Woot
The Woot Inc. is an American Internet sales platform from Carrollton, Texas. The company was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and went online on 12 July 2004. Woot was one of the American pioneers of the "Deal of the Day" sales model on the Internet. On his website woot.com Woot offers every day exactly a product at a discount price. The offer is exactly 24 hours. Every day at midnight runs from the offer and is replaced by another product. The product range offered by Woot is great, but is mainly about computer components and electronics.
- 7.1 wine.woot!
- 7.2 shirt.woot!
- 7.3 sellout.woot!
- 9.1 Customer Service
- 9.2 Delivery Times
- 9.3 server breakdowns
- 9.4 Censorship of the competitions
Name
The name goes back to Woot term from the network jargon. The exclamation " W00t! " Is particularly common in chats to express joy or success. At the same time Woot may also Apronym as for the phrase " Want One Of Those " ( " Will one of them " ) are available.
Business Model
Under the motto " One Day, One Deal" Woot offers every day a product until either stocks are sold out or it will be replaced at midnight (UST -6) against another offer. Even if a product is sold out before midnight, it will be replaced only by zero clock against the following offer. An exception is the so-called Woot - Offs. A special feature of the business model, the products in advance are never announced. The resulting excited impulse buying can lead to the particular product is within hours or minutes already sold. The Woot system relies on simplicity and surprise. An ad for the remaining stocks of products can be found at Woot not, however, the order button is animated while only 10 percent or fewer of the stocks are available. Only when a product is sold out, Woot published the sales figures. The shipping on Woot be within the United States flat rate $ 5 per order. The Woot shipping is limited to the U.S., which is why it has been found elsewhere in the world many imitators.
Marketing Communications
The marketing style of the company relies entirely on disrespect. The product often mock the product, the customer or Woot itself weaknesses product be given preventively. Users of the Woot community often make their own research and post their opinion in the forum. From the Woot staff as qualitatively very well perceived contributions are highlighted in whole or in part, regardless of whether they throw a positive or negative image on the offer.
The users of Woot can share their opinions on daily product on the Internet forum of Wootplattform.
An important part of the Woot community are organized by Woot Photoshop contests. The top three entries will receive cash prizes. Some posts also get an honorable mention and a shipping coupon for the next order. Contributions that have been the subject asked to miss or edited particularly poor, the chance of achieving the Monkey Prize ( " monkey", English For Monkey, . " To monkey ", English for " get up to mischief ."). This is rewarded with a low- price, which usually is related to monkeys. Some users who are targeting specifically on that price, so create an extra bad posts to get this consolation prize.
Promotions
Woot -Off
Occasionally Woot differs from its one- deal- a-day business model. During a Woot -off a succession of products is referred to for a time period not greater detail previously, usually 24 to 72 hours is. During these phases, the sales revenues typically exceed one million U.S. dollars.
Bag O'Crap
Also, with the offered occasionally Bag O'Crap (short: BOC, " bag of crap " ) differs from Woot from its usual supply structure. The BOC, which will be officially sold under the title "Random Crap " includes, in most cases, trinkets in the value of a dollar. Some randomly selected boxes are thereby added considerably more expensive electronic equipment. Usually, the BOC is within a few minutes after launch is already sold out. Due to the popularity of the BOC in the Woot forums community, the owner of the site word filters are always coming out that highlight or change that refer to the Bag O ' Crap on 1 April 2007 ironically words or parts of words was an April Fool the Bag O'Crap for 1,000,001 U.S. dollars, plus the usual shipping costs offered. On the same date, a coupon code in the product image a discount of $ 1 million to the offer.
Product launches
For some events, starting with the launch of the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder Gamma, Woot went into partnerships with other companies to offer a new product exclusively as the first and only vendor to its website. In this product " launches " indicates an icon that shows an animated rocket, which is referred to by some users jokingly referred to as " Papsthut ".
2 -for- Tuesday
Since January 10, 2006 Woot Every Tuesday two different products combined into one package. Woot uses the Tuesday again and again for other offers greater product quantities. The promotions are then named according to the amount of product also times 3 -for- Tu3sday or 4 -for- Fuesday.
