Some shoppers enjoy the thrill of hunting for products online. Others, however, become annoyed if they cannot quickly find a specific item they are looking for.
Crocs is appealing to both groups with ShoeFinder, an interactive and intuitive tool designed to help shoppers discover shoes. Since unveiling the new feature, Crocs has seen online revenue per visit increase by 50%. The brand and retailer also has seen customer satisfaction scores and average ticket prices increase.
Based on internal research, Crocs found that many consumers were unfamiliar with the variety of shoe styles the brand offered. In fact, Crocs has evolved into a complete lifestyle brand, which has led to an increase in distribution points and a greater breadth and depth of shoe designs.
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“Over the past five years, this has been the biggest change,” said Harvey Bierman, VP of e-Commerce Technology and Operations at Crocs, Inc. “It makes shopping and browsing more complex, but also more rewarding for the consumer.”
An increasing global footprint also has made the search experience more challenging.
“Our global footprint was making it more and more challenging to keep up with translation and localization efforts,” Bierman explained. “We wanted to provide an alternative form of navigation to our customers that was a more visual approach to search and navigation that did not require knowledge of terms like ‘loafer,’ ‘mary jane’ or ‘flat.’”
By partnering with innovation and solution provider Fluid, Inc., the retailer created ShoeFinder, a seamless, fun and quirky experience for shoppers.
The ShoeFinder tool presents consumers with an interactive and visual way to find shoes. Touting a variety of design elements — such as color, silhouette and gender — builds a more streamlined shopping experience for consumers all over the world.
“The Crocs ShoeFinder is different from most product finders because it is highly visual and not as linear,” noted Bridget Fahrland, SVP of Client Strategy at Fluid. “This means it meets the needs of both surgical shoppers and casual browsers.”
ShoeFinder also removes language barriers and empowers shoppers worldwide to find and purchase the shoes they covet.
“Having a visual tool for the shopping experience that is not dependent on text is one tactic we’ve taken to be more consistent in how we define our customer journey,” Bierman said. “Now a customer in the UK, U.S. and Japan can find a classic Crocs clog without having to know it’s called a ‘clog’ or ‘Classic.’ They just have to know what the general silhouette looks like.”
Although the variety of product attributes helps make sifting through inventory easier, Crocs has no plans to expand its menu of features.
“There is definite value in providing customers with some level of detailed technical product attribution,” Bierman said. “However, our image as a fun, comfortable and colorful brand encourages our customers to browse larger selections of appealing styles versus refining their results to an explicit subset of products that meet a defined set of criteria only.”
