Virtual ambience enhances shopping
Dateline: 03/31/99
Remember when marble floors, piano players, perfumed air and tempting displays were all that a fashion retailer needed to set the stage for a successful shopping atmosphere? Now that online shopping has begun to take a bite out of brick-and-mortar sales, as reported in eMarketer, several cyberboutiques and specialty e-tailers are sweetening their merchandise packages with virtual ambience.
The best shopping sites now have morphed from product-only sites to full-fledged stores, complete with atmosphere enhanced by content, innovative design or a sense of community. Some of the most impressive sites are coming from niche companies marketing to the savvy under 35 crowd. ECommerce Times reports that marketing to the Gen X crowd requires this unique sales touch.
Of course, the trickiest part of creating a virtual ambience is conveying the "feeling" of the merchandise. Here's a look at the cutting-edge fashion stores who do it best and whose appeal reaches far beyond the target audience:
Girly Goods
Gen Y e-tailer dELIA*s is a leader in the new hybrid of entertainment/shopping venues. Packed with features, fun and a real sense of gurrllllliness, this company has the ability to capture the wallets and hearts of its customers by building a real sense of community through chat, discount clubs and newsletters. And most important, the goods offered are focused, well-edited and totally on target for the 10-to-24 crowd.
The competition for gurrrllll bucks is stiff, but Girlfriends LA is another cyberstore that has a visually impressive merchandising package, coupled with product innovations like private label merchandise offerings that span the junior size range from 0-21 in many cases. Girlfriends LA's concept of contests, "Ask Cherie" fashion advice and very cute graphics makes one of the freshest sites on the Internet.
Hipster duds
Further up the generation food chain, the Gen X site, Fabric 8 ('"Hello Seeker" is the greeting) conveys a sense of shopping through a very hip Metro shopping area. Through sly copy, fast-loading graphics, multiple departments and hipster-appropriate merchandise, spanning the range from music to accessories to apparel, this site offers diversity and conveys a sense of uniqueness.
Girl Shop has downtown designers grouped together from Pixie Yates to Amy Chan. Eye-popping color combos are about as sophisticated as the graphic design gets, but the beauty of the site is in its excellent merchandising of multiple designer boutiques. Some of the hottest new names from New York are represented and jumping from one boutique to the other gives the same feeling as wandering around NY's cool shopping areas like Soho and Nolita.
Moderns
The ambience created on the APC site perfectly conveys the feeling of its merchandise. Navigating the site is much like wandering through a boutique. No alphabetical listing of goods or categories, just a sort of meandering through men's and women's apparel. No unnecessary copy or models distract the user from the spare, clean vision of APC.
Walking Man's site features urban living casual wear and conveys the upscale feeling of its goods through the use of clever copy, interesting layouts and well-placed white space. The merchandise is made even more appealing by real-looking models who look very happy to wear the clothes.
Virtual atmosphere adds sparkle and zip to merchandise offerings on the Net. And expect more and bigger productions as cyberstores continue to compete with brick-and-mortar stores.
