In this article, we’re going to explore some conversion rate optimization techniques for luxury ecommerce brands.
Taking the chic and elegant from beautifully designed in-store spaces and recreating them online is indeed a great challenge. Maybe that’s why it took luxury brands a little longer to make the digital shift. Luxury ecommerce is not just the product. It’s the experience, the mystery, and the personal touches that complete it. For those who did make the shift, statistics show online sales will contribute to 25% of their overall sales.
But how do we grow from there? With millions of ecommerce sellers online, there are products of every price range available side by side. Consumer trends have also changed over the years. Luxury buyers are not just millennials with overflowing pockets. It’s people from diverse income segments and age groups - a large portion of whom don’t mind thrifting or getting a look-a-like product from time to time.
With all these new factors in play, how can luxury ecommerce brands catch their attention and further, get their conversion rates up?
Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Luxury Ecommerce Brands
Here are our top seven strategies to grow your luxury ecommerce conversion rate in 2024.
1. Deliver a luxury experience
From the design, layout, colors, personnel, and of course, the price tags in-store, you know luxury when you see it. Transcending this in-store experience in all of its glory to the online world, where users can experience it from the comfort of their homes, is surely going to be tricky.
Why is this important? The experience and uniqueness you provide each customer is what makes you stand apart from phony look-alike product pages. It holds up brand reputation and encourages brand loyalty. Moreover, your website can help you deliver key brand messages to your audience without sounding forced. The complete creative freedom over text and design can give you more flexibility to showcase who you are.
Again, the same aspects play a major role. Investing in a good UI/UX design for your ecommerce website will easily be one of the best decisions for your business. Make sure the design and colors you choose for your webpage reflect your customers’ ideal experience or even more.
Ensure that your website delivers the same experience on all screens. Not just desktop, but mobile too. Optimize your website and give users a seamless action flow- no crossroads or confusion. The best way to test this out is to run focus groups and user testing.
2. Stay true to your brand
Luxury brands have strong personalities and values which their audience looks up to. It can be expressed through their layout style, imagery, or web copy.
You can think of it this way- Whenever a customer sees your store- offline or online, they should be able to recognize, relate, and say ‘Hey, I’ve seen this place before!’.
However, you choose to express it, stay consistent. Use authentic images, and stick to your brand aesthetic. Understand how your audience searches. Constantly analyze website data and understand how shoppers shop at your digital store. Don’t be afraid to A/B test and find what works best for you.
3. Create a brand identity
We live in an era where customers expect more than just products from brands. Brand value and company missions are more than just a statement. They are words to live by.
Taking up digital initiatives with an inclusive approach gets your audiences’ attention. Several such campaigns like the #TurnYourBack challenge by Dove have received tons of positive responses. Use all your marketing channels like social media, blogs, websites, and even ads to support your campaign.
Once you get the momentum going, if your audience catches on, that’s tons of user-generated content, easy discoverability, and a proud moment for your luxury brand altogether.
4. Reassess your audience
The stereotypical luxury shopper would be a 28 year old woman in her chic outfit and high heels with a lot of branded shopping bags. Here’s a surprising fact for you- More than 50% of luxury shoppers are male. Research states that by 2025, millennials and Gen Z will be responsible for 45% of luxury product sales.
An ecommerce website opens up your brand to a wider range of audience. There’s a high chance of users discovering your brand when looking for similar products or doing their due diligence.
To understand who your online audience is, analyze your website traffic. Monitor user data and their journey through your page. You can use heatmaps, recorded user sessions, and run focus groups to identify what works great and what is not so great for your website. Understanding user behavior can, in turn, help build strategies to improve your luxury ecommerce conversion rate.
Here’s one more tip. Being humans, expectations change over time and generations. In identifying your specific audience segment, you can utilize demographic studies to understand them better. This might help you get a clearer picture of what ‘luxury’ means to them.
5. Integrate technology
Technology can be a great addition to your website to stand out from the competition and offer something unique for your audience. From AR filters, holograms, machine learning, and AI to 3D visualization of products, technology has come a long way in the retail space. Integrating them into your website can provide an additional dimension and encourage users to spend more time on your webpage.
