A Midsummer's Dream
Apparel e-tail sites are hitting it big during the usual midseason doldrums, but will the hits turn into sales?
Special promotions seem to be part of the reason the Web is experiencing a spike in ecommerce traffic this summer, but not enough to account for the truly impressive numbers. This normally flat or sagging period in retail sales has suddenly come to life, according to a new report from Nielsen/NetRatings.
Nordstrom.com, for example, saw traffic increases of more than 50 percent in the week ending July 21 over the previous week and 58 percent over the same week last year.
Traffic, of course, does not necessarily translate into increased sales, and those numbers have yet to be analyzed, but previous patterns indicate that some of those new “eyeballs” are shoppers.
“This summer traffic spike may bode well for the upcoming backto- school season, a busy shopping time that e-tail has only managed to capture a fraction of to date,” said Keith Regan, writing in E-Commerce Times [www.ecommercetimes.com] on July 29. Carrie Johnson of Forrester Research was also quoted as saying, “I think most Web retailers are interested in getting more shoppers to think of using the Web for Back-to- School.... All of the attention has traditionally been on the end-ofthe- year holidays, and this is a period that sometimes gets overlooked online.”
Among the top 10 Web retailers gaining this new traffic are Kohls.com, Macys.com, Nike.com, Barnesandnoble.com and CircuitCity.com. All of these retailers are building from their established brick-and-mortar bases—which seems to be a key success factor in the post-dot-com crash.
Some attribute the growth to a new emphasis on well-promoted, shelf-clearing, inventory-dumping sales designed to make way for the Back-to-School and Fall seasons that lie just ahead. Other observers have noted that much of the glitzy whiz-bang gimmickry, who-needs-to-think-about-the-bottom- line attitude and flashy graphics that characterized the “early days” of e-commerce seem to be taking a back seat to product quality, pricing and customer service.
But that by no means is an indicator that the “fun” of shopping online is being forgotten. New software sophistication and the proliferation (though currently stunted growth) of broadband content delivery will continue to cultivate plenty of novel new e-tailing innovations. It’s just being put in a more sober context as these Web sites seek to turn a profit.
Site Review: London Calling
With relatively few editorially driven fashion-shopping Web sites having survived the dot-com crash (survivors include alloy.com, style.com, fashionpatrol.com and bluefly.com), the arrival of a high-end women’s fashion site is an elegant addition to apparel shopping online.
Net-A-Porter [www.net-a-porter.com] founder and managing director Natalie Massenet, a Los Angeles-born and Parisraised former fashion editor now working from London, asks, “How many times have you shopped armed with a magazine page in hand? It was always my dream to click on the pages of a magazine and buy.”
So, out of frustration at not being able to shop online for informed, quality high fashion, she took matters into her own hands. Massenet created an eye-pleasing monthly magazine-formatted Web site that offers a fantastic designer-label shopping spree.
This is no online catalog that just has a bunch of items to sell you without any context. A host of well-qualified contributors participate in locating and describing particular items from specific designers with intelligent and sometimes whimsical visual adventures.
Take, for example, the site’s “Bag Girls” tour, which transports you on a delightful sequenced trip through a series of doctored old photographs featuring elderly women of yesteryear sporting some of the hippest designer bags and purses currently on the market (Cacheral, Jimmy Choo, LeFlesh, Clement Ribeiro, etc.). The images are black and white except for the cleverly superimposed accessories, which are clickable and can be ordered from Net-A-Porter and delivered anywhere in North America in two days.
Seasonal trends and designer profiles augment the site, creating an entertaining and educational experience from indubitably savvy thinking.
