Apparel & Accessories

Internet Retailer Best of the Web 2007

AE.com
FamousFootwear.com
Gap.com
NikeStore.com
Nordstrom.com
Polo.com
Spiegel.com
Talbots.com
Zappos.com

Shop for a toaster online today and any savvy site will have specs and pictures at the ready to help one decide without ever setting foot in a store. Buy a coat, however, or a handbag or pair of shoes, and the gap between being there and having to depend on the product information offered on a computer screen can loom large.

This year’s category winners in apparel & accessories succeed by bridging that divide and, in fact, giving online shoppers something beyond what they’d get in a store. Among them are retailers leading the way in the use of new applications that leverage the web’s unique properties to expand on the customer experience.

For example, a web-enabled installation at Polo Ralph Lauren’s flagship Madison Avenue store this summer gave “window shopping” a whole new meaning with a touch-sensitive store window featuring tennis wear that enabled passers-by to shop from outside the store by simply tapping on the window glass. And Nordstrom’s new Flash-built designers’ collection feature helps inject a big dose of the excitement associated with high fashion into Nordstrom.com.

But launching out-there applications that enchant shoppers isn’t the only way that the category leaders win online. As others demonstrate, oftentimes the tool that delivers the best results is an ear tuned closely to the customer. Talbots, for instance, is becoming an online powerhouse with the help of merchandising features such as shop by outfit, new at Talbot’s, and live chat—a method to build on the personal kind of service customers seek in Talbots stores.

And pure-play Zappos.com marches to the lead in the shoe space online with a strategy that skips wow-factor bells and whistles in favor of site improvements driven almost entirely by customer comments. The result is a formula that keeps shoppers coming back: free two-way shipping, a huge selection, and search, sort and shop functionality that gets shoppers to what they want, fast.

“It’s how our site has evolved,” says Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. “Anything we add on our web site is generally from customer suggestions.”

Winning in online retailing doesn’t always require engaging graphics punctuated by videos and music—although that can help, especially if the targeted audience is teens and young adults. What is profoundly important is providing the fundamentals of retailing: products that appeal to the customer base in an easy-to-shop environment. When a retailer excels in both of these areas, it can spell the kind of growth like that being experienced at AE.com, the retail site of American Eagle Outfitters, hitting close to $200 million this year.

American Eagle added to an already graphic-rich, interactive site this year by launching “aerie Tuesdays on CW.” Aerie, its new line of intimate apparel and sleepwear for teen girls and young women, is sponsoring Tuesday night showings of the “Gilmore Girls” and “Veronica Mars” on the CW television network. AE.com displays clips of the TV shows and American Eagle’s sponsoring commercials, which feature AE customers discussing the TV shows and AE apparel.

AE.com makes extensive use of Flash technology to provide interactive mouse-over navigation to reveal product details and displays of outfits—a merchandising tactic that supports young online buyers who like to coordinate outfits but don’t always take the time to navigate throughout a site to find them.

AE.com also lets online customers shop to the same music played in its stores by clicking on tracks from the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, N.E.R.D. and other groups.

With all of its online entertainment and interactivity, however, American Eagle still sticks to the fundamentals. It has been careful not to overwhelm visitors with content, making it easy to navigate the site and complete a purchase, says Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president at consultants Retail Forward. “American Eagle does a great job of honing in on its core audience of teens and young adults, but they also do a good job of providing features like a holiday gift guide that’s good for others who spend money on AE.com, like parents,” she says.

So in addition to all the pizzazz, it’s making sure it’s giving its targeted customers—and their parents—a shopping experience that keeps them coming back.

One of the most frustrating experiences for online shoppers is entering a term into site search and turning up results that guide them to the wrong product. More often than not, if a shopper can’t hit the right search term in a few tries they will abandon the site. Understanding that consumers often don’t know fashion industry terms for shoes, Famous Footwear has spent the past year expanding the dictionary of search terms on its web site to make it easier for shoppers to find exactly what they want.

“Footwear shoppers are savvy, but they don’t necessarily know industry terms such as slip-on loafers being called moccasins,” explains Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group. “Famous Footwear now has a vocabulary in its site search that matches that of the consumer, and that’s extremely beneficial.”

The upgrade in site search is part of a broader cross-channel marketing and merchandising strategy Famous Footwear calls “More Shoes, More Ways.” The intent is to create closer ties between the web site and its stores. The retailer averages 458,000 monthly unique visitors.

