In a recent Internet Retailing webinar, Customer Experience Masterclass, James Brooke of Amplience considered why and how retailers can improve the way their website is viewed across different devices. Below, we summarise the subject areas covered.
Change is accelerating
• “The external environment is changing unbelievably quickly.”
• Consumers are using a wide range of new devices and shopping and browsing in new ways, so retailers need to change to engage the customer. The millennial generation, aged between 16 and 24, may well be using a gaming device rather than a PC to view a website, while Google Glass and connected watches are emerging too.
“It’s no use if we’re delivering something that’s fixed and static and can’t work around whatever next year’s device is going to be.”
• Need to redefine the digital experience around multi-screen and mobility, with all the challenges of discontinous connections, unpredictable bandwidth and more, and the fact that customer journeys are no longer linear.
• According to eBay research, 40% of transactions on the site were multiscreen ones in 2013, while the 21% of users who multiscreen account for 44% of transactions.
• Broad range of content, tools and technologies are required.
Combine content and commerce
• Getting consumers’ attention is the number one online retailer’s problem. “We need to inspire our customers, persuade them and start selling in channel,” because that makes for more profitability.
• Examples
Tom Ford: “using the media they create daily to create a really exciting and compelling experience”.
New Look: “providing value-added overlay,” with a long scrollable home page that gets in a lot of content.
Sweaty Betty: integrates lookbooks, catalogue into the product details. “You’re getting the brand and commerce experience upfront”.
• Engagement from combining commerce and contents lifts revenues: e.g. Sweaty Betty saw a 27% increase in online revenues, 8% increase in conversion rates, 28% reduction in bounce rate.
Mobile-specific experience
• “One thumb, one eyeball”: Need to think about building experience differently on a mobile phone that’s used everywhere and anywhere but in different ways and for short periods of time.
• Examples: Dunelm, Tom Ford: how the homepage adapts from prime online site to mobile site, where it’s explored using one thumb. Ways of taking one image and delivering it in different contexts, dynamically, on different devices.
Sweaty Betty: Consistent brand experience: What happens on the online site adapts to the mobile site.
Adaptive media: demonstrations
• Charlotte Olympia: size and resolution of the image changes as the screen gets narrower. How it adapts as the screen size changes, as it would on different devices.
• Amplience dynamic media image demonstration: how retailers can dynamically change quality and size of media as factors such as bandwidth change.
• Moving away from static page templates: lister page
• Examples: Littlewoods. Adaptive media changes the quality of images to deliver highest fidelity image possible for the device that it’s viewed through; Tom Ford: Enhances the experience to optimise inspiration.
• How team can take control of and optimise master images to give different images in different contexts.
• How to merchandise videos – creating shoppable videos; using authoring tools to build lists of relevant products.
Improving lister pages: alternate views, colour swatches, using dynamic media system, use of roundels to join images together. Examples: Mamas & Papas, Charlotte Olympia.
Enhanced product pages: using media to create different views.
• Examples:
DFS: how it merchandises its furniture products
Charlotte Olympia: ways of using spin merchandising to enhance view
• Ability to track engagement media: “It’s a great way to track intent:” analytics can show duration, frequency of zoom, spin, alternate views and other technologies.
Image SEO (findability)
Page 1 of Google means more clickthroughs
Think of your product pages as being landing pages
Importance of file names
Poll, held in webinar
Which of the following solutions are you likely to implement this year (tick as many as apply)
Content and commerce (60%); mobile specific experience (80%); interactive video (25%); enhanced lister media (10%); enhanced product media (25%)
• Question and answer session.
To hear the webinar for yourself, to view the accompanying slides and hear the question and answer session, visit the Amplience webinar page.
For details of our other webinars, visit our webinars page.