Podcasts
Every weekday, when Woot setting a new product, the portal also publishes a podcast. The podcast provides a brief description of the product offered for sale and featured an often humorous song or a parody of the articles to be sold. The podcasts are produced by Matthew Shultz.
Another recurring feature is the podcast Podcast Mailbag ( " mailbag "). Instead of a song emails are read, which were lodged at Woot.com. Accompanying the " Mailbag " of piano music. Again and again voicemail messages of users are imported into the podcast. Regularly the Mailbag ends with the words: "E- mails are not answered on air, may be not answered; Therefore, if it is an emergency, please do not email to [email protected] but choose 9-1-1 ".
The Sonic Trivia Quiz ' is an irregular Woot podcast. It is a mixture of various sound clips and concern is to identify and find out what they all have in common the individual clips.
Days on which the Bags of Random Crap sold obtained (except for Woot - Offs ) a Random Crap Theme Song. The Woot -off actions are accompanied by themes songs. Songs for products that are related to the heart, always have a throbbing rhythm, reminiscent of palpitations. An example of these products are blood pressure or pulse meters.
Whenever products with Bluetooth technology are sold, the podcast recommends a specific song. From a pirate crew sang, the song tells the story of " Bluetooth, the most fearsome pirate of the Seven Seas" and his nefarious deeds. In the middle of the song each time reports a single voice from the chorus of pirates and complained that Bluetooth is a technology and has nothing to do with pirates. Even products by manufacturer Magellan GPS systems are mainly accompanied by a special song. This always starts with " Ferdinand Magellan, the world sailor, crossed the darn meridians, crossed the equator darn ... "
Woot services and applications
Some members of the Woot community have in turn developed services and applications for Woot. Some of them have specialized to inform the user when a new Woot - product is offered. Others focus on the exchange of articles that have been bought from Woot.
Spin-Offs
Wine.woot!
On 22 May 2006 Woot began beta testing a Woot platform for wines. With the slogan " One Week, One Wine", the project was launched on 2 October 2006 and has since been officially offers every Monday a different type of wine to. Already after 2 months Woot began offering its own wine brand named Monkey Prize. The wine described as Woot Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon sells for 59.99 U.S. dollars and got an outstanding rating by the U.S. winemaker Gary Vaynerchuk in his video podcast wine tasting.
Since October 2007 there is at Woot Wine the Labrats ( " lab rats " ), a concept to get a purchase at the right time and a little luck automatically an additional bottle of the weekly publication sent. Who gets this extra bottle is stopped by Woot to give his opinion about the wine in the forum. Besides the pure positive or negative evaluation, the user can put their thoughts to the wine into words.
On November 1, 2007 provided wine.woot! for the first time cheese to wine to. This was announced and sold as a surprise offer after the sellout of the week wine.
The current legal situation in the U.S. only allows for the delivery in 42 of the 50 U.S. states.
Shirt.woot!
With Woot Woot Shirts offers every day a new t -shirt design for 12 U.S. dollars. The project started on 20 July 2007 on weekdays beginning and has been running since 1 September 2007 on the weekends. In contrast to common sales practices of Woot shipping is free, although there is an overnight shipping option for $ 5. The first shirt sold was the " Woot Launch " motif to celebrate the launch of the website. It was the aforementioned rocket icon that is used on woot.com for the launch of new products.
The T-shirts are screen printed made in Woots facilities in Carrollton, Texas. The design tendering and selection runs over the Woot office in St. Louis. Most designs are from reputable, established designers. The printing is done on solid color T -shirt from American Apparel. The base color of the shirt is selected by the shirt designer and submitted with his subject proposal.
Weekly organized Woot T -shirt design contests on its website. Submissions must adhere to specific guidelines. Only submissions that meet all the criteria will be posted in the Woot blog and can be selected by the users. The design with the most votes will be offered on the following Friday for sale. Second-placed design is on Saturday and the third placed on Sunday sold. The winners will receive a cash prize and a share of the revenue. Only registered users who have made at least one purchase may participate in the competition.
