Retailer Web Services Digital Advisor Winter 2018 | Page 5

ON DECK
RICH TV
First Impressions
Matter from
Screen to Store
J
esse Johnson knows a thing or two
about first impressions. They’re
the gold standard he has set as a
second-generation owner, along
with his brother, Richie Fraley, of Rich
TV & Home Center in Portsmouth,
Ohio. Customers rave about Rich
TV, consistently citing fast delivery,
outstanding service, friendly and
knowledgeable staff, and competitive
prices. It’s no wonder Johnson expects
the store website to deliver the best
first impression when prospective
customers start their shopping process.
Johnson considers RichsTV.com
the window to his store, a business
founded in 1994 by his father, Rich
Fraley. At that time, Fraley had lost
his job from an appliance store that
was going out of business. According
to Johnson, his dad had two choices:
move or start his own business. A
move from the depressed, old steel
manufacturing town along the Ohio
River was contemplated, but instead
Fraley started Rich TV in his basement.
It didn’t take long for the business to
outgrow the basement and expand
its product offering from electronics
to appliances and mattresses. One
year away—and counting—to the
store’s 25th anniversary in 2019, the
Digital Advisor talked with Johnson, a
WebFronts ® Level 4 and RetailDeck ®
customer, about how, after a year with
another web provider, he returned to
RWS and has been leveraging the
power of digital ever since to attract
prospects to his store and convert them
into customers.
Left to right: Brothers Richie Fraley and Jesse
Johnson of Rich TV & Home Center
Digital Advisor (DA): Who are your
competitors?
Jesse Johnson (JJ): We’ve been in a
depressed market for a number of
years; our local competition is a Lowes
and a regional chain store. Most of our
competition now is online. It’s evolved
over the years…When folks came in,
we had to educate them. Now, they
come in with a ton of information
from their web searches. That’s a
benefit of having an RWS website—we
can be that information source for
them, showing we’re competitive with
everyone else.
DA: What’s your biggest challenge as
an independent retailer?
JJ: Our biggest obstacle is the
misconception we’re higher priced. We
need people to know we’re competitive.
If you can break through that barrier,
once they come in the door we have
a good shot at having them as a
customer. In the appliance business,
the majority of folks want to touch and
feel products before they buy. Our site
needs to be the window into our store,
the first impression that draws people
in—professional-looking, easy to
navigat e and full of information.
DA: You left RWS at one point and
returned. What happened?
JJ: We were an RWS early adopter,
one of the first 20 that did the MEGA
WebFronts ® beta program. When we
changed buying groups, we left RWS
and moved to another platform. We
had been using the RWS system for
so long, when we switched platforms
our analytics showed less traffic, and
the SEO and organic search weren’t
as good. We had to advertise more to
bring people to the store.
When we tried digital advertising, our
site traffic increased but still, no results.
People didn’t stay on the site; it couldn’t
support the digital advertising. After
a year on the other platform, it was
costing us money—not making us
money. RWS was so superior to what
we were using. We returned to RWS in
the summer of 2016.
DA: What, in your opinion, are the
greatest benefits of the RWS platform?
JJ: The flexibility of the RWS site
gives me the ability to change pricing
on a dime. I can set up my market
parameters and react to market
conditions on the fly. The sheer amount
of information the RWS database
provides on model and SKU numbers is
beyond anything. Automated national
promotions and rebates are at my
fingertips. And with the ability to de-
anonymize, the customer is sharing
their email with us and we can see what
they’re looking for.
DA: How important is your website to
your business?
JJ: Our website is first and foremost; it’s
the launching pad for everything we
do. We have more people coming in the
store saying they’ve been to our site. We
have more calls to the store directly from
the site. We use our site as a selling tool,
carrying around our tablets, pulling up
information on the fly rather than having
to go to vendor sites. Between our Level
4 site and RetailDeck, it’s a great pairing
of the two.
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