You’d be hard pressed to find a Web site more in need of an extreme makeover than that of women’s apparel marketer Spiegel in the earliest part of the 21st Century. And in fact, that’s exactly what the company did, and Spiegel Brands senior marketing vice president Tony Chivari shared that tale with attendees at the Internet Retailer 2006 conference in Chicago yesterday.
Spiegel’s need to re-invent itself online grew out of the Chapter 11 filing in March 2003 by The Spiegel Group, which included Spiegel Catalog, Newport News, Eddie Bauer and other divisions. The company that emerged from bankruptcy in July 2004 consisted of the Spiegel Catalog and Newport News.
A need to control costs at the new company resulted in a decrease in catalog mailings and page counts, Chivari said, which put more pressure on the Spiegel Web site to take up the sales slack. But that site had not been touched by Spiegel’s brand repositioning as “The Idea Resource”, capitalizing on customers’ desire for fashion advice, inspiration and content; but that repositioning had not filtered through to the Internet channel.
The Spiegel site’s problems were evident in its user metrics. New users converted at very low rates, used single-word site search a lot—indicating problems with navigation—and could hardly ever find the special “Idea Resource” area of the site. Existing users surfed in large numbers to the clearance pages, and page views per session fell off.
Chivari said Spiegel framed its Web challenge as designing a site that would accommodate the different goals of its online shoppers without overwhelming them with choices or forcing them to go through the site in a particular way. “The site needed to be an extension of our brand, not a standalone entity or a copy of our catalog,” he said.
The redesign produced a cleaner, lighter home page with more effective site navigation. Under the old design, 75% of Spiegel’s purchases came through two categories, “fashion” and “accessories”, indicating that those were too broad; the company flattened out top-level categories to get customers deeper into the product mix with a single click.
The redesigned site lets visitors shop either by category, using standard product hierarchies, or by collection to highlight merchandised concepts such as Spiegel’s signature collection. This change more closely linked the “Idea Resource” advice and content to actual shopping.
Spiegel’s old product pages were also poorly designed, Chivari said, forcing customers to purchase each item separately and to toggle between the shopping cart and product page. That made cross-selling difficult. The new product pages allow visitors to purchase an entire outfit with one click, adds alternate views, size charts and styling tips, and keeps the visitor on the product page rather than sending her to the shopping cart with each purchase.
The metrics prove the virtue of the redesign, Chivari said. Home page departures decreased by 19%, while page views per session rose 14%. The changes also heightened shopping efficiency: single-word searches dropped by 15%, and adds to cart from product pages went up 45%. The average order value was 13% higher after the site redesign.
Those clearance site issues with existing customers were resolved by creating a “site within a site” with separate navigation. “The clearance customer behaves differently,” Chivari said. “For one thing, she wants to come back often; she’s a deal-hunter.” So Spiegel added “Today’s Steals” to the clearance site to build frequency. The company also made it easier to search for sizes—important in dealing with the incomplete stocks of clearance items.
As a result, the Spiegel clearance site boosted monthly sessions per visitor by 7%. Average time spent in the category rose 17%, while the departure rate decreased by 15 percentage points.
Overall, Spiegel’s redesign of its Web site produced a 20% decrease in cart abandonment, according to Chivari. Conversions increased 59% for new users and 43% for existing users, and year-over-year sales have shown double-digit growth.
