How does virtual fitting improve user journey conversion?
The customer journey of a fashion e-commerce site is all the steps the consumer will go through:
From the search for a product matching the need, to the shopping cart and purchase confirmation.
Virtual fitting experiences improve the conversion of e-tailers by optimizing several essential steps of this user journey.
Virtual fitting optimizes product discovery
The first step in the shopping journey is product research, where the user arrives at an e-commerce site and navigates through the website via the search bar, product sheets or the header.
A study conducted by SaleCycle shows that in the ready-to-wear sector, only 42.5% of visitors to a fashion website consult a product page.
https://www.ecommerce-nation.fr/pret-a-porter-bonnes-pratiques-optimiser-parcours-client-ligne/
So more than half of the users do not consult products before leaving the site, it is therefore essential for e-tailers to succeed in converting the remaining ones.
When arriving on a product page, consumers can only view one garment or outfit offered by the brand.
To view another garment, it is necessary to load a new page or return to the previous page, thus increasing the risk that these users leave the site.
With an optimized virtual fitting experience, users can discover new products with one click:
A "Mix&Match" experience is a great way for the brand to showcase multiple products on one page.
Users can swipe between different garments to dress the mannequin, they can change endlessly and try on any combination of tops and bottoms to compose the outfit of their choice.
An experiment of this type exists at the brand La Redoute, developed by Veesual:
Mannequins that look like users for more projection
After finding the right item, the consumer will imagine wearing the garment.
The same SaleCycle study reveals that out of 100% of users arriving on an e-commerce site, only 11.5% add a product to the cart.
So less than a quarter of the users put in a shopping cart, probably because it is difficult to project in e-commerce, a garment in photo does not always look the same in reality.
To reduce this problem of projection, fashion brands offer images of clothes on mannequins.
However, each user is different, there are as many sizes, skin colors and morphologies as there are consumers, but fashion brands cannot shoot all users.
One possible solution is to offer users the choice between different mannequins of different sizes, skin colors and morphologies.
When customers identify with the mannequins, purchase intent increases by about 200%, according to a study conducted by Ben Barry.
Thanks to this type of experience, users could more easily project themselves and imagine themselves in the place of the models. They would then be less hesitant to put their order in the shopping cart, increasing the conversion rate.
Virtual fitting increases the average basket
One of the last steps in the user journey is the addition of items to the shopping cart.
This is the primary objective of e-tailers, but the goal is also for consumers to add as many items as possible, thus increasing the average shopping cart.
Another study by VE Interactive reveals that the highest average baskets are spread over two key times of the year: Black Friday and the Christmas vacations.
During these key moments, the average basket can explode, but quickly returns to its initial values after December.
So we need to find new ways for consumers to add more product to the cart:
If users could view the outfit of their choice with any piece from the collection, they could put together their own outfits.
By seeing complete outfits, they could project themselves even better in these outfits and add more items to the cart.
By adding more items to the cart, consumers are also increasing the conversion of e-commerce sites.
The virtual fitting of clothes allows to improve the conversion through several steps of the user path:
- By optimizing product discovery with new ways to navigate an e-commerce site.
- By allowing users to project themselves more easily into the mannequins and reduce hesitation.
- Increasing the average shopping cart through innovative experiences in which consumers can compose entire outfits
Want to know more about how to improve your site's conversion with virtual fitting?
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Why does personalization make a difference in fashion e-commerce?
Nowadays, fashion e-commerce is a very competitive sector, with increasingly demanding customers. Fashion brands have to find solutions to stand out, increase their performance and satisfy their customers. It's no longer just about offering the best products, but also about providing an impeccable shopping experience. Personalization is a solution to meet this challenge.
Myth 1: Virtual fittings are not realistic, because you can't actually try on the clothes.
In the fashion e-commerce sector, virtual fitting has become a must-have feature, but it remains a controversial subject for some.In a series of articles, we're going to demystify the myths surrounding virtual fitting. The first is that virtual fitting is ineffective because it doesn't offer a real fitting experience. We can start by recalling that e-commerce customers are those who rarely, if ever, visit physical stores, for a number of reasons: lack of time, no attraction to in-store waiting, especially for fitting room queues. Brands need to be able to adapt to these customers, because the need remains the same: to buy clothes. And, as in a physical store, this purchase is based on several aspects and questions: "does it fit me", "do I like it", "what would it go with"... The virtual fitting experience answers these questions by reproducing as closely as possible the fitting room in a physical store.