Asos.com has a new design which, says Snow Valley’s Sarah Clelland, “is a real triumph. This is down to five things that their team have done really well”:
- Each category has its own homepage — so in essence there are 6 homepages. Each looks like their paper catalogue, with headlines to attract the fashion-hungry customer, eg ‘We love jumpsuits’.
- This headline links to a sub-category called jumpsuits that only contains jumpsuits. Not trousers. Not ‘no products found’. The customer only sees completely relevant products.
- Where the headline does not link to a category — Trend Alert: 80s Brights for example — they’ve created a magazine-like landing page that shows relevant items. No throwing the customer to a product page for a pair of orange leggings and expecting them to find the rest themselves.
- The category pages persist — if I am a man shopping in the Men category and I leave the site, I am automatically returned to the Men homepage on my next visit.
- They haven’t messed with the bits that needed to stay familiar and reassuring — the product page layouts and the checkout process look the same.
“My only gripe,” says Clelland, “is that the scroll bar on the right of the homepage for Women is a bit erratic, but I’m sure that will get ironed out.”
The company is also about to launch an online community designed to give shoppers an insight behind the scenes at Asos. It will feature blogs and a personal shopper who will be on hand to answer style questions and help find the right products for particular occasions.
“We genuinely want to get to know our customers,” says Asos marketplace and community director James Hart on the Asos Community News blog. “What we are launching is a way for our customers to talk to us directly and transparently, to talk to each other and to help develop Asos into something even better.”
According to Retail Week:
Sources close to the e-tailer said the new channel will be followed by the launch of Asos Marketplace later this year. This will provide a platform for customers to sell their own goods online, similar to Amazon.
It is understood that Asos is hoping to leverage the level of trust that The Community will establish ensure the success of Marketplace.
Asos has also added a new childrenswear department, called Little Asos, featuring over forty fashion labels and with clothing prices ranging from £6 to £120.
