Marks & Spencer relaunches website with content focus
Retailer Marks & Spencer has relaunched its website, with a strong focus on content and new ‘editorial hub’ Style & Living.
M&S says the new site design has been developed by its in-house team, in a two-and-a-half year project that involved ‘an extensive amount of user testing’.
The retailer has moved away from the Amazon platform and says it worked with Sapient, which has experience in this area, as well as longstanding IT partner TCS.
M&S says the user-feedback programme identified 40 ‘key customer insights’ which have been addressed in the new design.
These include functional updates such as improving the quality of search returns, to more strategic developments such as a stronger focus on editorial fashion and lifestyle guidance.
The new Style & Living section offers daily updated content from a dedicated editorial team, as well as celebrity and guest editors.
Elsewhere in the website, product shots have been made 50 per cent larger and catwalk and 360° video features have been included.
M&S says a new ‘three-tier navigation’ system makes it easier for customers to reach content more quickly.
M&S says the new website is a key part of its plans to ‘transform from a traditional British retailer into an international, multichannel retailer’.
To support the new site, and future developments, M&S says it has built a 50-strong software development team, as well as a specialised ‘digital lab’, which has been created to supply ‘a more start-up mentality to innovation and testing’.
Laura Wade-Gery, executive director multi-channel E-commerce at M&S, says, ‘We’ve put customers at the heart of our rebuild so that our new site really reflects how they want to browse and shop with us.
‘Online acts as the shop window to all our stores, products and brand, so we’ve used bigger, bolder and better-style imagery, and we aim to inspire and help our customers with a clear style point of view and compelling editorial content that’s refreshed on a daily basis.’
Wade-Gery adds, ‘We now have the capability to respond quickly and efficiently in a world where customers, technology and trend are quickly evolving.’
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The site looks like a great improvement to what M&S had before, we have to wait and see if john Lewis will follow. however John Lewis’s site works really well, many people find it really say to use, so not sure if thy will tamper with it.
the M&S is not responsive? maybe is something they are working at. They must since the trend to do online shopping is on smartphones and tablets. Great article.
Julian P. http://www.percevaldesign.co.uk