Me Encantan Zappos!

(I haven't taken Spanish since 9th grade, so forgive me if the title is wrong.)

I'm sure most of you have seen the fun Zappos.com commercials with the people dancing and color exploding everywhere as the mailman delivers happiness to eager shoe lovers (if not, you can get a dose here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxBWfqDAQkg). Being a shoe lover myself, I decided to check out the site. I was a bit disappointed when Zappos.com didn't explode with color and music when I opened it and instead looked like every other website, but I did some site surfing and decided Zappos is still a pretty sweet company.

Aside from providing access to 1,340 brands of shoes and 24/7 customer service, Zappos loves staying in touch with its customers. The bottom of the page is full of youtube videos and links to their various fan clubs, online groups, and blogs. According to an article on bnet.com, Zappos has four separate blogs. The CEO and COO actually blog frequently and love to answer consumer questions and feedback both on their blogs and on a twitter feed. Many other Zappos staff members are also into blogging.

While I wouldn't recommend this involvement in new social media to most companies (Can you imagine a blog from the CEOs of Taco Bell or Home Depot?), it seems to be working out for Zappos. According to the BNET article, “Zappos doesn’t do a lot of advertising, but what it does is brilliant. When you take off your shoes in the TSA line at 15 airports around the country, they go into bins with Zappos ads on the inside.” This fun approach brought Zappos revenues from $1.6 million in 2001 to over $800 million in 2007.

Now Zappos has full support from its customers on just about every social networking site, from Facebook and myspace to MyYahoo and MyMSN. Zappos.com even provides the code for 9 different banners/stickers to post on myspace profiles to show your Zappos love. Since it seems a lot about fashion is a popularity contest, it's no wonder jumping into the middle of the social scene has brought Zappos so much success.