“We want to make certain we communicate this message regardless of the media or channel,” says Jennifer Stack, vice president of relationship marketing for Famous Footwear. “We also want our stores to realize the web site is a friend, not a foe.”

To further that concept, the merchant is testing access to its web site in 15 store locations. Customers can access Famous Footwear’s catalog of 1 million shoe styles, compared with the 11,000 to 12,000 typically carried in a store. This access is a major benefit because footwear shoppers understand their size may be out of stock or carried in another location than where they are shopping. As a result, they expect to have to hunt for what they want. “Extending this capability to the store is what people want because shoppers can see an item firsthand then immediately order it on the web site,” says Tocky Lawrence, a vice president at F. Curtis Barry & Co.

With shoe retailers developing more aggressive web strategies, innovations like these keep Famous Footwear a step ahead of the competition.

Gap.com, along with its sister sites OldNavy.com and BananaRepublic.com, has grown substantially in value over the past year to parent Gap Inc. Following a major overhaul of each of the sites one year ago—an ordeal that left the sites out of commission for two straight weeks—Gap Inc. re-emerged as an e-commerce leader. Its e-commerce sales returned to sharp growth as sales at stores declined, and its re-designs impressed technology experts with leading-edge use of rich media.

While raising ease of shopping to new levels, Gap realized a 31% increase in year-over-year sales at OldNavy.com alone to $68 million from $52 million for the second quarter ended July 29.

Industry experts say the ease of shopping that Gap put into its sites late last year has helped set new standards for how online retailers can leverage broadband-supported rich media technologies. A recent merchandising display on the home page of Gap.com, for instance, invited shoppers to view a scrolling gift guide. By simply mousing over it, the guide scrolls to the left or right with a series of product displays, and mousing over each display produces a pop-up box with product details.

In Gap’s shopping cart, shoppers can mouse over size and color options to see in real-time whether their preferences are in stock, then add products and continue shopping without hitting a back button. “We made the online features an extension of the store shopping experience,” says Will Hunsinger, general manager of Gap.com.

“Their site design is strong, and it makes a strong fashion statement,” says Colleen Coleman, an affiliate with retail consultants McMillan/Doolittle. “They have good content in terms of different trends, and they show you how to put together an outfit.”

One shortcoming, however, is that the redesigned sites lack a site search function. “That could cause them to lose convenience customers that want to get in and out quickly,” Coleman contends.

However, Gap launched last month Piperlime.com, its first online shoe store. Among its features is a site search function that offers a pull-down menu within the search window to search by product category. For Gap, this may be a sign of things to come.

When a shopper clicks the ever-present shopping cart button in the NikeStore retail e-commerce section of Nike.com, the cart doesn’t just pop out in a flash. It scrolls down to reveal all the goods a shopper has put in it.

The scrolling feature is a tiny part of the style and functionality that makes up the shopping experience at Nike.com, which was relaunched this year for the first time since it debuted in 1999. Nonetheless, the scrolling is important, says John Mayo-Smith, CTO at R/GA, which led the redesign, because it shows that even in minor details Nike.com is different from other specialty apparel sites. “When we bring all things together the overall impression is of a high-performance experience,” he says. “That lines up with the overall brand message—a high-performance site for a high-performance brand.”

Nike has invested a lot over the years in promoting its athletic footwear and apparel, running costly TV commercials and taking on celebrity endorsements from golf phenom Tiger Woods and others. Its web site needs to maintain the image set in other channels, Mayo-Smith says.

Using Flash technology, the redesigned site lets shoppers mouse over images for more written product data, activate a click-and-drag zoom feature to view texture, stitching and other intricate product details, and navigate by multiple topics including sport and product type as well as by men, women and kids.

In addition, shoppers can click any page into the Nike ID menu to use a configurator that lets them customize products with colors, features and their typed names for personal identification.

“Nike’s customer focus expertise shines through in examples such as featuring shoes which match the colors of the iPod Nano, and allowing their customers to engage with the brand through personalization within the Nike ID product line,” says Maris Daugherty, senior consultant with J.C. Williams Group.

But while perking up its site with rich media and multiple shopping options, Nike keeps shopping easy without letting shoppers get lost in lengthy clickstreams. “Nike tops off a great consumer experience with clear messaging, great online user tools and crisp merchandise editing,” Daugherty says.

