Successful Online Websites - Apparal

Successful Online Websites
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Successful Online Websites
Elements that will impact luxury experience for luxury brand owners
In the past few years, luxury goods companies such as Burberry, Dior, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Louis Vuitton have focused substantial attention on online marketing and sales channels to tangible effect. Kapferer (2012) stated that at first, many were worried and feared that e-commerce may diminish their brands’ integrity or that consumers would be less likely to purchase expensive products without seeing them first. However, that was not the case and customers are perfectly comfortable in buying all manner of luxury items online, and their online experience plays an important role in their buying decisions. This paper discusses the elements of an e-commerce website that will impact luxury experience for luxury brand owners. The positive impacts on brand are also discussed.
Several elements on a luxury brand’s website have an impact on the luxury experience for luxury brand owners. The first one is Personalization – Okonkwo (2010) pointed out that an integral part of luxury marketing is personal touch. It is imperative for luxury brands to create a compelling and personal experience online. Personalization simply means delivering the most relevant and engaging content such as product information, articles and images, for all the visitors to the website page in real time, or for all recipients of an email from a luxury brand. Generally, personalized offers tempt consumers to make further purchases online as customers look for more direct online relationships with the brands they buy. Few companies do true personalization in the luxury space for instance Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton’s use of personalized e-commerce clearly shows how luxury brands can preserve their elite and exclusive the shopping experience and aspirational brand image online. Using its Mon Monogram application, Louis Vuitton has been able to offer its traditional personalized service to its community of users in face book. Users discuss product purchase to much greater extent compared to other post topics, and this suggests that the application is helps to maintain Louis Vuitton’s luxurious brand image (Kapferer, 2012).
Visuals – Sight is not only the most effective, but also the most powerful medium of catching the interesting of the web-shop visitor. Typically, visual tools consist of picture, color scheme, video films, color scheme, interactive media, text font, 3D product view, possibility to zoom, full screen mode and graphics (Okonkwo, 2010). The homepage needs to be designed such that it creates a high-impact and strengthens the brand’s luxury features, like heritage and personality, because this is the first contact the site visitor has with the brand together with its web-shop. In addition, this page must be updated frequently and keep a consistent level of uniq...