Why cross-channel experience matters
It’s surprising how long it took Selfridges to release a fully transactional website. Being a representative of the pinnacle of London fashion they must have missed out on years of full online shopping baskets, not launching their transactional site till 2010, but relax – now it has arrived!
The experience of shopping in Selfridge’s store, on London’s Oxford Street is superior. Externally, the store building is impressive with amazing window displays tempting you in. When inside, the cosmetic rooms are buzzing with glamorous assistants waiting to spritz you with the latest fragrance or swipe you with a new lipstick. The fashion rooms offer a wide range from high-end luxury brands to the latest trends in The Street area – really hitting all ranges of fashion customers’ needs.
The recently launched website however, doesn’t reflect this luxury experience. The Homepage takes an age to load with unnecessary animation. I think this is an attempt to look cool and trendy, but really it just adds to the frustration of getting to the items that you want to purchase. Products are tricky to find in the illogical navigation structures. Adding to this, when you do find the department that you’re looking for, despite the vast range of products that Selfridges offer, product pages mostly only show three items per page as default. That means a lot of unnecessary clicking through to additional pages. All in all the online experience does not reflect the superiority that the in-store shopping process deliverers.
You would expect that the team at Selfridges would leverage the premium brand reputation that they have built up offline, by delivering a slick online customer experience on the newly launched website. However, this isn’t the case. I doubt this unpolished site will actually put customers off shopping in the Selfridges store, however Selfridges will not be making the most of the huge online audience that are at their finger tips. In addition to this, the cross-channel purchasing behaviour that is evident in today’s customers will not be supported and their expectations of the well established Selfridges brand built up through the in-store experience will not be met online.