If it hasn’t been said already, these are strange times for all involved in physical retail. So, what can we do to help our colleagues in eCommerce? The Mercaux app can help provide a solution to bridge the gap between the shop floor and your online teams, and help them to generate more sales.

One of the key features of the Mercaux App is that it allows Store Associates to create unique looks through simple drag and drop functionality (see gif below), giving HQ Team unique crowd-sourced content that can be used by every Store Associate to inspire customer to buy whole looks, instead of individual products.

With enforced store closures by governments around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, why are we choosing to highlight this in-store feature to you now?

Recent focus has been solely on Retail's eCommerce Teams to generate much needed revenues for retailers. This is where the rich source of content that has been generated by Sales Associates in-store can be leveraged by Mercaux customers to drive engagement, conversion and larger basket sizes. Mercaux has an open API that customers can use to easily export looks from the app for online use. The unique content is already there, so why not use it! And once lockdowns are eased (the UK was the latest government to announce dates for store reopenings this week) these use cases can still be deployed to inspire online customers unwilling to return to stores. Here are a few customer examples of this being used on eCommerce and social media:

Finn Flare
Finn Flare has used looks from the Mercaux App to inspire cross-selling on produce pages to increase basket size (UPT):

How the looks are displayed in the Mercaux App:

How Finn Flare is displaying the looks carousel below the product description online:

Charuel

Retailer Charuel has leveraged looks for use in social media, with has the potential to drive sales (see our post about S-Commerce here). The posts help shoppers to visualise real life outfit combinations, whilst for marketers, they are able to push out authentic content which resonates with their consumer base.

Charuel looks used in Instagram posts

French Connection

We've always been impressed by the team at French Connection creating fresh and engaging content for their communities. We even covered this in a dedicated blog post where they set a challenge for their staff to create looks within the Mercaux App, followed by photo shoots to showcase the looks in situ. See some of their looks that they created below, which made their way on to their social media channels. Perhaps now might be the opportunity to challenge your teams to create "lockdown looks" with stock they have at home to push on your social channels?

How else to make the most of 'looks' during and after lockdown?

1. Add a looks gallery to your website to generate interest from customers wishing to be inspired of what to purchase

2. Share multiple looks and bundle together into one complete cost (e.g. purchase this looks for <fixed price>, or purchase 5 looks for <fixed price>)

3. Send a "complete the look" follow up email a few days after the previous ecommerce or offline purchase to encourage customers to purchase complementing products

In all, utilising the 'Create A Look' feature of Mercaux and being able to parlay it into different channels, be it e-commerce or social media, stands you in good stead. You’re able to utilise the Sales Associate generated content to provide personalised and unique ideas for shoppers to pick from. 

How do you get involved?

Looks data is available on-demand via our open API. If you would like information on extracting the content from your app to recreate on your eCommerce or social media channels, please contact your Customer Success Manager who will be able to provide more information (it's pretty easy to do!).

For further articles helping you to respond and recover from the COVID-19 crisis, please visit our Resource Centre: https://blog.mercaux.com/covid-19-resource-centre