.gif)
New Style at HoF online
House of Fraser has re-launched its transactional website with new navigation, a new look and a new focus on the company's social media platforms. We take a look at what the new site has to offer.
.jpg)
In July, 160-year-old department store chain House of Fraser announced that its online sales had grown by over 100%, making it the best-performing store in the group.
As befits this performance, the site has undergone a makeover, featuring a cleaner, more design-focused structure.
However, it isn't just the look of the site that has undergone a change.
The new site, which is based upon hub pages rather than the traditional shop-by-department design, puts the company's brands at the forefront, as well as making the most of the company's multi-media strategy.
House of Fraser launched its original transactional website in 2007 and it has performed well since then, but as the company's social media strategy has grown and more customers turn to e- and m-commerce, the obvious benefits of highlighting its multi-channel options evolved into the first major redesign of the entire site.
Robin Terrell, executive director for multichannel and international at House of Fraser, commented: "Multichannel retailing is a fast-moving area and we are always looking at ways to stay at the top of our game." He added that he was "confident" that existing customers would be delighted by the new look and feel of the site, and added: "The launch of our customer interaction with social media strategy will introduce House of Fraser to new UK and international customers. We are very excited about these new initiatives, which we believe will continue to drive growth this year."
The new site is based solidly on feedback gathered from customer surveys, external reviews and blogs, (as anyone surfing the old House of Fraser website will gather in recent times from the requests for feedback via online surveys.)
The new site offers a more interactive experience, featuring a magazine-esque design throughout the site. A lot of the black that dominated the previous homepage, making it look, as one commentator said, "like web browsing fuelled on red wine", has gone. As has a lot of the information, which is now hidden behind drop-down menus in a cleaned-up navigation bar.
The result is a cleaner looking homepage, with large, engaging fashion and beauty images that link straight through to the hub pages for brands and products, which in turn are easy to navigate.
In fact, the navigation for the entire site has been streamlined and customers are encouraged to use the search function as well as browsing by department and brand. In addition, more intelligent filter options make it easy to find exact items.
Once customers have selected the product (let's take dresses for example) they have the option to filter by style, brand, colour, price, size, customer rating, fabric, length, neck and sleeve length. The filters also now allow multiple selections, a real improvement on the old site.
The little touches that give a good etail site a personality are also there, such as the tongue-in-cheek "hello stranger" greeting that welcomes unknown users as well as the fact that items in the customer's shopping bag, which can be saved indefinitely, will be removed if the item sells out, thus eliminating the possibility of going through the checkout process only to find that the item is no longer available.
One of the biggest and most interesting changes to the site is the addition of a hub for the company's social media platforms, "Your Style", where customers can browse entries from the House of Fraser blog, Facebook and Twitter as well as enter competitions and view "how to" guides on various subjects from finding the perfect fragrance for yourself or as a gift or how to buy the perfect pair of jeans. This creates a sense of community without too much crossover of content between the website and its social media pages which are informative and updated regularly.
The company's extremely personable blog, for example, features regular columnists writing on their specialist areas including clothing, men's fashion, beauty, homeware and bridal. Events such as New York and London's Fashion Weeks are counted down to and covered.
The Twitter site has a somewhat modest following of 5,474 (compared to Debenhams' 11,458 for example) but tweets are regular and one must suppose that the flurry of excitement that accompanied the new website launch should push the numbers up before too long. Meanwhile the Facebook page, which features a healthy amount of content throughout, has 64,844 'likes', up on Debenhams' 58,573 despite the competitor's bribe of five free Facebook credits to those who sign up to their page.
Overall, the look of House of Fraser's site is now much more pleasant, but it is the new ease of navigation that makes the most marked improvement for the customer experience.
Given the success its predecessor enjoyed, there is no reason to think that the new site, as well as its smartphone counterpart, will not go from strength to strength.
