Online styles as different as Target and Wal-Mart

As online shopping goes mainstream, the nation's top two discounters, Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., are taking vastly different approaches to their websites.

Wal-Mart has made the Web central to its holiday sales plan, publicizing special post-Thanksgiving Day sales and tripling from a year ago the number of online-only deals in the last week of November.

Minneapolis-based Target, on the other hand, has shied away from trumpeting Web-only deals. For now, at least, it is sticking closely to the carefully crafted holiday promotions offered in stores.

"Everything we're doing is to support the bricks-and-mortar store," said Target.com president Dale Nitschke. "Our guests look at Target.com as Target. We're trying to create the same lean, fast-moving environment that you find in the Target store."

In the retail world, both companies have been relatively slow to embrace online sales since launching in 1996. But that's starting to change.

"Eight years ago, we were crashing every three days trying to figure out how to keep the [online] store doors open," Nitschke said. "Now we've become a much more integrated part of the overall strategy. It's not, 'Oh, yeah, Target.com.'"

Their strategies appear to be working, as traffic to both websites has skyrocketed this holiday season.

Wal-Mart expects its online holiday sales to rise 40 to 60 percent, two to three times faster than industry projections, said Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart.com spokesman.

Still growing

Online shoppers already have shelled out $13.4 billion since November, a record increase of about 18 percent, according to Internet research company comScore Inc., of Reston, Va. Analysts predict an overall increase in holiday e-commerce of 15 to 20 percent this year, making it the fastest-growing retail category.

The changing marketplace was most apparent on Cyber Monday. What started as a marketing event dreamed up two years ago by the National Retail Federation to keep the post-Thanksgiving Day momentum alive, now is a "permanent fixture" on the retail calendar, Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, proclaimed last week.

Retailers launched special Internet-only deals on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and saw sales increase 21 to 26 percent over last year, a record.

Consumers will see a host of new trends this season as major chains search for ever more creative ways to harness the power of e-commerce. About half of the nation's retailers have enabled store workers to make online orders for out-of-stock items, according to BizRate. About a third have installed in-store Web kiosks.

In November, J.C. Penney launched its "Know Before You Go" feature, realizing that as many as 70 percent of its online customers went to its website to do something other than shop. Often they're checking out merchandise and promotions, said spokeswoman Kate Parkhouse. Target's find-it-at-a-store option has a similar goal: letting customers know the availability of products at certain stores before they get in their cars and drive there.

Potential of a teenager

At Target.com, the online database gets updated every 15 minutes. That means aggressive shoppers can snatch up those Nintendo Wiis as soon as they become available, even if it's at 3 in the morning.

Nitschke said its website also has become an important tool in spotting trends and managing inventory, something that could be key as it and other retailers see sales slowing in high-margin products.

An online spike in a bright red Isaac Mizrahi party dress or a complete lack of interest in a new storage system prompts stores to adjust their stockrooms accordingly.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart reports that the Web is bringing in new customers through its "Site to Store" program, which allows customers to order items online but go to the store to pick them up. Started as a pilot two years ago, the program became available to all 3,300 stores in July.

While 90 percent of WalMart.com's customers also shop at a Wal-Mart store on a monthly basis, the company found that half of the customers who used the site-to-store service were making their first purchase, Jariwala said. And once in the store to pick up their online order, shoppers spent an extra $60, he said.

Target said it has no plans to offer such a program, believing most of its customers prefer to receive items on their doorstep. To that end, it has offered free shipping for about 50,000 items this year. It also is promoting year-round features such as GiftFinder, which offers gift-giving suggestions, and TargetLists, an online registry.

"Our business is in its adolescence," Nitschke said. "We're not a mature business yet or a mature element of Target's strategy, but we're showing the potential of a teenager."