The LV site is one of the best of the bunch, with a clean and stylish design that loaded fast with clear navigation. The use of video sparingly and in the right places definitely helps add to the glamourous feel.
The e-shopping section is marked clearly, and within a few clicks you are in the product detail information and able to add items to your cart to buy.
Today, only half or less of the products can be purchased online. For example shoes and ready to wear collections can not be bought online, but accessories and bags can be.
Presumably this is for customer satisfaction reasons - not wanting an expensive purchase leaving a bad impression to an incorrect size, due to the lack of a fitting process, yet it would seem a simple enough solution to have a time limited free size replacement system at their retail outlets to handle this. Perhaps it's more about protecting retail revenue and margins.
Despite this, the site is a great example of a luxury brand presenting a stylish yet user friendly means for their customers to help tempt them to make that 2am spur of the moment online purchase.2/ Chanel
The experience at the Chanel website is often an exercise in patience, with heavy and at-times excessive use of multimedia.
The full use of video, music and animation at times translate to long load times, which isn't very good if all you want to check out is one specific product you desire. Navigation can be frustrating, with the wrong mouse-click launching into another length wait. When it is finally loaded, it's a great experience that gets you into the mood of the brand.
And thankfully for those who are on a slower or shared connection, there is a low bandwidth website option provided as well.
3/ Cartier
Browsing the Cartier site is a love-hate experience.
Without a doubt, it is the most heavy and slow of the group, yet also is probably the most graphically stunning when things are finally up and running.
However the sad end-conclusion is that it's less love and more hate - the blatant overuse of video for title animations ends up just frustrating users, many of whom would have moved on to another site. Not to mention about the use of separate pop up windows in different sections of the site, and the need to wait for full menus to load before being able to click one item in many cases, nor the un-user friendly registration.
Zero. None. Muchos Nothingias.
What's more, even prices aren't displayed, with a need for consumers to "make and enquiry" and leave a message to find out the price for an item. In the age of instant gratification, this doesn't seem like a very useful approach.
All up, not a great customer experience. Shame.
4/ Hermes
After struggling through Cartier, Hermes is a breath of fresh air. A big breath!
The whimsy, lightweight light design with handrawn illustrations is a great contrast with the other four other sites which are heavy with black backgrounds. The quirky feel is instantly attractive, and while not screaming "luxury" it certainly conveys a big degree of class.
Of the top 5 brands, Hermes is the most enjoyable experience in luxury shopping online today.
5/ Gucci
Never has been buying a $US 5399 jacket been so quick and easy. I was going to say painless, but at that price point, it's probably not the most appropriate description...
Gucci's website is a clean, fast and user-friendly experience, with a careful use of flash and offering rather than forcing the use of video to site visitors.
The interface is sparse and leaves a slightly empty feeling, particularly for a brand trying to reinforce a luxurious and highly stylish image. Yet the flipside means an easy and fast navigation experience, which means more revenue when paired up with great e-commerce functions...The site features perhaps the strongest lineup of available products that can be bought on the spot with just a few clicks. With the inclusion of helpful size guides, the site lets users buy a wide range of fashion, from jackets to bags, boots to belts. Even hats are up for grabs! Although I'm guessing hats wouldn't be as common a purchase option.
All up when it comes to online shopping on Gucci, buying is easy. Perhaps too easy.
So what's the big picture? The state of the art? Well online shopping on most of the top luxury brand sites is a reality today, and in some cases such as Hermes and Gucci, very far down the path already. There are some outliers such as Cartier, but all up they seem willing to take advantage of the opportunity.
Which is a great thing for them as well as those consumers who are willing to buy their items at any time and for many, at any price.
J