French perfumer creates online flagship store
success of its fragrance store, in turn riding the growing
phenomenon for online shopping.
Annick Goutal launched the online store last month, partnering with a UK based design agency Neue Media to create an online forum that promotes prestige brands more commonly found in boutiques. The partnership aims to boost the consumer base for the business, giving it access to a much wider target audience who are more likely to purchase products online than in-store. Indeed, the multi-functional content of the site will help push the company forward as market leading innovators within online luxury perfume brand sales. The company has designed the site to cater for all online needs, offering multiple languages, multiple currencies and other features, including advanced user recognition and a resolution responsive layout. A large part in the success of the website has been put down to the collaboration with the design company, which has created an in-depth level of communication with the online world. "Working with Neue Media has enabled us to use the full potential of our online presence by introducing a fully scalable multi-lingual, multi-currency website automated with our logistics and local payment processes," said Rebecca Barouche, head of marketing at Annick Goutal. Going above and beyond many flagship internet stores, the design agency has dealt with different cultural spending habits, whilst addressing different security and logistical issues. "Our e-commerce and content management systems have been built from the ground up to handle cross border e-tailing and uniting the different shopping habits of different countries into one system," said Andy Creed, technical director at Neue Media. According to the company the system allows different regions to be sold different products, whilst also adapting to different pricing and payment structures within each region - helping the perfume business extend its reach across the globe and out of Europe. The move into online sales comes at a time when beauty consumers are embracing the new era, and using the internet more than the average person. A recent report 'Marketing Beauty With The Internet Beast', by Mary Beth Kemp of Forrester, showed how the average beauty consumer is now favouring online media portals as the way to view product descriptions for beauty and cosmetic products as opposed to more traditional media. And with just under half of those browsers taking the step from merely 'window shopping' to buying, this news will no doubt encourage more cosmetic manufacturers to step up internet campaigns. In order to benefit from the increased usage the study encourages the manufacturers to embrace the trend by, advertising and selling online, keeping in regular relationship driven contact with consumers, and to try 'new' moves to add value to products. Likewise, with 42 per cent of internet beauty buyers allegedly sharing and telling friends about products discovered, the online 'word -of -mouth' marketing tool is key to the increased sales of cosmetic products.
