Having established a very loyal customer base over the years Pro:Direct wanted to forge even stronger connections with their customers and knowing how native consumer mobile apps can help brands to drive increased engagement and sales conversion took the decision to build them. The team started to look for a proven partner, one who understood the sports retail marketplace and mobile first customer shopping journeys and selected One iota tp help build out the iOS and Android Consumer Mobile Apps.
Native consumer apps are typically designed and developed for loyal customers, one way of ensuring this loyalty is maintained and improved over time is through a well designed membership programme. The mobile consumer app is a highly effective channel to help move customers up through the membership tiers, for example using push notifications for early access products, events or personalised promotions.
The ProDirect and Nike membership schemes have been linked through Nike Connect allowing ProDirect members to gain access to a range of exclusive benefits and experiences. These include early access to special Nike product launches, free UK & Standard Delivery and registration for member-only experiences to enter exclusive competitions with once in a lifetime prizes.
For brands such as Pro:Direct who have very strong relationships with brands including Nike, Adidas, Reebok and others a key point of differentiation is in their ability to offer exclusive or limited edition products. The consumer mobile app is a highly effective channel through which to do this with push notifications advising customers of new drops and giving them the opportunity to enter raffles to win them.
Key to any shopping experience is ensuring that the customer can access high quality written content, images videos to inform their buying journey. This backed with a rich source of delivery and payment options ensures that the brand has the best possible chance of converting visits to sales.
Superdry is a global retail brand which focuses on products that fuse vintage Americana and Japanese-inspired graphics with a British style. The brand has a significant and growing presence around the world, operating through 515 Superdry branded locations in 46 countries.
Superdry wanted to improve its customers' shopping journey by creating a connected online and in-store shopping experience. The key objective of the project was to ensure that staff members were empowered to help customers search and purchase items that may either not be ranged to the store or have experienced size fragmentation. With the mantra of "never lose a sale" in mind the store teams wanted to ensure they could always help customers find what they were looking for and optimise sales conversion. The ability for the store teams to be recognised for their role in an online sales was also an added benefit.
Among special features of the new flagship, there is the newly developed “Smart Fitting Room” that will be integrated into eight of the 17 fitting rooms in this store for the first time.Such specific new experiential tool offers customers digital access to extensive product information, including material and care instructions, as well as alternative sizes available.Equipped with RFID, items in the fitting rooms are immediately recognized and displayed on a screen. Customers can also use an application on the screen to request additional items or help from the sales team for personal advice without leaving the fitting room, This enables a more individual and comprehensive service.
The whole team at Sportsshoes live running and fitness and have over 30 years of expertise. This allows them to deliver industry leading expert advice and support to their customer communities whether this be Couch to 5k runners or elite athletes taking on ultra marathons. Sportsshoes provide online gait analysis, to shoe and jacket finders, live chat expert advice as well as our Running, Trail and Training advice hubs, the team are always on a mission to help their customers find the perfect product from their range of brand partners.
One iota were appointed by the retailer to implement endless aisle application as a cloud based managed service, this running on iPad Mini's. The iPad app enables Superdry’s store teams to search its entire online range in-store and increase conversions of out-of-stock items for products, helping to create baskets, place orders for home delivery and take payment. The iPads were connected with a range of payment hardware devices and services through global omnichannel payment solutions partner Adyen, allowing customers to have multiple ways to pay through the app. Sales assistants not only have access to more product information than ever before, they also have the ability to check stock availability, access the customers transaction history and transact anywhere in-store. One iota support over 500 devices across a global store estate, the multi-lingual and multi-currency app running in every store type from Flagship stores which may have multiple devices through to Airport Stores where additional functionality such as airport boarding pass scanning is available to take friction out of the shopping process. Where iPads or payment devices become faulty or are broken then stores return them for repair/replacement through One iota's fully managed service.
Sportsshoes vision for their mobile experience is to ensure they are delivering personalised content, both editorial and product led. This content is tailored for communities such as elite runners to leisure runners through to the hiking community driving engagement and sales conversion.
Membership is a key feature for retailers with large and loyal customer followings. Ultra is Sportsshoes membership program that elevates the customer experience by providing a wide variety of rewards including. These include access to exclusive content and special offers, first access to sale items, competitions, the ability to shop new product launches before anyone else and priority order processing for ultra fast service
Over the years Superdry has been able to elevate the customer experience and when it comes to sales conversion have seen a 5-10% uplift in store sales. Although it can be argued that some of these customer could have gone online and ordered even at the lower end of this range, event taking into this account it is still making a considerable contribution as part of Superdry's annual turnover. This as well as creating a raft of satisfied and loyal customers with an increased life time value.
People today want to express themselves and their personalities in everything they own and brands are very aware that personalisation creates value for their customers. A study by Deliotte discovered that personalised products can command a premium price of up to 20% more than non-personalised products, a great opportunity for retailers to increase revenues. ProDirect have introduced this feature into their consumer mobile app, allowing customers to personalise shirts and boots to help strengthen the bond between customer and brand.
ProDirect worked with brand partner Adidas to launch the augmented reality (AR) footwear try-on in their Consumer Mobile Apps on iOS and Android. This feature has been designed to let customers virtually try on some of their latest boot releases, including the <names of two of the boots that have this option>. Viewing products in 3D is already known to increase conversion, reduce returns driven by style or look and help brands attract new customers.
As well as being a member of the Sportsshoes community some customers are also members of other running focused organisations such as England Athletics. The Sportsshoes mobile app allows members of both programmes to link their accounts and for members of England Athletics to receive specific member discounts. This co-collaboration of value helps both organisations to strengthen the bond between customer and brand.
Sportsshoes work with a range of leading brand partners across running and hiking, these including ON, New Balance, Asics, Salomen and New Balance. Working hand in hand with brand partners the app will become the primary channel for members to access special offers and events such as entries to the London Marathon.
