Cloggs puts best foot forward with website relaunch and company rebrand to exploit the mobile shopper

With half of its web traffic now coming from mobile, shoe retailer Cloggs is revamping its website to optimize it for multiple channels as more of its customers start to interact with the online store via mobile.

Powered by Venda, the website relaunch coincides with the company’s wider rebrand, reflecting the business’s new direction, which will specifically cater to the family market segment.

Chris Thomas, Managing Director at Cloggs, explains how important mobile is to the revamped brand: “We now get 50% of our traffic from mobile/smartphone devices. What’s even more interesting is the pattern of usage during the week, there is a real surge over the weekend when customers are out and about on the High Street and they are checking for the best online deals but also in the evenings, which I think this is a reflection of dual-screen behaviour, in the lounge watching TV and browsing on a tablet at the same time. Whilst the sales do not exactly match traffic, it is growing every week and clearly is an important channel to connect with customers.”

Following its acquisition by JD Sports Fashion Group earlier this year, the new website will also help strengthen Cloggs’ own brand presence within the footwear industry. Moving away from its previous strategy of featuring a wide array and disparate number of products, the site will now feature a more focussed number of high quality brands to be resold by Cloggs. The shift in approach will allow Cloggs to reach the family market via targeting high earning females, aged 35 years or older, who are increasingly making purchasing decisions for the whole household.

The Venda partnership means Cloggs customers benefit from access to a mobile optimised site, while the Venda platform will also support Cloggs as it continues to expand both domestically and within international markets. Additionally, the flexibility of the platform will allow Cloggs to adopt additional tools in the future, such as interactive merchandising, order fulfilment, or multichannel solutions, in line with business needs and priorities.

Thomas adds: “We’re keen to reflect our origins as a family-run business within our business model and establish ourselves as the one-stop shop for family footwear. At present there is a huge generic footwear market, with many companies simply chasing the most popular brand of the moment, without having a true understanding of what customers need or want. Our rebrand signals a shift away from this approach, so we can focus on catering to a specific aspirational customer base. Given our long-standing relationship with Venda, our confidence in them from technical point of view, and the cost effectiveness of its solution, made them the natural choice to lead the rebuild of the website.”