive online product catalog. Even now, nearly a year after their go-live, their web sales are well over 1000% compared to the same period the year before.
McGuckin’s in-store average order value (AOV) has also increased by 23%, despite their customer count declining 16%. Online AOV has grown 34% with the help of promotions, clearance sales, and their “Customers also bought” feature at the bottom of product detail pages. It presents McGuckin customers with similar and complementary products related to their item search, which helps them fill their shopping cart.
While they are monitoring key website metrics, Harrison acknowledges they are still not anywhere close to where they need to be as far as tracking their site performance. “There’s so much more we can be doing to analyze data,” he admitted. “We want to dig deeper to find opportunities to enhance our digital branch, increase engagement, and grow sales.”