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Asos ranks highest in online merchandising

By FashionUnited

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Online fashion site Asos has scored highest amongst 50 apparel sites for customer engagement and visualisation in a comprehensive report compiled by software expert Peerius and IMRG, the industry body for e-business. The 2010 Online  Merchandising Index is an

independent study providing key insights into best practice merchandising within the apparel industry in the UK. The study provided critical analysis of what matters most to a customer’s online experience; which fashion sites are doing the best job of enabling customers to find what they are looking for (Discovery); how products are presented to customers (Visualisation); and overall level of customer engagement (Engagement).

FashionUnited were invited to an exclusive breakfast briefing and presentation in central London last week to get a first glimpse of the Index and it came as no surprise to learn that Asos were the reigning champion overall, scoring 80 points out of a total of 110. The online retailer leads the category for visualisation with a good mix of imaging options including 360 views, model and catwalk, as well as relevant product information.

David Smith, Managing Director of IMRG, comments: “Merchandising is all about active selling online. If you exclude the process of getting to the site ‘the bit at the beginning’ and paying for the goods and fulfilling the order ‘the bit at the end’ then pretty much everything else that happens online is part of merchandising.”

Joint first place in the category for customer engagement went to Asos and apparel website Figleaves, with both credited for using interaction tactics to influence customer behaviour such as community groups, review centres, editorial content and video.

Footwear retailer Schuh managed to clinch the top spot for discovery, allowing users to filter by options including brand, price, size and heel height. Shoe devotees will be pleased to find a search for “red shoes” delivers all red shoes, as opposed to delivering everything “red” and everything “shoes”. This is basic shoe etiquette in our opinion.

Smith highlights: “People have to be able to find your products, which is where site navigation, search and filtering come in. Once they have decided that they want to view a particular product, it needs to be presented at its best and customers need access to all the information that is important for them, whether that is colour, skirt length or washing instructions.”

He continues: “If you want to maximise your site revenue then you need to present your customers with additional purchasing options which is where product recommendations and cross-selling and up-selling play their role. And finally to keep customers on your site, the whole experience needs to be as pleasurable as possible which is why we need clear layout, good design and quality usability.”

The results suggest that while the majority of sites are leading the way in visualisation, a smaller number of sites still have a long way to go in areas such as discovery and engagement. Just last month online community platform specialists EPiServer published results that indicated many online brands are not embracing social media such as blogs on their websites despite recent findings that showed social networking to be the most popular online activity in the UK, accounting for 27% of total online time.

The merchandising world flocked to hear the panel of industry experts, including Peerius founder and CEO Roger Brown, Drapers Online Editor Keely Stocker and Dr Mike Baxter, Managing Director of Sales Logiq, impart opinion on improving conversion and key metrics. However the top tip of the morning was the sure fact that Internet access through a mobile device will overtake Internet access from a pc or a laptop by 2014. This future development will no doubt feature in the next merchandising index which promises to be an annual event.

Here are the top 10 apparel sites in the UK:

   1. Asos
   2. Figleaves
   3. Additions Direct
   4. Schuh
   5. Warehouse
   6. Watch Shop
   7. Boden
   8. Net-A-Porter
   9. Next
  10. Office




Asos
IMRG
online merchandising
Peerius