High-end fashion retailers like Nordstrom Inc. excel with stores that both dazzle and pamper shoppers. Attractive merchandise is presented in an elegant environment that, combined with personal service, usually makes for a pleasant and easy shopping experience.

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Although it’s impossible to completely replicate that experience online, Nordstrom.com effectively complements and builds on the Nordstrom store environment. It brings apparel fashions to life with engaging rich media, allowing shoppers to easily zoom in and out while quickly checking multiple styles and colors, and it launched earlier this year a separate Flash-based Designer Collections section that lets visitors browse through playfully illustrated online boutiques featuring labels such as Donna Karan, Roberto Cavalli and Missoni.

To Nordstrom, offering rich media-enhanced online shopping is a must for its customer base. “We know our customers have high expectations in how they shop, and we need to be ahead of the game,” says Jamie Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct, the online and catalog unit of Nordstrom Inc.

But Nordstrom also realizes that flashy product presentations also must be backed by exceptional customer service and ease of making purchases. In the top navigation bar on each page, for instance, it offers a customer service link that offers three varieties of live chat—with a customer service rep, a beauty specialist or a designer specialist—as well as a toll-free number and additional links to information on order status, gift cards and payment options.

It also excels at communicating its combination of fashion and customer service, says Colleen Coleman, an affiliate of retail consultants McMillan/Doolittle. “Nordstrom effectively transmits several messages on a single page without it looking cluttered. That’s an art,” she says.

Unlike many retailers whose home pages focus mostly on pricing offers, she adds, Nordstrom blends price with content—like peeks into its Designer Collections boutiques and a section on gift-wrapping. And within category and product pages, it offers multiple ways to shop, such as by brand or department.

“We’re not resting on our laurels,” Nordstrom says. “We’re working hard to meet our customers’ expectations.”

At Ralph Lauren’s Polo.com, shoppers find content ranging from videos on golfing tips from pro Davis Love III to pages of photographs and text that advise on how to wear skirts in the latest fashionable outfits.

“Our site embraces the concept of ‘merchantainment,’ where customers can browse our products, get style advice and experience our exclusive editorial and imaging content,” says Sarah Gallagher, president of Polo.com. “We leverage the limitless space that the Internet offers to provide an experience to our customers that can only be done online.”

That experience provides a consistent if at times subtle reminder of how Ralph Lauren’s products—including home furnishings as well as apparel fashions—can be part of a shopper’s everyday needs. “By trend, brand and category, they’re helping customers realize how Polo Ralph Lauren fits into their lives,” says Colleen Coleman, an affiliate with retail consultants McMillan/Doolittle.

Shoppers who may not have thought of Ralph Lauren as a source of sports attire, for example, get fashion tips along with sports advice when clicking into one of Polo.com’s instructional sports videos. They can listen to tips from Davis Love on how to drive a golf ball into the wind, watching him swing as the camera focuses on the Polo logo that appears on his sweater.

Visitors who prefer to watch a video about rock singer Sheryl Crow can see clips of her performances and hear about her preference for wearing comfortable apparel, as she comments, “I have a velvet Ralph Lauren jacket that I find that I can wear every year.”

Polo.com also offers extensive advice on how to engage in current fashions—how to wear a long skirt as part of a fashionable fall outfit, for instance, or how to dress up a bedroom with trendy linens.

One thing it could do better, Coleman says, would be to let shoppers click directly from its video content to purchase the featured merchandise. “Being able to purchase directly from the video would respect the customer’s time needs,” she says, “but overall Polo.com is a markedly different site that is doing several things right.”

How do you work your way back from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and into the top ranks of e-retailers? Redesign your web site. That’s exactly what Spiegel.com did in October 2005. In the process, it transformed itself from just another struggling retailer of women’s apparel and home products to a fashion resource with growing sales and engaged customers.

And it didn’t take long for the new site to show an impact on Spiegel’s financial performance. Overall company sales in the fourth quarter of 2005 rose 26% over the year-earlier period, with the web accounting for about 50% of total sales, says Tony Chivari, senior vice president of marketing.

The new design was crucial in addressing the biggest problem facing Spiegel: Convincing its target customers—women in their mid-40s, college educated and employed full-time—that it no longer was the stodgy department-store-in-print. “We talked about being a start-up with a 140-year brand,” Chivari says.

