Function Forward

Timing is everything in the fashion world: Today’s hottest trends can become passé in the blink of an eye. For a fashion retailer selling its wares online, a website must be fresh, up to date and have a strong visual element.

Chic clothing retailer Intermix has enlisted the help of e-commerce software provider MarketLive to create a website where shoppers can mix and match products from multiple designers and stay abreast of the latest trends.

Founded in 1993, New York-based Intermix carries a wide array of clothing fashions and accessories from a mix of the hottest established and up-and-coming designers in its 24 stores. From Sexy Wild to Jennifer Zeuner, Intermix positions its merchandise so that customers can mix brands and price points to complete an outfit or a look.

The retailer relies heavily upon the website to inform customers about new products – even those who ultimately shop in its stores, says e-commerce director Don McNichol.

Intermix adds “between 75 and 100 products per week,” he says, and “the web complements the store environment in the sense that most of our customers receive weekly e-mails to see what new items have arrived.”

The ability to make easy, rapid updates was critical when selecting a web solution, McNichol says. Intermix had been working with San Francisco-based MarketLive since 2005, and its updated MarketLive v5.5 platform allows the retailer to add functionality to its site as the need arises. The platform also allows Intermix to achieve greater efficiencies in the overall management and merchandising of the site and more seamless integration with corporate and legacy POS systems.

Tiffany Riley, senior vice president of marketing for MarketLive, says that keeping a site innovative and fresh is part of her company’s recommended best practices. That can include swapping out an entire new homepage with templates or creating new ways to display the products so that every time a shopper returns to the site, there is something different to entice and engage her.

“We recommend that people actually make changes to their promotions or merchandising on a weekly basis,” Riley says. “Part of our product set is designed to allow merchants to make those changes.”

Intermix stocks a variety of designers from around the world, and fits and body shapes can vary drastically from one line to another. As a result, the company takes great care to provide comprehensive product copy that specifically describes the cut of every garment, along with precise measurements and how they will match up with body types.

Updated content
With a constantly-evolving assortment, Intermix’s content must be frequently updated with precise measurements and detailed information. Keeping customers abreast of new trends and styles is important also, and the website uses various elements to tell a story that resonates with customers.

“We get a lot of customers who are looking for more functionally-rich sites that will allow them to merchandise their products in better ways,” Riley says. “They’re looking for the flexibility to be able to present their offerings and collections.”

Intermix customers can shop by trends such as “Black Magic,” “Socialista” and “Style U,” each catering to different market segments and offering the ability to mix and match tops, bottoms and accessories.

Fashion is all about the look, and the visual elements of Intermix’s website are critical. It spends a significant amount of time on photography to make sure that the zooming elements allow shoppers to get a feel for every detail in a piece.

Each trends page features a captivating layout with up to a dozen products. Shoppers can navigate the page, click on their favorite pieces and be brought directly to a new page to learn more about that product.

MarketLive’s Intelligent Selling methodology enables merchants to enhance their customers’ experiences online while dramatically improving acquisition, conversion and retention rates. It has developed sets of best practices and consults with all of its clients to determine how to market most effectively to their target audiences. Intermix has embraced many of those best practices, Riley says, and it is paying off.

“They have a very interactive and engaging site and they understand their target market and what appeals to it,” she says. “How they use their navigation has been specifically designed to appeal to that market. They highlight trends and educate consumers on what they are.”

Multi-site, multi-language
MarketLive v5.5 allows retailers to create shopping experiences that use market, audience and demographic-specific marketing and merchandising strategies. The multi-site, multi-language capabilities enable merchants to drive revenue and grow their brands by delivering web experiences that are targeted to the shopper’s lifestyle, language and location.

The Intelligent Selling toolkit features dynamic merchandise imaging capabilities, e-mail campaign management, search engine visibility and intelligent cataloging, which promotes cross-channel selling by putting interactive versions of print catalogs online.

Every quarter, MarketLive produces a performance index that tracks, in aggregate, the traffic, conversion and abandonment rates of all its customers. That report provides valuable information that allows retailers to analyze their metrics and compare their results against a broader sample.

“It gives us a sense of what strategies and tactics are actually driving real performance,” Riley says. “We can take that and, on a merchant-by-merchant basis, see how everyone else is doing and map that to new customers.”

McNichol said that visibility of the data has allowed Intermix to focus on the behavior of customers — why some shop online and why some shop in stores. Tracking customer behavior and patterns online also highlights what they are purchasing and the brands they prefer. As a result, Intermix can now deliver specific web pages to repeat customers based on their past behavior.

“Instead of coming to the homepage and seeing the latest trend that we put up this week, I may substitute that for all brand new must-have arrivals for the fall,” McNichol says. “It may also give me an ability to cross reference to new designers they may have an affinity for.”