Product recommendations, interactive customization tools and other customer engagement solutions can help make the online shopping experience more personalized and enjoyable for shoppers. These digital strategies especially impact consumers searching for specific products in certain sizes or colors.
Flutter Eyewear, an online-only eyeglasses and accessories retailer, relies on a variety of personalization tools to engage and educate consumers. People consider a variety of factors when searching for a pair of glasses — lens magnification, frame shape, size and color. A digital try-on tool, online catalog and even paper dolls help make the decision-making process for Flutter customers less of a struggle. With these tools and resources in tow, product return rates have reached only 4%, according to Patti Lee-Hoffman, Co-Founder of Flutter.
“Our goal is to help women who need glasses have an easier browsing and buying experience while avoiding a trip to the local store to spin a carousel full of choices and still not find what they really want,” Lee-Hoffman said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We want to provide a luxurious experience, while ensuring that we give our customers a wide variety of eyeglass designs that truly match their wants and needs.”
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The battle to find stylish eyeglasses with the correct magnification inspired Lee-Hoffman and Co-Founder Gayle Haworth to create Flutter. Both women struggled to find eyeglasses that complimented their face shapes and also provided the correct power. After sharing their subpar shopping experiences, Lee-Hoffman and Haworth decided to create a web site that offered a variety of designs as well as tools and resources to help consumers make optimum buying decisions more easily.
“The overall distribution strategy for eyeglasses just isn’t working,” Haworth explained. “Stores and boutiques can’t hold the breadth of frames that e-Commerce can offer.” Noting online giants such as Zappos as their inspiration, the entrepreneurs “saw an unmet need we thought we could fill.”
Guiding The Browsing And Buying Journey
Once consumers enter the Flutter web site, they have instant access to a plethora of resources to help them start their shopping journeys.
These tools, according to Lee-Hoffman, “allow people to really visualize the products then gauge whether a certain frame size or shape works for them.”
To find the perfect fit, consumers also have access to a customization tool called “My Virtual Mirror.” By uploading a picture to the Flutter site, consumers can digitally try on different styles of glasses before they make a decision. If more traditional tactics are preferred, shoppers also can print out designs, cut them out and physically try them on. Product search results also can be tailored by face shape and size, as well as the color and frame type.
Because of these customization services, “visitors are spending more time on the site as they look through multiple product pages,” Haworth said. “In addition, we have a very high retention rate: We know people are coming back after they make their initial purchases.”
If consumers are unsure where to start the research process, inventory also can be accessed via a shoppable digital catalog. When a specific design stands out, visitors simply click on the model name and are taken directly to that specific product page.
