Orajewels.com, which launched in April, is seeing stronger than expected sales thanks largely to a customized "try-on" feature that lets shoppers see how necklaces and earrings look on three ethnically diverse models, Judy Shapiro, executive vice president of marketing, tells InternetRetailer.com. "Conversion rates for products that feature Try-It-On are three times higher than products that don't have it," she says.
Orajewels, a wholesaler of jewelry for nearly 50 years, knew it would have to offer a unique shopping experience to stand out among other e-retailers in the fast-growing online jewelry market when it decided to build a retail web site last year, Shapiro says. Online sales of jewelry and watches grew 37% in the first quarter over the year-ago period, to $226 million, compared to 24% growth in all online consumer spending to $20.9 billion, according to comScore Networks Inc.
Because Orajewels targets male shoppers who typically buy jewelry as gifts for women, it wanted to offer a shopping tool that would help them see how hoop earrings or pearl necklaces would appear on different types of female models. "If you're buying a hoop, you want to see how big it really is," Shapiro says.
The e-retailer deployed the virtual try-on tool from RichFX, a provider of digital imaging technology, after a few months of custom development. The most difficult part of the development, Shapiro says, was to get jewelry items to appear in the correct scale in relation to the images of models. But once scale is worked for a product category, such as necklaces, it's easy to make the tool work for all products within that category, she adds.
The try-on feature requires shoppers to have Shockwave rich media technology loaded on their computers, but Shapiro says she has not received any complaints from shoppers.
Back...
