Luxurious New Site Doubles Conversion

The luxury shoe and accessories market has been a consistent growth driver in the overall luxury market for the past seven years. This growth has been bolstered by a significant rise in direct-to-consumer online sales that shows no sign of slowing down. Modern luxury brands are recognizing this opportunity and positioning themselves to meet the needs of their consumers. Jimmy Choo is an iconic luxury accessories brand best known for its shoes. As a pioneer in the art of celebrity dressing, Jimmy Choo was among the first to use the red carpets of Hollywood as a runway for showcasing handbags and shoes to a broader audience of potential customers. Today, Jimmy Choo is a staple of style icons from celebrities to royalty and musicians. The brand sells in the most prestigious department and specialty stores worldwide, and the customer experience in its 150 stores is unparalleled.

The online luxury customer experience wasn’t measuring up to the high standard of personalization that was occuring in Jimmy Choo stores. The company website existed in a single realm of the Demandware platform that did not offer Jimmy Choo the scale and flexibility that it needed to expand globally and offer culturally specific experiences to its consumers. Jimmy Choo reached out to Astound to ideate an experience-driven commerce ecosystem and lead the complex process of realizing that vision.

To up-level the online experience, Astound would need to migrate Jimmy Choo onto a new realm of Demandware (now Salesforce Commerce Cloud) with a single codebase that enabled responsive design and would work across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Astound would also help provide Jimmy Choo with a singular holistic view of their customers across all brand touchpoints, online and offline, and create unique online ecommerce experiences that could live up to the luxury in-store experiences that Jimmy Choo is known for. Shortly after this strategy was developed, two of its sister luxury brands, Bally and Belstaff, realized they could also benefit from this approach and became part of a larger initiative that Astound would manage.

Astound mapped out the needs of online shoppers and created unique bespoke experiences for each of the brands that would be supported by a Demandware/Salesforce implementation. For example, Jimmy Choo wanted to offer shoppers the opportunity to customize shoes and handbags by selecting materials, colors, and monogrammed details. When our work was complete, Astound launched 16 responsive sites across the three brands, each with its own look and feel. The Jimmy Choo site includes its made-to-order solution, while the Bally site offers a “locate in store” and a “deliver to store” feature. These and other frictionless commerce features, such as improved payment options and mobile optimization, are designed to improve onsite conversion rates.

Astound empowered all three brands to be able to more effectively engage with their consumers through inspiring experiences that truly reflected the brands’ luxury credentials. We enabled more-effective marketing campaigns and loyalty programs that helped them reach their financial objectives. The new sites doubled conversion rates for all three brands on both web as well as in the dynamic realm of mobile shopping.