Use your tech stack to give shoppers a personalized experience. Give them something to interact with and share. Make them feel like royalty even if they’re at home in their pajamas.
6. Develop customer loyalty programs
Introduce a customer loyalty program for your in-store shoppers. This encourages them to check out your online website and stay updated with your latest launch. You could build it as a points system, referrals-based, or simply, early access to product drops, discounts, and sales.
Additional features like same-day delivery, fast shipping, or in-store pickup can be equally enticing. Did you know that 22% drop out of an online shopping session because shipping is too slow? There are many softwares to help you build your brand’s loyalty program like Xoxoday Plum, LoyaltyLion, etc.
Additionally building loyalty programs can boost your re-targeting efforts for recurring customers. Same person or not, it doesn’t really matter if it improves the conversion rate for your luxury ecommerce brand, no?
7. Create a mobile app
Finally, if you haven’t already, you should consider launching your own branded mobile app.
Selling luxury products online is all about authority. You need to signal to customers that your brand is an authority, and that they can trust your brand to deliver on the promises of quality.
One of the best authority signals you can deliver is having your own mobile app. Apps - at least as most people perceive them - take a huge amount of time, effort and money to create. So when a customer sees you have a mobile app available, they’ll think you’re the real deal.
Luckily, it doesn’t actually take that much to create your own app today. With MobiLoud, you can convert your website into a mobile app and leverage the customer experience you’ve already built for the web to launch a beautiful app quickly and affordably.
Just see these example case studies - which include numerous high-revenue ecommerce brands - to learn what’s possible. As long as your website is mobile-friendly, you could be live and in the app stores in as little as two weeks.
Whether you’ve got a luxury fashion brand, jewelry, or any other high-ticket ecommerce store, an app can have a huge impact on your conversion rate, as well as your overall revenue.
If you’re ready to learn more, and want to see a demo of your website as an app, book a free consultation now.
Do Ecommerce Apps Help with Conversion Rate?
In a word - yes. Launching an app for your luxury brand is a great way to build a more immersive and contained shopping experience, which has a direct impact on conversion rates.
When someone shops on your app, they have fewer distractions to contend with. No browser tabs, no other sites contending for the customer’s attention. Just a smooth user experience purpose-built for mobile.
Besides conversion rates, mobile apps are a great way to boost revenue, full stop. Ecommerce app revenue saw an 8.1% increase in the last year alone.
Having an app increases your reach, boosts retention, boosts average order value, and increases the lifetime spend of each customer.
- Your brand will be visible to more potential customers by being able to enter the app stores.
- A mobile app is a natural retention engine; an icon on the user’s homescreen makes it more likely that they’ll come back and shop more than once.
- A smoother, more contained, distraction-free shopping experience means shoppers will spend more time on your site and will likely purchase more.
- Higher retention and AOV means a higher spend over the customer’s lifetime, especially when factoring in the power of push notifications to communicate with customers and boost engagement.
Bottom line, if you can build an app, and it’s not going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should do it - especially for luxury ecommerce brands, where small increases in conversion rate, retention and AOV add up to a significant increase in profit at the end of the day.
Final Takeaways
Luxury brands should be dialed in to find any ways they can to increase conversion rate.
Even incremental improvements in conversion rate will have a huge impact on your bottom line when you’re selling high-ticket items.
One of the best ways to boost conversion rate, along with long-term revenue, is to launch your own app.
With MobiLoud, you can launch an app in as little as two weeks, which replicates the luxury experience you’ve built on your website.
Unlike other no-code solutions, you can keep all the features and all the design from your website - you don’t need to rebuild anything. There’s also no work for you to do. It’s a fully managed service, including taking care of your app after launch. We do everything for you, with a white-glove service package for every user.
The cost of building an app with MobiLoud is less than many luxury brands will make in just one sale - so if your app just gets you one or two extra sales per month, it could already provide a positive ROI.
With mobile commerce booming, and more and more people making mobile their preferred way to shop, you shouldn’t wait any longer to build and launch your own luxury ecommerce app.
Interested? Get a free preview of your app and schedule a free consultation with one of our experts.