There is intense speculation that the retailer will be heading into administration this week.
The retailer was reportedly running special online toy promotions yesterday morning, but today you can find no toy products listed on the site.
Although this news is quickly spreading round the industry, it's interesting to note that no formal announcement actually exists on the homepage for toys on Woolworths which informs users that toys are no longer available. Yes the page looks very blank, but you can still delve deeper into the left hand nav and view all the character pages for brands such as Batman and Bob the Builder.
Similarly, it's interesting to note that they will probably still be receiving lots of quality traffic on to this page on the back of their good SEO as they rank at position 1 & 2 on Google UK for 'cheap toys'... a search term bound to be getting some decent volume at this time of year.
I wonder if Tesco Toys or ToysRUs might ask Woolworths nicely if they'd put a 301 redirect on their toys page and link it through to their own toys pages? What do you think... reckon Woolies would go for it?!
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4 comments:
Woolworth's were a great "Grandfather" brand in the UK.
I've heard recent rumours that they may be returning online only shortly. Is this true?
Do you think their model will work given the poor press the brand encountered after they went into receivership?
hi chris,
you're right - Woolies are to return to the UK in an online-only format which is similar to what Zavvi are doing.
The online model is definitely profitable in its own right and is the only shining light in retail at the moment, so in theory it should work.
My thoughts with Woolies is that so many people now know they have ceased trading it will be some job trying to get the "we're open - online" message out to their core customers. So quite a lot of advertising is going to need to be done as Google Insights already tells me their brand gets less searches than it used to.
Furthermore, i haven't seen the demographics for Woolworths' core audience but i'm unsure about how web savvy they are. Loyal Woolworths customers I suspect, the Grandfather generation you refer to, may not be enough to get the site going. The web customer is less loyal than the high street anyway (because of the propensity to change shops at the click of a mouse) so i forsee problems for them.
I do wonder if Woolworths had interacted with their customers more whether they would have realised what their underlying problems were. Perhaps a mystery shopping programme may have helped their cause, for example www.MysteryShopMyBusiness.com
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