Lakeland, the eponymous homewares brand, has just redesigned its web site. What was already one of the easiest retail sites to shop is now even better. So, what can we all learn from their redesign? E-Consultancy has distilled the lessons into a top ten – here are the highlights.
1. Use of product videos: Lakeland creates lots of product shorts, well aware no doubt that merchants have often experienced incremental uplifts in sales of 20 percent to 40 percent with them.
2. Easy navigation: On a site as packed with various wares as Lakeland, the retailer makes good use of “mega” drop down menus to provide a quick route to any section of the site from the homepage.
3. Customer reviews: Lakeland has reviews on most of its product pages, and provides the average review score in product category and search results pages. This is the potentially controversial bit for some retailers: reviews include not just the good, but the bad and the ugly too. But take a closer look at the bad reviews and you’ll notice that Lakeland responds to every single one of them—referring unhappy customers to customer service. By answering customers direct at the point of feedback, Lakeland manages to do two things: show other customers that they will be taken care of and to validate the positive ones.
4. Using reviews for navigation / product ideas: Lakeland uses review scores to show the top five products in different categories to promote sales – simple but effective.
5. Easy returns: Lakeland has made it easy for customers to return items, which provides reassurance when customers are making a purchase, getting them to finally click that “Confirm Purchase” button.
6. Relevant product recommendations: Customers will see additional products that could appeal to them based on what they are currently looking at.
7. Free delivery: Who doesn’t like free delivery? Lakeland has a threshold of £20 on the site, which is a great way to boost average order values.
8. Virtual catalogue viewer: For those who prefer catalogue format, Lakeland has a virtual catalogue viewer on the site for those still clinging desperately to the dead tree version.
9. No compulsory registration before checkout: One of the very few retailers to do this, Lakeland does not force users to register before they checkout, but they can opt to if they want for extra features, such as tracking orders. This reduces the barrier to purchase dramatically.
10. Enclosed checkout: Lakeland has enclosed the checkout process to minimize distractions at this very important point. The only routes out are the “continue shopping link”, the homepage logo, and the various FAQs at the foot of the page.
To read more about Lakeland’s overhaul and to see where they still need to improve, read the full e-Consultancy post here.