Canadian Retailer - Winter 2013 - 20

MYSTORE RETAILER'S GUIDE VOL. 9.1: TECHNOLOGY

CAPLAN’S APPLIANCES MAKES THE WEB HOME
Caplan’s Appliances is a destination retailer—offline
and online.
A family-owned store, Caplan’s has been a Toronto
retail landmark for more than sixty years. For the
last ten years, the store has worked hard to make its
website Caplans.ca the destination for Torontonians
looking for that new oven.
“We use the web now to be a voice of what our store
is about,” says Robert Caplan, president of Caplan’s
Appliances.
Customers visiting Caplans.ca will learn a lot about the
store, including product news, store information and
more than 600 testimonials about the store.
Caplan says the store’s goal is to enhance the online
presence incrementally. In the past year, the store has
posted more than 60 videos of staff talking about
products. Caplan’s has also added an area where
customers can ask for a quote.
Caplans.ca changes monthly. Caplan says the store
continually experiments to see what works and what
customers like. “That’s the beauty of online. You can
reinvent yourself in a month,” says Caplan.
Caplan says the store’s web presence is part of a
larger marketing and advertising strategy. “We
integrate everything,” says Caplan. The store crosspromotes the online and offline experience, offering
coupons online to redeem in-store and vice versa, all
with the goal of building the Caplan’s brand.
“We’re trying to bring people online because it helps
us to tell a story that we can’t always tell in the store. If
the online and offline components are very integrated,
that is a win for us.”

2. Secure the online space

20 |

3. See what people are saying

Even retailers that don’t have plans for
the web must secure their online space. For
retailers that want to build an online presence, securing an online space is the move
to make.
Securing online space involves taking
ownership of the store’s online identity. This
means buying a domain name for the store.
“Protect your trade name,” says Rick Silver,
president of N49 Interactive, by buying two
or three domain names that represent the
store. “You don’t even need to have a website,” he says. But you do need to make sure
competitors don’t buy your domain name
and use it to direct business to their site.
Along with securing a domain name, retailers will want to claim other brand-related
properties, like their Google+ page and their
twitter handle. Even if the retailer has no plans
to use these tools, taking control of the pages
can help to protect the store’s reputation.

Another aspect of securing online space is
searching the store.
“Google yourself,” Silver advises retailers, and look for two areas of concern in the
search results.
The first is competition. “When you google
yourself, are you coming up or are your competitors coming up?” Silver asks. “Are competitors buying ads under your names?”
The second is presence. Retailers want
to make sure their store appears at the top
of the search results. "That first page on
Google should be you," says Silver. The page
shouldn’t be filled with information about
competitors or stores with similar names.
If the store appears at the top of the search,
retailers will want to know what these search
terms say. Are they positive? How do they
reflect on the business? How will potential
customers interpret the search findings?
Stores with existing home pages need to know
how Google recognizes the page. Does Google
have the store’s web address in its memory?
Has Google categorized the store properly?

canadian retailer | winter 2013 | www.retailcouncil.org/cdnretailer

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Canadian Retailer - Winter 2013

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