Consumer Choice

With more than 100,000 products available, German online retailer
computeruniverse.net offers a galaxy of software, hardware, and
accessories. Whether site visitors are looking for business productivity
applications, games, DVDs, consumer electronics, stereo components,
televisions, computer displays, or digital video cameras,
computeruniverse.net is likely to sell it.
But breadth of product isn't the only thing that sets computeruniverse.net
worlds apart from other online stores. According to Alexander Koppisch,
chief executive officer, the site's real difference centers on the quality of
information. computeruniverse.net's depth of merchandise details
contrasts most high-end German computer stores' basic product
specifications and lack of insight or context for customers to find the item
best-suited to their needs.
In addition to a diverse product selection, computeruniverse.net's shoppers
include consumers and business customers in multiple countries.
The majority of site traffic comes from Germany, but German-speaking
residents and business customers in other European countries and the
rest of the world find what they want at computeruniverse.net as well.”
Breadth and Depth of Information Upholds Commitment
to Customers
"We're committed to providing as much data as possible so the customer
will find what he needs," says Koppisch. "The challenge is to provide
comprehensive, up-to-date information and pricing for all the products
we carry, as quickly as possible. That's no small feat when we offer such
a huge selection."
From the outset, computeruniverse.net founders recognized the
enormous challenge that data aggregation would present and sought a
way to automate the collection of information. The company's online
store was even purpose-built by in-house programmers to receive an
automated data feed of some kind.
According to Koppisch, "Manual data collection would have meant
copying some marketing text here or a picture there. It would be
incredibly difficult, inefficient and costly to try to gather extensive data,
keep it up-to-date and organize it consistently so that our customers
could comparison-shop."
However, in Germany there were few suppliers for product data.
computeruniverse.net executives looked at online retail competitors'
sites as a benchmark for the kind of detail a data supplier would need to
provide. The breadth of merchandise information supplied by domestic
service providers paled in comparison, so computeruniverse.net turned
to CNET Channel's DataSource™, in order to achieve its mission of
providing customers with quality information.
"Where the local providers offered information on ten products in a
category, DataSource provided details for 50 items," said Koppisch. "For
every ten features the others listed, DataSource listed two to five times
as many. Those details are crucial for a customer who's purchasing a
motherboard and needs to know which processor he can fit on it, which
RAM he can use, and how configuration will impact performance."
computeruniverse.net also relies on DataSource to provide information
about items related to the product sought, such as accessories for a
digital camera, laptop bags and other merchandise. "Those products
also are part of our commitment to helping the customer make informed
decisions, for a quality shopping experience," adds Koppisch.
To start shopping, visitors to computeruniverse.net can choose the product
category they prefer. They can click on the item they wish to purchase
and see exhaustive information courtesy of DataSource, including a
picture and the price, a description, and extensive feature data. Users
also can select several items and choose the comparison function to see
a side-by-side presentation of DataSource-supplied specifications.
At a Glance
Company:
Website:
Headquarters:
Founded:
Employees:
Summary of Challenges: To distinguish itself from the
competition, computeruniverse.net sought to offer the
broadest and deepest information for about 100,000
technology products running the gamut from business tools
to entertainment software.
Summary of Results: computeruniverse.net's awardwinning
online store serves customers in Germany and
abroad with merchandise details and comparison shopping
capabilities that have created consumer loyalty in the form
of repeat business, and have eliminated the need to
compete on price alone