Buoyed by the success of a small-scale test that tripled shopper-to-buyer conversion rates online, Anthropologie is now expanding its use of advanced Internet graphics and special effects to build sales and strengthen its bonds with customers.
The 67-store retailer, part of $827.8 million Urban Outfitters Inc. of Philadelphia, is experimenting with Internet technologies that allow shoppers to create the online experience that suits them best.
A new feature Anthropologie will add to its Web site as early as this fall helps shoppers build wardrobes on their own and in collaboration with friends, said Ranjana Sharma, Anthropologie’s e-commerce manager.
“All the control is in the customer’s hands,” said Sharma, who demonstrated the concept at last month’s Internet Retailer conference in Chicago. The event was organized by Vertical Web Media, the Chicago-based publishers of Internet Retailer magazine.
During her presentation, Sharma showed how an e-mail message with high-quality personalized graphics guides a shopper to the company’s Web site. Once there, the shopper is presented with an image of an item she’s already bought — such as a blouse — draped on a form. Animated graphics of coordinating skirts, slacks, jackets and accessories appear in rapid succession to illustrate how one piece of apparel can be built upon to create multiple outfits. The shopper can e-mail an “outfit” to friends, who can manipulate those same images, modify color selections and e-mail back to the shopper a suggested variation on the outfit.
“It lets her buy everything from one screen. Product information is all ‘above the fold.’ I think it’s going to have a good ROI [return on investment] for us,” Sharma said.
Anthropologie’s test, which targeted a group of shoppers who purchased a best-selling top, delivered conversion rates three times higher than average and “order value was astronomical,” she said. She declined to specify figures for the order value or conversion rate increases.
This relinquishing of control online would seem a departure from the strategy executed in stores, where the customer experience is carefully orchestrated. Each Anthropologie store has a dedicated customer care manager and a visual manager whose job is to create an ambience and “emotional bond” that encourages shoppers to linger. And they do. “Core” customers spend 75 minutes, on average, in the store, Sharma said.
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“We believe in engaging her senses at every level as she walks into the store [with] smells, sights and music that take her to a totally different world. She goes into a state where she has to spend time in the store,” she said.
Where props, lighting and music create a controlled environment of tranquility to inspire exploration and spending in stores, the online channel is fraught with distractions such as a crying baby in the next room or a ringing doorbell, she said.
“The online world is completely different” than the brick-and-mortar channel, Sharma said. “We don’t have any control what happens when she is online shopping.”
It was this realization that led Anthropologie to explore rich Internet technologies to offer shoppers a personalized experience that builds on the sense of community and escape that’s nurtured in stores, where shoppers may “discover” a $4 bar of French soap or a $2,600 antique velvet sofa.
“If we could somehow give her more control with rich Internet applications and enhance her shopping experience, then that is the [framework] for developing a relationship with her,” Sharma said.
She emphasized that Web site enhancement is very much a work in progress whose timeline and details are still being finalized. The visuals she presented are prototypes used for the test, which focused on apparel.
In addition to apparel, Anthropologie also sells shoes and accessories, home furnishings, tabletop items, personal care products, bedding and gifts through stores, the Internet and catalogues. Store sales at Anthropologie rose 52 percent to $320.6 million for the year ended Jan. 31, during which time Anthropologie opened 13 stores. Urban Outfitter Inc.’s direct-to-consumer sales, which include the Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie Web sites and catalogues, rose 83 percent in the last fiscal year to $93.9 million, according to the company’s annual report.
Anthropologie’s first foray into rich Internet media involved zoom technology. Last year, the retailer deployed the Dynamic Imaging solution from Scene7 of Novato, Calif., to give shoppers the ability to magnify product images in high resolution and to view items from various angles.
“Just providing multiple views of the product was not enough,” Sharma said, “because we were still controlling her experience of finding the details.”
The new solution builds on the social component shoppers appreciate in stores. “Our customer wants to do the shopping with her girlfriends,” Sharma said. Once Anthropologie recognized this preference, stores lifted the limit on the number of garments that can be brought into a fitting room and expanded the size of fitting rooms to accommodate two people shopping together.
Through Scene7’s rich Internet software, Anthropologie hopes to replicate online the camaraderie shopping partners enjoy in stores. Though two friends may be in different locations while shopping online, rich media and e-mail can be the bridge to bring them together for a virtual, shared experience.
“It sounds like what they want to do is to make the experience online the way it is very unique in the store,” said Janet Kloppenburg, president of JJK Research, a New York retail research consulting firm. “Most people who shop Anthropologie don’t know it is a bigger chain. They like to think of it as a boutique,” said Kloppenburg, who was a Wall Street retail analyst for 18 years before starting her own company.
She said Anthropologie has a “devotion” to creating a unique store ambience and has maintained that distinction even as the chain has grown. “All good concepts are copied quickly, but this one is hard to copy. My bet is they will have a wonderful Web site and it will be hard to duplicate.”
The E-Retail Index
- 8 Number of shopping hours saved in three months’ time by researching products online before buying in a physical store.*
- 88 Percentage of Web-to-store shoppers (those who research products online before buying in store) who purchase additional products in store.1
- $200 Value of additional purchases made in-store — beyond the cost of products researched online — by female Web-to-store shoppers, ages 35 to 54.1
- 79 Percentage of Web-to-store shoppers who want the ability to compare online prices with store prices.1
- 73 Percentage of Web-to-store shoppers who want the ability to check online whether a particular store has a product in stock.1
- 62 Percentage of Web-to-store shoppers who buy in-store to avoid shipping costs of online purchases.1
- 66 Percentage increase in traffic to online comparison shopping sites over past two years.2
- $311 Quarterly online spending per household, among those with a broadband connection to the Internet.2
- $217 Quarterly online spending per household, among those with a dial-up connection to the Internet.2
- 4.4 Number of product categories purchased online by consumers with less than two years’ e-commerce experience.2
- 10.4 Number of product categories purchased online by consumers with five years’ e-commerce experience.2
- 64 Percentage of Internet users who research or buy apparel online.3
- 4 Percentage of consumers whose primary reason for going online is to shop.3
*SOURCE: 2005 U.S. Web2Store Benchmark Survey, The Dieringer Group; 2 SOURCE: comScore Networks; 3 SOURCE: Retail Forward ShopperScape