Bagga’s latest concept of stocking a tightly edited range in store but giving customers the chance to browse and buy from two internet terminals on site could
be a vision of the future for indies. Owner Dave Lomax believes offering full collections online suits his web-savvy market, and could make efficient use of
retail space if rolled out in the future. Customers are buying more thanks to product recommendations on Baggamenswear.co.uk too.
These suggested ‘add-ons’ are generated by Peerius software, and account for 15% of sales from the site. In a three month period after installation of the
software, the average order value rose 23% while the conversion rate was up 40%.
Jake Brumby, co-founder of Magic Toolbox, which supplies JavaScript image zooming and enlarging tools, says smaller players can now afford to create the customer experiences Boo.com aspired to, at a fraction of the cost. "It can cost less than £40 to download the software you need to do a lot of this work yourself, and digital cameras can take really high megapixel shots. A few years ago it would have cost thousands of pounds to achieve simple zooms on product images."
High rents and service charges also make online retailing an attractive proposition, says Rikki Hunt, director of Nine Fashion. "It costs £20,000 to £30,000 a year to run a good website, but you’re looking at £80,000 for a store, with potentially the same return," he says. Nine’s website launched in June this year, and already generates 10% of sales.
Hunt says the days of paying web agencies huge fees for designing your site are over, and that Nine’s searching and product viewing tools have been built in-house at little cost. "We do think it’s worth investing in quality photography," says Hunt. "We employ two local models, and a professional photographer every time there’s a new range to shoot. We haven’t gone for catwalk clips yet, but we aspire to that further down the line."
M&S, Next and GIVe are following a massive trend in online fashion by introducing video content. "On the www.matchesfashion.com site you can select your favourite designer, watch their catwalk show and shop directly from this video content," says Laura Summers, online marketing services manager at BT Fresca, whose web clients include Coast, Whistles, Mint Velvet and designer mini chain Matches. Summers adds that catwalk clips can generate more traffic, drive up conversions and reduce returns.
Littlewoods.com achieved double digit conversion rates after integrating over 1,500 online product videos using AdobeScene7 and picked up the IMRG ‘Best Use of Rich Media’ award last month. "The implementation of such a large number of hosted videos was a huge undertaking but we’ve seen benefits in terms of customer engagement, improved conversion rates and higher sales," says Mark Newton-Jones, chief executive of Shop Direct Group, Littlewoods’ parent company.
But catwalk clips come at a cost. "You’re looking at an extra £300,000 to £400,000 a year for a large retailer to put in catwalk clips," estimates Friend at Fashshot.com. "To cut down on bandwidth use, some retailers are running it for a few weeks, then taking it off."
Sarah Curran, chief executive of My-wardrobe, says a pitfall for late online adopters is failing to understand the complexity of balancing usability with interest. "Often images going onto sites are flat and clunky and don’t do anything to reflect the experience of shopping in-store," she says. "Every product needs to be photographed, styled, have copy added, and be made as accessible as possible. We use video to add energy and movement, but you also have to make it simple to use. It’s possible to ‘click to buy’ straight from our video clips."
My-wardrobe is also about to launch its latest gadget - video clips that are individually tagged so that customers can select several and create their own personal catwalk show. "The idea is to view all ‘winter wedding’ clips or all ‘day dresses’, which will be a great experience, and also aid buying decisions."
Looking ahead video will become more interactive, says Max Childs, EMEA marketing manager at Adobe Scene7. "JC Penney is working on interactive catwalk clips that you can pause and then rotate the models and zoom in at your leisure," says Childs.
Rich content must be transactional, urges James Brooke, director of 10CMS, an on-demand rich media solution. "A big new area in searchandising is building outfits, but most importantly is providing a simple way to then buy those assembled products," he says. "Clients of ours including Tesco, Jimmy Choo and AWear are constantly looking for ways to increase basket size, through interesting lifestyle content, while simplifying the checkout process."
Ten years ago Boo.com was beaten by technology; today, it’s at the fingertips of fashion retailers. But the key to success is understanding your customer and deciding what will make them tick - and click.
Screen Pages and Peerius have already implemented the Recommendation Engine for Smythson (www.smythson.com), the luxury stationery retailer. In the trial period alone, Peerius’ testing was able to prove in a 45 day period:
- Over 12,000 recommendations were clicked
- conversion rates on recommended products increased by 7.4%
- average order values increased by 4.35%
- overall revenues increased by 12%
- rapid integration with existing e-commerce website (in days)
- automatic population of recommendations in the place of existing cross-sells
- management tool for tracking, reporting and management
- A/B testing to measure the improvement in sales performance
- optimisation of engine rules by Peerius
- 3 month "no risk" trial
- Preferential fee structure for Screen Pages’ clients after trial period
Roger Brown of Peerius says, "Our partnership with Screenpages allows us to rapidly deploy our technology and immediately add value to Screenpages’ client base. Screenpages are a leading e-commerce platform provider and so we are delighted to be working with them."
One company that has designed a version of recommendation technology is Peerius.The science behind Peerius’ recommendation technology is simple: the software records the behaviour of the user,
such as where they go on site, what they click on and what they buy, and uses that data to recommend other products.
In more complex examples, size, fabric, finish and style can also be taken into account. Finally, it records what recommendations have been successfully clicked on and bought
and uses all of this information to build an even more accurate shopper profile for future transactions.
Peerius states that its clients can "start the process by inserting a single line of javascript into the html of their web pages".
From then, the data collection begins immediately.Once the technology is implemented, the process is entirely automated. It works by recording the behaviour of a user and
then comparing it to the behaviour of other users. Companies can also chose to make manual recommendations alongside these, which is a a useful way to push slower selling product lines.
If the pattern of one user is similar to another, it then recommends products that the other user has viewed or bought.
In order to filter this slightly, etailers can also choose to add rules to the program so that certain chosen products do not appear in the recommendation tool.
Although fashion retailers are beginning to become aware of this technology, many are not using it to its full potential at present, or at all. Instead, they are creating a manual version of it.
The written explanation of how the retailer has selected which products to recommend must also be chosen carefully. For instance, while Mandmdirect.com uses "Customers who bought this also purchased…", Miodestino.co.uk, an online lingerie boutique, uses "Related products" and independent retailer Donna Ida has a "Stylist suggestions" section.
None of the above take into account the user’s own tastes or historical buying habits and therefore these etailers are blindly selecting products to recommend without the help of science.
Online retailing should be engaging and interactive. What better way to do this than to suggest to shoppers something they might actually want?