Imagine waking up to discover one of the world’s biggest influencers has featured your product in an Instagram post.
This exactly what happened to Clue client, Sommer Swim, when Kendall Jenner posted pictures of herself wearing one of their swimsuits on Instagram.
The post was liked 9.3 million times and had over 53 thousand comments and shares.
Publicity flowed with articles being seen in Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Mail, Pop Sugar and more. Celebrity Insider ran an article titled “Kendall Jenner Breaks the Internet in Barely There Bikini”.
The Sommer Swim website was flooded with visitors in the days that followed. Transactions spiked, average order value increased, and inventory was snapped up by happy customers in major markets around the world.
It’s a dream scenario for most digital business owners. It certainly was for Sommer Swim, yet we hear stories of businesses who fail to take full advantage of their time in the sun.
How many times have you heard of websites crashing during major shopping events like Click-Frenzy or Cyber Monday? Or even if the website doesn’t crash, the eCommerce experience was enough to turn people away.
The truth of the matter is a lot work needs to take place for a business to maximise its very own Kendall Jenner moment.
Three things we recommend to a business of any size is:
#1 Build Your Website on a Strong Foundation
Sommer Swim’s website is built on Shopify and hosted with Amazon Web Services. Hosting is scalable and won’t crash when traffic suddenly spikes. The eCommerce site is optimised to be easily discoverable in search engines and for sales conversion. With the website developed on a strong foundation, Sommer Swim can take advantage of moments of customer intent by providing a seamless eCommerce experience.
#2 Provide a Consistent Brand Experience
Providing a consistent brand experience is critical to increasing a customer motivation during the consideration and conversion stages of the buying journey.
Sommer Swim is an excellent example of a business offering a consistent brand experience. It’s imagery and content across its website is consistent with its other channels and delivers a message that is aligned with Sommer Swims overall brand values. Sommer Swim also uses content to build its community and give people a reason to revisit the website. This is something every business can do if they’re willing to invest in quality content and storytelling.
#3 Positive Fulfillment and CRM Experience
Promise plus experience equals trust. If the customer experience doesn’t match the promise, then it results in lower trust.
Setting expectations about delivery costs and timing is a good way to do this. It ensures people know when to expect their purchase and sets the stage for a seamless end-to-end customer experience.
Sommer Swim does this clearly on their website. They also have a strong customer experience management program set up. This helps keep customers engaged and coming back to the website.
Final Thoughts
Most businesses will never be featured by an influencer such as Kendall Jenner. Yet every business can and should expect its moment in the sun – when something happens that thrusts your business into the spotlight and drives peak demand.
Being ready for that moment requires a strategy and a little forward planning to make sure the moment is leveraged when it comes. This includes having a strong ecommerce platform that’s optimised for sales conversion, using content to provide a consistent brand experience, and having a quality fulfilment and customer relationship management process in place.