Speartek Creates New Online Store For Weather.com
Speartek Creates New Online Store For Weather.com
(ATLANTA, GA December 20, 2007) In response to viewer demand, The Weather Channel has upgraded their online store at http://store.weather.com. Offering branded products as well as weather-related items, the new website delivers a fresh online shopping environment that is stylistically consistent with the primary Weather Channel web property.
“The Weather Channel store brings a dynamic interactive shopping experience to consumers; one that we believe will meet the expectations of existing users and attract new ones. Our new store.weather.com offers a rich retail experience with products that reflect our brand mantra of ‘bringing weather to life,’” said Shari Pace, senior Vice President of Licensing and Merchandising. This new online retail channel was designed and implemented by Atlanta-based web development company Speartek (www.speartek.com). Speartek focused on crafting a unique and consumer-friendly shopping experience for TWC’s target audience that was visually aligned with the existing Weather.com brand. In addition to its sleek design, the site features Flash animation on key category landing pages and suggests related product offerings to maximize sales opportunities. A key factor in the success of this new venture is its customized integration with the fulfillment systems of All Points Atlanta (www.allpointsatl.com). All Points provides the day–to-day warehousing, order processing and customer service for numerous corporate entities, housed in a state-of-the art facility near Georgia Tech in northwest Atlanta.
Speartek and All Points Atlanta are accustomed to addressing the online shopping needs of B2B and B2C organizations, and applied their distinct skills as a team in The Weather Channel Store use case. Frequent partners in delivering branded “company stores” corporate apparel and marketing products, the complimentary assets of the two enterprises provide entities such as HBO, AT&T and Arby’s with a single solution for managing online commerce, email marketing and website content.
With the assistance of Tango Partners (www.tangopartners.com) promotional products consultants, specific merchandise was selected based upon quality and appropriate ‘fit’ for The Weather Channel’s viewer demographic. Many of the apparel items are selected for outdoor “activists” and have special features such as a running jacket made of fabric that “wicks” moisture away from the skin. At launch, products for fall and winter will be featured; new items will be added to the mix with each new season.
The Weather Channel store leverages the loyal following of millions of viewers and online users of The Weather Channel and its Web site, weather.com. TWC website traffic averages 30 million users per month, certainly high enough to influence brand marketing strategy. Promoting the store with five-second intros to its “Weather on the 8s” television segment and through a banner ad on its home page, initial ecommerce site traffic was largely generated through these marketing efforts. Today, over 12% of site traffic results directly from organic search engine rankings for the individual products, demonstrating the power of the Speartek platform’s search engine optimization.
About Speartek: Speartek is a leading Internet development company specializing in ecommerce, content management systems and customized ebusiness applications. The company works with direct clients and in partnership with promotional apparel and uniform distributors, fulfillment houses and marketing agencies to create websites that manage B2B and B2C ecommerce as well as provide email marketing and search engine optimization solutions.