To meet friends and families of the artists who could be ordered in the usual way a T -shirt, Shirt Woot has his one- deal- a-day principle, extended to a Second Chance option. T- shirts, which sold out or have been missed by the customer, so that can be reordered after the actual date of sale. Restricting who can buy a Second Chance Shirt, there is not. However, there is a complicated process which regularly determined from the demand for T- reordering, which reach 20 motifs in the Second Chance pool. The order links for older Second Chance Shirts are not published on shirt.woot, but collected from users in blogs. Based on the Random Crap on the Woot page, there since November 2007 on Woot Shirt Random Shirts for 6.66 U.S. dollars.
Sellout.woot!
On 12 September 2007 Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo! and developed the page sellout.woot.com. All product offers and purchase transactions are taken over by Woot. Accessible but the page is just about the shopping site Yahoo!. Seven days a week new products are offered at the same time as in other Woot sites.
Statistical
On 26 July 2005, a Woot blog entry gave out some preliminary statistical data on Wootkunden. The Wooter with most purchases had purchased 338 products in 114 different Woots. Another user had spent 16285.62 U.S. dollars on Woot.
Another blog entry of 20 September 2005 revealed that just buy on average 62 % of customers with a copy of a product, 14 % buy two pieces, and 24% three. On average, 27 % of sales take place in the first hour. The highest sales achieved Woot at 7 clock in the morning. The U.S. states with the most product purchases per capita Nevada ( 637), Washington ( 828), Maryland (865 ), California ( 876 ), and Utah ( 893 ).
In July 2007, Woot claimed to have over 800,000 registered members. According Woot was the one millionth article, a 4 GB USB stick, sold on 5 February 2007. As a reward, the buyer of this article was given the product of Woot. Even during and after a purchase Woot published statistics for daily offer. These include, among many other things, for example, data for the first and last buyer, different metrics to sales periods, the level of experience of the buyer.
Criticisms
Customer Service
Woot offers no adequate Withdrawal and merely accepts the return of defective products. According to its corporate identity Woot is rude to his customers and calls on them to auction with dissatisfaction the products on ebay and, initially, from product defects to improper operation.
Delivery Times
To save costs, Woot FedEx SmartPost uses to delivery smaller and lighter products. This shipping method is the packages before delivery to the State Post USPS further, extending the delivery times. A paid overnight solution like Woot Shirt Woot does not exist on the page.
Server breakdowns
During a Woot -offs or a BOC sale, the server always collapse under the large customer request.
Censorship of the competitions
Woot reserves the right to exclude posts without giving reasons within his creative competitions.
Comparable German deals
Not only in the U.S. Woot scored with offers like " Zazz " and " MidnightBox " competition. Across Europe, a 3 - billion - euro market for so-called live shopping has developed.
Around the same time as Woot in the U.S. celebrated its first successes, launched the first European sales platform, which was based on a similar system. 2005 was the Dutch sales platform " iBOOD " online.
The first all- German market successor to the American Woots was the Düsseldorf Shop " protection money ", which became operational in late 2006 and now account for about 20,000 users daily offers Price crimes. However, protection money closed its doors in late 2008.
After the Cyberport offshoot " Cyberport.24 " despite an interest of Hubert Burda Media already had to give up shortly after its launch, the Cologne-based sporting goods shop " Sportlet " was the beginning of 2007, the fourth player in the German market.
In February 2008, there were about 14 German -speaking Stores by the "one- deal- a- day" business principle. Some of them serve as the American counterpart Woot! especially the information technology and electronics. Other vendors such as " Abedi ", " NIBOKI " or Sportlet specialized in travel, art or sport.
In addition to selling system, some of the German shops also oriented to the successful sales strategies by Woot. Among them, for example, the " Bag of Crap ", podcasts and the " Woot Off ", which are available in various forms and under various names. Some of you but also surprised with their own ideas: One of the major providers in the German market " Guut " led " Guutscheine " one. Another great provider " Preisbock " led a buy rating, thus ensuring maximum transparency. " 24Limit " offered thematic activities such as condoms on World AIDS Day, or a cake in heart shape for Valentines Day. The end of 2008 there were already more than forty live shopping provider in Germany.