Mulberry relaunches ecommerce site in light of international and mobile growth

Mulberry has relaunched its ecommerce website as it looks to support growth in visitors coming both from overseas and from mobile devices.

The Somerset-based luxury fashion retailer, known for its leather handbags, hired San Francisco’s Tacit Knowledge to build the new site, which is based on the hybris framework. “We decided to relaunch our ecommerce site,” said Charlotte O’Sullivan, head of online at Mulberry, “because we wanted to ensure that we would continue to have a strong, stable platform that could keep pace with and support our international growth, and that would allow us to continue to evolve and improve the experience and service level we offer our customer.”

The new site incorporates responsive design from Poke, which comes in response to the growing number of visitors using smartphones and tablet computers to access the site.

This, says O’Sulllivan, is the biggest difference that the new site brings. “We wanted to ensure we had a strong, scalable mobile and tablet offer that would mean the customer would get a fantastic, consistent experience regardless of the device they are using to visit any area of mulberry.com.”

Tacit Knowledge also aimed to focus on the customer experience, developing a crisp look and feel with new product photography.

“The underlying principle of everything we do at Mulberry revolves around quality and delivering the best possible customer experience, which is why Tacit’s belief and approach to software as a craft had strong resonance for us,” said O’Sullivan. “We were extremely impressed with the skill, pragmatism and professionalism of Tacit’s teams from the outset, and are delighted with the results of our partnership.”

She expects that the site will evolve over time as Mulberry continues to find new ways to improve the customer experience. “In particular we’re looking at ways we can improve our service proposition for customers at a regional level and also in terms of how we can continue to integrate the online and offline experience for our customer,” said O’Sullivan.

“It’s a real privilege to collaborate with an iconic brand like Mulberry,” added Chris Andrisick, chief executive of Tacit Knowledge. “When we do our job, the technical underpinnings fade into the background. What remains in this case is an online experience elegantly showcasing a catalogue of refined products.”

As well as selling online, Mulberry trades through 127 stores around the world. It directly operates 62 stores, including 15 in the UK.