The Exchange’s Website Turns 25. Here’s how it’s Grown Up.
On July 15, 1996, when “Independence Day” ruled the box office and “California Love” dominated the pop charts, the Exchange debuted its website, then known as www.aafes.com.
Within days, thousands found AAFES’s new online home, many writing with suggestions and customer inquiries, the Exchange Post reported.
The www.aaafes.com website, circa 1996.
The website was far from the shopper-friendly site it is today. Initially, it consisted of an external site with information for the public, and an internal site for associates.
“The location pages were the main part of the site (the “Store Locator” now),” said Bryan Johnson, manager of web and e-Comm design, one of three designers who built the front-end page.
Online shopping didn’t start immediately, and in its earliest version, customers could only browse the Exchange catalog online.
“You could identify products and call in to order,” said Tim Miller, chief of digital media and one of the original website designers, “because we were still heavy into the print catalog books.”
By the summer of 1997, shoppers could order online, but the site had room to grow.
A display advertising the www.aafes.com in 1996.
“On the original site, you were required to log in before browsing,” said Scott Blevins, service portfolio manager, who was on one of the earliest IT teams to work on the site. “Today, you can shop, and you’re not asked to log in until you try to place an order.”
By 2000, with shoppers able to buy merchandise online wherever they were in the world, the site was successful enough to earn it the No. 4 spot in InformationWeek’s E-Business 100 list. And it continued to evolve.
In 2010, www.aafes.com became ShopMyExchange.com. Senior Business Analyst Masuma Tiwana, who has been with e-Commerce for 10 years, said that her first project as part of the e-Commerce team was revamping the site.
“It went from a very simple site where we offered a smaller assortment and very basic functionality,” Tiwana said. “It was bare bones, but we made sure we took care of our customers. From there, we’ve evolved to a more complex site with a larger assortment.”
A recent screen capture of the ShopMyExchange.com home page.
One of the most significant events for e-commerce was expanding the online shopping base on Veterans Day 2017 to include millions of honorably discharged Veterans. In the months leading up to the launch, celebrities such as Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood and others recorded endorsement videos to help get the word out.
Since 2017, more than 770,000 Veterans have verified their eligibility to shop online, placing more than 1.1 million orders.
In a continued effort to increase convenience and fulfillment for shoppers, other features have been added during the past few years, such as ship-from-store, introduced in 2016. In September 2018, a buy online, pick up in store option was added, followed by curbside pickup in spring 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later this year, 575,000 Department of Defense and Coast Guard civilian employees, who can now shop in person at their local exchanges, will have access to ShopMyExchange.com.
Figures from before 2005 were unavailable, but e-commerce sales have grown from $223 million in 2006 to $551 million in 2020, an increase of 147%. Compared with 2019, e-commerce earnings are up $8 million, an 83% increase.
The site will continue to evolve. Enhanced search capability, additional pickup options and more convenient buy online, pickup in store among planned improvements. In the early days, sometimes as few as 1,000 items were offered for online shopping; by next year, says E-Commerce Senior Vice President David Lemons, the number will be well into the millions.
“That’s part of that major evolution we’ve been working toward for a while,” Lemons said. “Industry and customer sentiment drive our future enhancements. Customers have given us quite a bit of feedback on our search and navigation capabilities, so we’re putting a lot of focus into that.”
And ShopMyExchange.com is about much more than shopping, with links to the community Hub, Exchange history and more.
For a look at how the site has evolved over the years, go to web.archive.org. Type www.aafes.com or shopmyexchange.com into the search engine, then click on the highlighted calendar dates to see older versions of the site.
“It’s gone through a lot of iterations,” Tiwana said. “I treat it like my baby, and I like seeing how the baby’s growing up.”
