New Macys.com user-friendliest to date

TUCSON, ARIZ. Macys.com. —It’s full speed ahead at

The online arm of the nation’s largest department store operator last month opened a state-of-the-art fulfillment center, expects to hire 80 new employees this year and plans to surpass $1 billion in online sales by next year.

To achieve its growth objectives and keep pace with demanding young female consumers who represent its next generation of customers, Macys.com last year also relaunched its Web site and added new functionality which allowed online sales to reach $620 million, according to Peter Sachse, chairman and ceo of Macys.com.

“We redesigned the site last year to give customers fewer, but more significant, options. We made it easier for her to determine where she wants to go without reading a lot of text,” Sachse said last month at the annual University of Arizona Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing conference.

Although making a site intuitive is as fundamental to online retailing as logical product adjacencies are to physical stores, Macys.com is pushing the envelope in other areas. For example, new functionality that allows users to view products from multiple angles was added to boost sales and reduce the likelihood items would be returned. Although, if customers want to, that process has been simplified because the company’s 850 stores are capable of processing returns.

The driving force behind the addition of new functionality is the need to keep pace with a hypothetical consumer Sachse referred to as Danielle who doesn’t read newspapers, has never had a landline phone and trusts peers more than experts. That’s why Macys.com decided to included user-generated content on its site such as standard and even video product reviews.

Tying the enterprise together is a state-of-the-art fulfillment network built from the ground up. Last month in Portland, Tenn., Macys.com opened a facility that Sachse said is designed for speed and accuracy.

A similar facility is also planned for Goodyear, Ariz.

“Once the second warehouse is up and running we will have a logistics network that can deliver anywhere in the United States within three to four days,” Sachse said.