Macy’s tops among specialty retailers in Digital IQ Index
New York City -- Macy’s took the top spot in the annual Digital IQ Index, which ranks retailers according to their online competence. The index measured the digital footprint of 64 brands via 350 data points across four dimensions: Site, Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Mobile. Based on these scores, each brand was assigned a Digital IQ and a corresponding class of Genius, Gifted, Average, Challenged, or Feeble. While 37% of the brands in the Index were classified as Gifted, only Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, and Nordstrom earned the Genius distinction.
The ranking was developed by NYU Stern Professor of Marketing Scott Galloway with L2 in partnership with Buddy Media.
The top ranked brands in the study were:
- Macy’s
- Victoria’s Secret
- Nordstrom
- Sephora (tied)
- Urban Outfitters (tied)
- Threadless.com
- Bluefly
- Bloomingdales (tied)
- Gilt Groupe (tied)
- Pottery Barn (tied)
Key findings include:
- Facebook presence has become the price of entry as every brand has developed their own fan page; however there still remains a significant opportunity to monetize Facebook communities as only four brands developed fully-functional Facebook storefronts.
- For most specialty retail brands, mobile has become synonymous with the iOS (iPhone/iPad) platform. Despite the Android platform’s enormous and steadily growing market share, only 5% of brands in the Index have Android apps; likewise, only one brand's mobile site is optimized for Blackberry.
- Sixty-seven percent of brands have mobile sites, almost triple the number from 2010; 88% are e-commerce enabled.
“In Q1 2011 e-commerce grew more than twice the pace of overall retail," Galloway said. "Digital competence and mastery of mobile and social platforms will likely result in a bifurcation in retail between the haves (digitally competent) and have-nots (digitally challenged).”