Asos ranks highest in online merchandising
By FashionUnited
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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