Macy’s took the top spot in NYU’s Luxury Lab’s think tank’s annual Digital IQ Index, which ranks specialty retailers according to their online competence.

It is a surprising finding until one considers that department stores in general have been stepping up with social media strategies, the survey said, according to Woman’ Wear Daily. The average Digital IQ for department stores grew 14 points from 2010, second only to e-tailers for highest category IQ. The category as a whole went from "average" to "gifted" status. Macy’s, along with Nordstrom, were labeled "genius" in terms of innovation in mobile, social and branded sites.

Accolades and Achievements

For anyone watching Macy’s in particular the news is not surprising either. Keynote Systems recently looked at search result page load time for retailers on its Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index, finding that on average such pages would download in 9.7 seconds with the quickest load time 3.86, courtesy of Macy's.

The US Postal Service recently highlighted My Macy's, the department store's localization initiative that it personalized to target regional preferences and individual shopper habits. Customers who made credit card purchases received catalogs that reflected their specific shopping histories - such as a specially-crafted catalog with mostly clothing for someone who has purchased a lot of clothing lately. Macy’s produced more than 30,000 catalog versions with page counts that varied from 32 to 76.

Macy’s also doubled its number of Facebook fans from 900,000 to 1.8 million as the result of its "Million Dollar Makeover" campaign this year, according to Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren, via the Chicago Sun-Times. The department store spent $120 million of its $1 billion marketing outlay on digital-media spending, he said.