Home › IMRG Blog › 5 Online Fashion Retail Lessons From Fashion Connect
By IMRG
By Charles Scherer - Deputy Editor at IMRG
Last week One America Square hosted IMRG’s Fashion Connect 2017 - featuring some of the best and brightest in online fashion retail for a day of thought leadership, discussion, debate, and a networking drink or two.
We had speakers from online fashion retail, and solution providers in payments, merchandising, and marketing, who took to the stage against the dramatic backdrop of Londinium’s original wall.
If you made it, thanks for coming. It was great to have you.
If you missed it, our condolences. But take heart, here’s a listicle to give you a taste of the event.
So, in no particular order, here are five things we learned at Fashion Connect 2017.
Our own Andy Mulcahy shared some thoughts about what Lifetime Customer Value means (and what it doesn’t).
During our Big Debate, hosted by Kristoffer Ewald, CIO at Netbooster, we heard from Steve Roberts, VP retail at MPP global; John Redman, director at Summit; Anoop Vasisht, VP Europe at Dynamic Yield; Michel Koch, ecommerce and M&A consultant Time Inc.
Paddy Earnshaw, Chief Customer Officer at Doddle, spoke about click and collect, retailer efficiency, and customer satisfaction. He explained the two key chemicals at play in a purchase and a delivery.
Dopamine is triggered by making the purchase. It’s the short-term reward, the rush that comes from clicking ‘Order Now’. It offers a brief but delightful thrill. The downside is that it leaves you wanting more.
Oxytocin produces the feeling of satisfaction. It’s the post-coital chemical — which should give you an idea of its power. In the context of online retail, oxytocin is released when your order is in your hands, when you get to open up the parcel and take possession of your purchase.
Oxytocin also inspires feelings of generosity and loyalty. That’s handy from an evolutionary perspective, and also from that of online retail.
By harnessing the same instincts that make us go all cuddly, online retailers can even more effectively build relationships with their customers.
A well-placed offer, cross-sell, or just ‘thank-you’ note can inspire more purchases, or simply a feeling of good will, at a time when a customer is most apt to feel positively about a brand.
It’s certainly not an opportunity to be wasted. By capitalising on the successful fulfilment of a purchase, retailers have an opportunity to create and maintain loyal customers.
Physician, heal thyself.
In a straw poll conducted by Jonathan Haseler, Director of Corporate, Barclaycard, a hefty number of audience members raised their hands when asked to admit to the practice of serial returning. That is, the habit of deliberately over-purchasing with the intention of returning some of the items in the order.
Everyone in online retail knows that a purchase is not a purchase until the customer decides to keep it.
It’s a phenomenon mainly of online fashion retail. Shoppers don’t have a fitting room, but they want to try on the clothes. So that happens at home.
It’s a tricky trade-off. Free returns eat into the profit margin, but making returns difficult or costly will put a lot of people off purchasing.
So, if frictionless returns facilitate serial returning, what can be done about it?
Well, first, as Jonathan demonstrated, retailers mustn’t forget that they are in their turn customers too. They shop online, and they’re just as likely to over-order and return the surplus.
With the benefit of that empathy, perhaps it’s best not to see the serial returning as a behaviour to stamp out, but a legitimate component of the online path to purchase. It’s just part of how online fashion retail works.
Perhaps it can be discouraged with thorough measurements, fitting guidance, and extensive images (video is even better). That will remove some of the mystery. The shopper will far more clearly know what he or she’s ordering.
Ultimately, since it’s essentially unavoidable, online retailers would be advised to factor returns into the business model. The starting assumption that items from an order may be sent back allows you to structure the fulfilment and re-stocking processes accordingly.
John Buss, Managing Director of Yext, and Andy Harding, former Chief Customer Officer at House of Fraser, spoke about building brand advocates.
Advocates are more important than ever.
A search for ‘The best pub food near me’ made from the IMRG office.
Jamie Merrick, Director, Strategic Solutions, SalesForce provided some data about the developing mobile and online retail landscape in fashion.
In the words of Ruth Ballett, Industry Manager, Fashion & Luxury Retail, Google: “We’re not going online, we’re living online.” She offered three tips for online fashion retailers:
Click here if you have forgotten your password.
Get unique insights straight to your inbox for free, and improve your understanding of online retail. Subscribe to Online Retail Weekly now.