Coolblue closes hundreds of web shops

Dutch e-commerce group Coolblue has terminated hundreds of its web shops, instead preferring one central web shop at coolblue.be/nl. This may be the precursor to an international expansion, the company says.

International expansion?

Coolblue started out as a small number of different web shops that were specialised in one specific product (and its accessories), like smartphonestore.nl or pdashop.be. As from today these will simply be subsets of coolblue.be/.nl, which should make it easier for customers to find the right products: they simply have to remember “Coolblue” rather than the hundreds of URLS with store or shop that existed until today. The unification should also raise Coolblue’s position in Google search results.

For the company itself, the new unified structure is also quite beneficial: this way it is easier to set up marketing campaigns across the (former) borders between web shops. “Moving everything to one domain was quite exciting. The commercial consequences are huge: now we can develop and automate faster. I’m looking forward to exploring these new possibilities”, founder Pieter Zwart said. 

Between the lines, Coolblue also hints to an upcoming international expansion: the press release states that “It will be easier to translate the web site” after the unification. Currently, Coolblue is only available in Dutch (for the Netherlands and Belgium) and French (only in Belgium).