A small, 5-person team running a successful, nationwide pop-up-shop apparel company was stifled by their inadequate web platform. Their rudimentary website lacked information and functionality, negatively impacting customer experience and business logistics.
As commerce shifted online during the pandemic in 2020, the fashion retailer’s omnichannel needs grew imminent. Only a robust, agile ecommerce platform could help them navigate the changing retail landscape.
At the recommendation of a colleague, the retailer chose Sophelle to restructure and revitalize their ecommerce platform.
Challenges
Sophelle first audited the retailer’s website and uncovered several foundational and front-end obstacles:
- The homepage lacked clarity and didn’t accurately represent the company.
- The website wasn’t interactive; landing pages and product detail pages had no buttons, media, or search features.
- Customers couldn’t access information on the site and instead had to send emails for return, exchange, and purchase inquiries. All correspondence went directly to the business leaders who couldn’t keep up with the increasing demand.
- A highly inefficient inventory management system limited the retailer’s insight into their available goods.
- The web platform lacked a sufficient tax management system.
- The retailer’s acquisition strategy wasn’t converting into sales.
Their platform needed a complete overhaul from development, marketing, and personalization standpoints.
Solutions
Rather than position the apparel retailer as a middleman between their development and marketing vendors, Sophelle stepped in to become the liaison communicating to all parties. This way, Sophelle had full insight into all areas of the project.
Development Improvements
Sophelle joined forces with the development team to update web pages and add all the features the site previously lacked, like care instructions, fit guides, material swatches, hover zoom, and out-of-stock notifiers. Sophelle also created featured collection landing pages and optimized attribution search, adding the ability to filter by size, color, etc.
Sophelle then recommended and implemented a series of best-in-class applications to address the retailer’s varying needs:
- Shopify to improve their inventory management system
- Happy Returns for a more convenient customer experience
- Avalara to automatically remit taxes each quarter
- Zendesk to build out their FAQ page and help center, which freed the business team to manage big-picture issues instead of responding to customer inquiries.
After installing these applications, Sophelle then trained the staff on how to use them, so the team would no longer rely on the development vendor to perform basic tasks.
Marketing Enhancements
Upon Sophelle’s research, we learned that the retailer never registered their business with Google, a glaring omission for SEO and SEM. Sophelle immediately remedied the issue by setting up Google Merchant Center and Google Search Console.
To acquire new customers, the fashion apparel retailer had been using a batch-and-blast email strategy, in which a large group of people received the same message. Sophelle tested several email acquisition strategies to determine which worked best, then calculated all related costs to acquire. With ample results in hand, Sophelle implemented a more effective email strategy for the retailer, then built desktop and mobile landing pages for each campaign.
Establishing the company as a fashion resource for trends, Sophelle also created a blog for the retailer and found a writer to produce content and help them rank on page one of Google.
Personalization Development
These days, a comprehensive ecommerce platform and robust marketing strategy aren’t enough to fight in the highly competitive fashion apparel landscape. To take on the biggest contenders, retailers must also prioritize personalization strategies and customize the shopping experience.
This apparel retailer had a tight personalization budget and needed to choose their enhancements wisely. Sophelle provided numerous options for the best functionality at their price point. The retailer decided to use an app that performs customer research and suggests personalization tactics accordingly. With new cross-sale and up-sale strategies, the small retailer generated an additional 5 figures in sales in just a few weeks.
Results
With development, marketing, and personalization strategies fully implemented, the fashion apparel retailer’s cumulative SEO position rose by 50%, total sales increased by 13%, online store sessions increased by 23%, and total orders increased by 23%. Plus, Sophelle reduced the business team’s email support by 70%.
Thanks to Sophelle’s full-scale omnichannel strategy, the fashion apparel retailer’s 5-person company can now rely on a platform that does all the heavy lifting, allowing them to focus on scaling their business.
Sophelle’s strategy, selection, implementation, and optimization services help retailers deliver world-class omnichannel capabilities. Contact Sophelle today to get started.
