Automation: amazing tech for shopper experience

Author: CIM COM

undefined Customer experience is acknowledged as a primary differentiator for retail brands. When it comes to buying online we’ve seen the rise of automated chatbots, shoppable video and virtual assistants from Siri to Alexa and Cortana. In the retail clothing market, ASOS has added visual search capability to its mobile customer experience, whilst innovator Metail provides body modelling and garment visualisation to remove barriers to online purchase.

Try on clothes online with Metail

When you buy clothing online how can you know if the item is the right fit or if it will suit your body shape? If you get it wrong having to return products is a hassle for consumers and costly for retailers. Cambridge start-up Metail provides software to solve the problem of not knowing. To address this issue, Metail’s software enables consumers to make a 3D model of themselves and then see a 360-degree view of their avatar ‘Me Model’ wearing the clothes on screen before they buy. Each avatar can be created within 10 seconds by inputting a few basis vital statistics. It can be personalised further with skin tone and hairstyle. Initially focused on women’s fashion the company plans to extend this innovation to men’s style.

In this video clip, ITN reports on how Metail is changing the way we shop.

Female fashion brand Princess Polly in Australia has made Metail part of the experience for their online shoppers. The brand reports that its resulted in a 50% increase in revisit rates as well as a 31% uplift in order value per visit.

Metail had previously partnered with House of Holland to showcase products online, at the same time that they were being presented on the catwalk with the ecommerce tool that mirrored products shown on the catwalk livestream. Shoppers could virtually try on the new seasons fashions and place pre-orders. Three quarters of users tried the tool, one third browsed the entire collection and on average users tried on 12 outfits.

The Metail app uses a mix of technologies including machine learning for body modelling, digitisation of clothes and garment visualisation.

Find products with ASOS visual search

When you want to track down and buy a specific item of clothing you’ve seen forget asking a shop assistant where to find the product. Ditch searching for products online with key words. Now you can find what you want by showing ASOS a photo. Just click the new camera icon in the search bar and you can upload an image from your photo library or take a picture and ask the app to use the photo.

Their algorithm will use optical recognition to understand and then decode what the picture represents – such as, women’s high-heeled red ankle boot – and show you the closest matching products from their database of 85,000 products.

The image search function dubbed by some as ‘computer vision’ is an update to the ASOS app. Initially available on Apple iOS devices, it’s being rolled out for Android. With mobile accounting for 80% of traffic and 70% of sales at ASOS, this visual search tool further improves the shopper experience.

Discover more about the ASOS approach to marketing with our CIM Creative Communications Group article:

Ecommerce: ASOS gets creative on mobile

Use your digital wallet for convenient shopping

Online shopping can dazzle you with choices and then disappoint you with its tedious checkout process, as you fill out payment and delivery forms. Compass reports that the average cart abandonment rate at the last stage of the buying process, the checkout, is 25%. (Incidentally, if your rate is under 13% then you’re a top performer.) In-store too, paying at the desk can be a slow process. And whether you shop online or in person there are justifiable concerns about payment security. Digital wallets provide a secure and more convenient way to pay. They cut out the repetitive form-filling with e-commerce purchases and enable you to buy in-store with less fuss. Whilst they’ve been around for a while, consumer adoption and retailer/merchant uptake is still in its infancy.

Three of the biggest digital wallet brands are Masterpass, PayPal’s One Touch and Visa Checkout, with many others including Google Wallet, Amazon Payments and Apple Pay. They allow you to buy on the web and on mobile securely and quickly. Masterpass, for example, supports loyalty schemes and in-store proximity payment technologies such as QR codes and Near Field Communication (NFC) at point of sale that turn a smartphone into a contactless card. Digital wallets offer marketers a raft of opportunities to provide relevant, timely, location-based offers and run campaigns which integrate with overall brand strategy.

October 2017 sees heavy investment from Mastercard in a campaign created to promote its Masterpass digital wallet offering. The TV ad campaign by McCann London will extend to digital, out-of-home advertising and social channels. Digital activity includes retargeting ads with retailer incentives to promote consumer adoption of Masterpass.

Read up on tech in retail

Amit at Let’s Talk Payments (LTP) provides a useful comparison of the three main digital wallet offerings: A Comparison of 3 Biggest Digital Wallets Globally for 1-Click Checkout

Writing for Insider Trends, Cate Trotter catalogues the Top 50 innovations in retail

Hana Krijestorac, Ventures Analyst for Plug and Play Brand & Retail outlines: The Top 10 Trends for Retail and Ecommerce in 2017

Sit back and learn from a CIM webinar

Discover more about current best practice in managing the customer experience with our webinars. Visit www.cim.co.uk, login to MyCIM and click the Webinar button on your dashboard. Choose from useful subjects such as:

Practical Insights: Handling barriers to customer experience delivery
Key Insights: The new consumer decision journey
Practical Insights: The journey isn't over