Based on customer research, Spiegel re-invented itself as a cross-channel “idea resource” that sells versatile, unique apparel and fashionable home products through its web site and catalog. It designed its web site and catalog to mirror each other, using similar content and graphics.

“It’s seamless whether you get the catalog in the mail or you order online,” says John Yunker, president, Byte Level Research. “They make it easy to do that.”

Spiegel also made changes in navigation, allowing shoppers to search by category or collection. The new design also enables customer to buy an outfit or just one item with a single click. And the retailer altered the checkout process to make it similar to competitors’, including adding quick links to shipping, security, returns policy, and guarantee.

“We decided checkout wasn’t the place to be interesting or innovative,” Chivari says. “The customer is becoming more familiar with Internet shopping. You don’t really want to be too different here.”

Spiegel’s site redesign apparently struck a responsive chord with consumers. Conversion rates have increased 59% for new customers and 43% for old customers. Not bad for a retailer some had pegged as a has-been.

One of the biggest challenges facing apparel retailers, besides creating a “Wow” factor for their sites, is giving their catalog better representation than just showing a picture of each item. Talbots.com Classic Girls Getaway feature rings the bell on both points.

Shoppers can mix and match blouses, skirts, pants and hand bags, and drag and drop them onto a virtual model. What creates the “Wow” factor is that the model and the created outfit can be placed in several locales, such as the country, the city, the seashore, and so on. Fun images, such as a dog and a picnic basket, can be added to the scene to create a true getaway feeling. The chosen scene can be e-mailed to friends to put the outfit and getaway into perspective.

“The basic need of apparel shoppers is to see how the item or outfit looks, regardless of the sales channel,” says Chad Dorion, senior strategist for retail consultants Kurt Salmon and Associates. “Where the store presents a controlled environment for achieving this goal, the web is like the Wild West to shoppers. To capture the interest of online shoppers, they have got to see the item in a hands-on way.”

This is especially true of shoppers age 35 and older, who shop online but prefer the hands-on feel of the store. “Talbots does a lot of business with this customer segment and creating an online environment that connects and motivates them is going to be a big boost,” says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst for NPD Group.

In addition to creating a more customer-centric environment online, Talbots’ acquisition of J. Jill in April 2005 creates an tremendous cross-marketing opportunity for suggesting items to Talbots’ shoppers that can be found in J. Jill and vice versa. J. Jill is known as a web savvy retailer, which is expected to help Talbots project its brand image more effectively on its site. “J. Jill can educate Talbots about what connects with shoppers online,” adds Cohen. “Online is a great place to smooth out the ridges in the overall merchandising strategy.”

So far, it looks as though Talbots has learned this lesson well.

To capture shoppers online a retailer could pour money into marketing and promotions. Or it could spend that money on delivering the best possible customer service and on driving that mindset through the entire organization. The latter strategy has paid off big for pure-play shoe retailer Zappos.com.

In September the 7-year-old company hit $1 billion in lifetime gross sales. Its 3.6 million-plus unique monthly visitors—60% of which are repeat customers—drove sales up 101% last year; this year it’s aiming for 62% growth and sales of $600 million. “As long as we focus on providing the best service I believe we have a good chance of hitting that target,” says CEO Tony Hsieh.

The customer is the reason for virtually everything Zappos.com does. For example, while the site’s heavily-laden home page has taken some hits from design critics, customers like it just fine. And they should, since they designed it—the site’s appearance and functionality have evolved directly in response to customer suggestions over the years.

Zappos fills orders from its warehouse continuously. It’s more challenging than batching fulfillment around one daily shift, but, “this way, when an order comes in we can get it out to the customer as quickly as possible,” Hsieh says. Zappos also keeps customers happy by staffing its call center 24-7 and putting its toll free number at the top of every page. And it gets the attention of shoppers—and retail analysts—by keeping one key offer at the center of its strategy: free shipping; significantly, on returns as well as outgoing orders.

“The driving force behind Zappos is free shipping both ways,” says Lauren Freedman, president of The e-Tailing Group. Freedman also notes Zappos’ robust product selection, search results that flag shoppers on which styles are new, and site messaging encouraging fans of particular brands to sign up for e-mail alerts when new styles from that brand arrive.

“They are targeting the shoe addict and putting anything that’s new right in their face—that’s good for that audience,” Freedman says.