3 Ways Retailers Can Improve Customer Experience for E-Commerce

Online fashion retailers are under pressure to provide better shopping experiences for their customers, while still remaining competitive and profitable. According to HBR, increasing customer retention rate by 5% increases profits by at least 25%.

Shoppers are no longer solely satisfied with a great product offering. To stay competitive, retailers need to offer a unique shopping experience for their customers, and as online shopping continues to outgrow the in-store experience, e-commerce retailers will need to think beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to good customer experience.

Here, we share three strategic trends retailers and fashion brands must implement to improve the experience for their online shoppers in 2021.

Show your products on model 

Most retailers don’t consider product imagery to be the most creative aspect of their work, but it’s what their customers engage with the most. In a sea of seemingly endless fashion products online, the way products are shot and displayed is an essential purchase driver for online retailers and fashion brands. Everything from the styling of the product to the lighting of a photo can make or break a shopper’s decision to add to cart.

Styling products on a model rather than shooting products flat typically translates into better sales, as it helps tell the story of how the product fits and how to wear it. Using Looklet’s digital photo studio, retailers are able to create high-quality product images without the need for elaborate photoshoots or models. Shoot each garment separately, select your model and pose, and combine into a look.

“At Looklet, we guarantee consistent high quality product imagery and fast time-to-market for our clients,” says Robert Ahlborg, CPO and co-founder. “We ensure they always present their products in the best way, even with hundreds or thousands of new garments online a day. This also makes sure that the customers can rely on the product imagery depicting all products correctly.”

“With Looklet tech, we can help our clients build a real personal shopper experience showing complete-the-look recommendations as real on-model images or let the users style online themselves,” adds Robert. “Our clients can at any time change any product image and update their product imagery. This means changing styling, model, posing, cropping, background or creating new detail images in seconds and totally within our software tools.

Personalization

E-commerce personalization has come a long way, with personalized product recommendations and content, custom social media ads and email marketing. Statistics says that customers spend 48% more when their experience is personalized. But most e-commerce personalization today is focused on improving the shopper’s current visit, or to show them relevant content or offers if they return again within the month.

With technology breeding new innovation, retailers are becoming more sophisticated with their personalization, like using a customer’s current shopping behaviour to generate a profile around their purchase taste or using a person’s brand affinities now to give clues to purchasing habits in the future.

Begin by working out what your customers need. Will personalization actually help improve their experience? If it doesn’t, they’ll ignore it and you will not reap the benefits.

Here are four trends in e-commerce personalization that are likely to thrive in 2021 and beyond.

Personalization of the product search experience: It is important for customers to not only be provided with relevant product suggestions but also for those products to be personalized based on the customer’s purchase taste and interests. If the customer is not seeing what they are looking for right away, they’ll move on to another online retailer to look for those products. Therefore, it’s imperative that you direct your customers to exactly what they want, faster. Two customers might be looking for the same product but yet might need to be shown different product recommendations.

Personalized recommendation widgets: Retails should consider deploying personalized recommendation widgets based on customers’ interests, preferences, and behaviour across different pages of your e-commerce site. They group together a similar category of products that are most relevant to a unique customer and help produce higher click-through rates (sometimes an increase of 90-120%) and conversions. They should be placed on high conversion web pages such as the Home Page, Product Listing Page, and Product Display Page.

1:1 product recommendations that can help move inventory: For most brands and online retailers, the cost of excess inventory is the heaviest expense item. Using the data you’ve collected on a customer’s taste and buying behaviour, you can showcase products that have remained in stock for a long time to the people most likely to buy them.

On-trend merchandising

Beyond helping to increase conversions, retailers can use personalisation tools to move old and surplus inventory by styling the items with on-trend accessories and seasonal merchandise.

Visual merchandising is a crucial retail strategy that maximises the aesthetics of a product with the intent to increase and maximise sales. On-trend merchandising plays a critical role in the look, feel and culture of an online retailer or brand.

Using Looklet’s digital photo studio, retailers can shoot garments individually and style together later, easily adding accessories or changing the look later in our styling software, The Look Creator, optimising products for different markets, seasons or trends.

“We had a huge batch from a fast fast fashion brand that was collecting dust in the warehouse for ages, sales simply did not move at all,” said the senior studio manager of a Looklet customer. “We decided to shoot the batch with Looklet – and sold it all in a go!”

Curious About Our Game-Changing Technology?

Discover how our AI powered e-commerce solution combines the best of both worlds: real and AI generated models, along with advanced virtual dressing room technology to enhance your digital dressing experience. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can support your brand, feel free to reach out to us through the ‘Contact Us’ form at the bottom of this page!