Seth Godin put up a great post about how Borders Books has cut inventory yet increased sales. Borders accomplished this by carrying less titles, but showing them in a more creative way. Essentially, Borders quit trying to show you what you can buy, and started helping you make that decision by showing you the books it was most likely to convince you to buy.

It was a smart move by Borders (not just because of my fabulous 20/20 hindsight), because they realized that their brick n’ mortar store could never compete on the dimension of variety with online bookstores like Amazon. Instead of chasing a dream, they decided to use one of the huge advantages a brick n’ mortar store has over the internet - better control over what you see.

Brick vs. Click

When you visit a site, you are limited to your screen size, and then there is the space for navigation, and all the other content. So, while you may have an endless selection, you can’t really see that many purchase options clearly (with a beautiful cover that some marketer did a focus group for) - it’s usually a tiny image and some text. On top of this, you can’t feel the book. I’m seeing more and more creative book cover textures these days.

It’s funny, but walk around a Barnes & Noble when you get a chance - you’ll notice people aren’t just picking up the book to read the inside cover or the back…they need the texture. Indeed, if you have picked up a copy of Made To Stick, you know what I’m talking about. You can actually feel the duct tape on the cover. It’s neat. You would have missed that part online.

Blockbuster Thinks (For You)

Borders Books certainly isn’t alone in realizing this, and a while back Blockbuster reviewed their own psychology textbook to help them compete with online DVD sales. One of my favorite companies to follow is Blockbuster, so I noticed this right when they made the change. They employ a very shrewd two-tier strategy:

On the outer walls of the store, they stock current movies with the front covers showing, and have up to a dozen or so placements (all right beside each other). One might think “what a waste of space - I saw they had this already”. However, in reality it actually aids them in making the sale - any sale.

Too much choice hinders decision making, and they are looking to move those new movies off the shelf. By cutting the total number of choices, and placing a more “convincing” argument for renting one of the choices they do have, they raise their odds of a successful rental.

Blockbuster also places “contextual ads” (and by that I mean other movies starring the same actor) right in the middle of that whole display, which guarantees that old stock gets looked at (especially when Blockbuster runs out of the new movie starring that actor, which seems to happen a WHOLE LOT more often ever since they don’t require you to return it AND they permit you to trade in mailed DVDs for one in the store).

As for older movies, they have that thought out too - the internal rows have movies with their spines facing out - mostly. Even here, they have one or two DVDs on each shelf that are face front, just to help move along the type of person who can never make his own choice.

Sneaky, isn’t it? It makes me wonder if we should outsource the CIA’s job to them…