Mytheresa vs. 24sevres: Which Provides the Best E-commerce Experience?

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When I decided to prepare my first digital retail experience comparison report, I thought “why not begin with the top luxury retailers?” After all, these brands cater to the most affluent customer segment and offer best-in-class products from the world’s most renowned luxury fashion designers, where one would expect to find high-ticket items. I presumed that it would be a treat for me to check out the best of digital customer experience capabilities and features that I may not have even witnessed till date. So, I decided to take up Mytheresa and 24Sevres for my detailed customer experience review. Let’s take them one by one and draw a comparison.

Mytheresa

To all female shoppers out there, if you always want to be in touch with luxury fashion, and dream of bringing the runway pieces to your wardrobe, immediately sign up to mytheresa.com. I guarantee you will enjoy the hottest trends, sale steals and daily new arrivals from over 200 luxury designers, including Gucci, Valentino and Jimmy Choo. They have the most exclusive collection at your fingertips that are modern and right on trend.

Trust me, their website is easy to navigate and you can shop easily from your smartphone or tablet, the same way you can from your laptop. (Spoiler – They don’t have an app for android phones). And the best thing I liked about the site, and I am sure you will too, is…discounts. Mytheresa.com has a separate tab for items on SALE right in the home page menu where you can shop by discount (items are divided into sections with 30% off, 40% off, 50% off and so on).

Let’s take a look at some of the other features of the website which elevated my experience while browsing:

a)The products are photographed from numerous angles so that you can view each product in detail. You can easily find your right size with their detailed size and fit description
b)They also have a style advice as to how you can team up the product with other items (that I dream about purchasing). Being able to “shop the look” is a welcomed time saver for shoppers – a personal shopper feel, adding value in a digital-only environment
c)Easy access to new arrivals and top designers (clearly visible on main menu of the home page)
d)Provision to receive personalized alert (push notifications) for items in your wish list “LAST PIECE”, “BACK IN STORE” or “SALE”
e)Weekly editorials about the newest trends and inspirations

But contrary to my thoughts, even the website selling the world’s most luxurious brands does not provide the best of digital luxury experience. A top-class online aggregator selling the chicest shoes, dresses and bags that left me drooling as I imagined them wearing in my upcoming office party, also lacked some of the most critical digital capabilities.

Imagine you are undecided as to whether you want to spend $700 on that Givenchy Fringed Dress. A catwalk video where you can see the selected product walking down a runway and get a real feel of the product would have helped in deciding. But, Oops, the site missed on that feature which was a complete let-down for me. I would have wanted to interact with a style advisor for some of my immediate queries but, unfortunately, the live chat tool was unavailable and that is further damaging the customer experience.

Mytheresa

24Sevres

Can a website translate the experience of physically shopping in a beautifully designed luxury fashion store? The answer is the newly launched 24 Sèvres, a boutique shopping website and mobile app named after the Paris street that our beloved French department store Le Bon Marché is on. The new e-commerce site is launched by Le Bon Marché and LVMH. It’s home to some of our favorite fashion houses that are always ahead of the trends—think Louis Vuitton, Dior, Givenchy, and Fendi.

I started browsing through the website and Gee, it gets your attention right from the first moment. The site really offers a reimagined visual shopping experience and recreates the store’s famed window displays. The images are simply breathtaking as they have given a unique treatment to the product imagery and have really brought their pages to life. A few things that added to my digital experience and really left me mesmerized include:

a)Product images are grounded and contextualized using props and backgrounds
b)Each brand label has their own personalized space featuring their own visuals
c)Guidance from their Personal Shoppers through live chat, Facebook messenger
d)The keyword search is intuitive and seems to know just what you are looking for
e)Live video styling consultation through their app which allows customers to have one-on-one style guidance or assistance in real-time
f)Click & Collect functionality that allows you to buy on their site and pick-up the product in-store
g)Free return service at the physical store
h)Selective brands, such as Louis Vuitton, enable shoppers to buy products online and get them exchanged at nearly every LV store (with a few exceptions)

What lucrative return and exchange policies! What else could you ask for? In fact, according to McKinsey&Co, a convenient return policy and free shipping are far and away the most important factors impacting purchase decisions in the US.

However, this website also suffers from a dearth of quintessential digital capabilities. Though we can’t blame it for having no customer-review or most-popular-product sections, since the site is relatively new, the absence of “catwalk video” feature and “recently viewed product” were a personal turn-off.

24sevres

Final Take

Based on my personal experience interacting with the two ecommerce sites, 24Sevres.com definitely fared better than Mytheresa.com in terms of overall digital experience, although I find online luxury retailers are still lagging other verticals in terms of providing “exceptional” shopper experiences. For instance, I use an Android phone and neither retailer currently offers an Android app, leaving many shoppers with something to desire. Nevertheless, both websites still have plenty of room to grow and improve the shopping experience, with the addition of emerging digital technologies including virtual fitting rooms or “build your outfit” features.

Silky Sinha
Silky is the customer experience analyst and a digital native with a global mandate, Silky is always on the search for industry best practices across multiple verticals. She identifies companies with superior customer experience based on a defined Customer Journey Framework.

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