Harvey Nichols says improvements to its online merchandising strategy have boosted clickthroughs from category to product pages by almost a third.
The upmarket department store says the number of visitors moving from the category level to view a product on its desktop website rose by 31% in a four-week period, thanks to its use of technology from Attraqt Fredhopper that uses advanced automated processes to supply the information required to arrange and present category pages. Customers can more easily search and navigate harveynichols.com as a result. Clickthroughs on mobile rose by 23% over the same period.
Responsive merchandising tools also allow Harvey Nichols to manually curate individual category pages. This ensures products displayed to the customer can be prioritised according to brand and business requirements such as trends or campaigns.
Harvey Nichols introduced its latest merchandising strategy as part of a recent website restructure carried out in partnership with online merchandising specialist Attraqt Fredhopper, with whom the retailer has worked since 2013.
“We want to offer our customers the same incredible experience online that they have when they enter one of our stores, and for them to feel confident and comfortable browsing and shopping in this environment,” said Pamela Reynolds, head of online at Harvey Nichols, a Top250 retailer in IRUK Top500 research. “We are impressed with the performance and results, and that gives us peace of mind, especially at peak trading times. Shoppers are staying longer on our site – engaging more with category filters and clicking onto product pages, which ultimately helps increase sales.”
Harvey Nichols says the new technology has also helped it to improve the overall performance of its website. As a result of the restructure, server response time has improved fivefold.
“As a luxury retailer, Harvey Nichols’ challenge online is to remain true to its aspirational brand image while driving sales,” said John Raap, chief commercial officer at Attraqt Fredhopper. “By restructuring its website and implementing technology that allows the online team to apply advanced visual merchandising techniques, Harvey Nichols is offering an inspirational digital shopping experience.”
Image courtesy of the Harvey Nichols website.
