In order to communicate about their products, brands deploy intelligence and numerous innovations. Some choose to include their community, with the goal of making your shopping more social, fluide and enjoyable. But they do not forget to drive sales… 88% of cyberbuyers thus declare that a liveChat on a website enhance the online experience. (LivePerson, 2013) Let’s have a quick panorama on the latest trends on this matter!
The e-retailer SheIn innovates by using a unusual approach for fashion resellers: here, they do not highlight their clothes by making willowy top models wearing them, but rather go for natural! In complement with the traditional photo shootings, the website set up a special LookBook rubric, that displays photos of the clothes taken by the buyers and the website community. Customers are then rewarded with loyalty points, in addition with a boost of pride J
Thanks to this great idea, customers have the ability to see one dress worn on different body types, for different events, or even included in different styles… Without even talking about the numerous social medias engagements that are the results of such kind of initiatives !
The start-up called AskAnna also focus on the weight of social in buying behaviors. In fact, this app (incubated in our Look Forward locals) allows you to upload a picture of your daily look in order to gain feedbacks from an active community of fashion lovers, bloggers and so on. Very useful idea, in particular when you are shopping solo and need advices and opinions on a top or a pant you saw… The start-up started to set up AskAnna devices in Jennyfer stores during May 2016 – more brands are following!
Another way to use social in customer experience during and after buying is to use chatbots, mainly developed by Facebook for example. Several high-range, premium brands already launched their bots, like Louis Vuitton and Everlane. These 2 companies use bots as a live chat to answer the simplest questions from their customers, but other applications still need to be invented: collaborative buying through Facebook, collecting customer opinions or allow communitarian help processes…
Last but not least, another concept is digging into this social trends in e-commerce Teeps, a French app launched by Fabrice Berger-Duquene (founder of PureShopping, former CO of Webedia and La Redoute), and Sonia Zarowsky (ex-ChicTypes & Webedia).
The concept ? The user choose a category of products (home decor, clothing, etc..) and his main criterias (price, size..) An algorithm then pass the demand to a community of enthusiasts, filtered according to the search criterias. The quickest is allowed to contact the customer through a chat, ask for details, and select references in the Teeps products database to show them to the customer. “The customer will benefit from a free and neutral advice from a fan that will receive half the commission on every sale, ranking from 15 to 30% according to universes…” says Fabrice Berger-Duquene (credits: JournalDuNet)
THE LOOK FORWARD PERSPECTIVE
Your relationships have been a major actor in your buying decisions for a very long time. However, only a few players already identified this opportunity and were able to deploy new digital tools in order to answer it. Today, numerous projects have been launched; both by large companies from the tech and fashion worlds, but also smaller organization which hope to differentiate.
It is also interesting to note that these solutions often hybrid several technologies and mecanisms in order to propose the best experience there is: they work on communities, but also develop machine learning algorithms and AI, improve their UX…