Like many brands, e-commerce retailers can sometimes be a bit inward looking. Clothier Perry Ellis wants to break out of that trap by taking cues from emerging social commerce channels like Pinterest, Klout and others as it rethinks its e-commerce strategy for key Perry Ellis brands.
Perry Ellis has overhauled the sites for key brands Cubavera, Original Penguin, Rafaella and Perry Ellis. A key goal, of course, is to drive transactions, but it also aspires to more, according to Michelle Magallon, vp of digital commerce for Perry Ellis International.
“I have several [new media channels] that I am keeping my eye on, especially in the social space,” Magallon said. “For example, there’s the Pinterest look-alike myfancy.com, which is like a shoppable pin board. I am also looking at ways we can effectively leverage Klout. For the remainder of the year, we’ll be moving more towards the omni-channel retailer. We want one view of the customer regardless of the channel, and we’d like to integrate everything about that person like social and purchase behavior.”
That means adding a “Pin it” button throughout the sites, which Perry Ellis did three months ago. It also recently tested out Foursquare and found it drove a solid amount of sales, according to Magallon.
Going into the new site redesign, Perry Ellis already had an idea of what customers wanted. Users complained about too much rich media. Also, the zoom functionality wasn’t that good. The company now has rollover technology for the zoom feature on the site. Perry Ellis also lacked refinements on its site, meaning the ability to sort search results by color or stitch, for example. Additionally, the search wasn’t smart. Now there’s even the ability to shop complete looks, something geared at men who aren’t always big fans of shopping.
Perry Ellis has also rolled out mobile commerce-enabled versions of the sites, giving consumers the option to search, browse and buy right from their mobile devices. Magallon said that the brand was seeing a tremendous amount of its site traffic was coming from mobile, hence the launch of the sites. In addition, Magallon expects to launch two apps this year for Perry Ellis. The apps will be unique in that there will geofencing technology to help the brand better target notifications to app users.
The company is in the business of more traditional channels as well. Perry Ellis relies on email, PPC, affiliates and retargeting. But that doesn’t mean that the brand doesn’t have its eye on the new media channels as well.
“Right now we are looking at how to maximize our social properties for brand awareness and direct sales,” Magallon said.
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