Mankind [www.mankind.co.uk] are the market leaders in male grooming and style. With a website featuring the best brands in the cosmetics world and a loyal customer base it is of little wonder that Mankind reports such incredible profits and growth each year. However, in a competitive market every company must offer something extra, something no one else is and this is where our work was done.
The second solution was aimed at providing a more personalised, involved interaction with a customer with a more focused push towards generating a sale. 'Personal Shopper' became the second piece of functionality that was designed and coded. Through a microsite linked to from the main website homepage as well as via independent online marketing, the Personal Shopper page asks a customer for a few key pieces of information for up to three recipients. After completing this information the resulting data is sent to a Mankind grooming expert to be reviewed. Mankind then searches their product range looking for suitable products and through some clever database and PHP formed pages can very quickly assign them to the customer, automatically creating a personalised email and a fully customised webpage of results including the suggested products and reasons for the choice. The customer can then select the items they would like to purchase and be taken straight to the shopping cart with all of the items populated for a simple checkout process.
“We are always looking at competitor sites and other big players in various industries to see what they are doing. A lot of the time that means that whilst your content and design is fresh and unique, some of your functionality is based on something someone else has already created. What is great about these projects is that we have been able to turn around and create something new, this time we are setting the trend.”
Objective:
By engaging with customers online, Mankind realised they could not only learn from their customers, they could collect contact data and increase sales. In order to engage in a deeper way a project was drawn up to implement two pieces of web-based functionality that would be held outside of the core site.
Solution:
The first piece of functionality, 'Live-Expert', was the implementation of an online chat function to allow customers to speak online in realtime with a grooming expert. The customer could ask questions, discuss products and ways to use them and also importantly be passed content via the chat window. The system was installed and tested before being released to the public via links on the homepage as well as an email campaign to the entire customer database.
The second solution was aimed at providing a more personalised, involved interaction with a customer with a more focused push towards generating a sale. 'Personal Shopper' became the second piece of functionality that was designed and coded. Through a microsite linked to from the main website homepage as well as via independent online marketing, the Personal Shopper page asks a customer for a few key pieces of information for up to three recipients. After completing this information the resulting data is sent to a Mankind grooming expert to be reviewed. Mankind then searches their product range looking for suitable products and through some clever database and PHP formed pages can very quickly assign them to the customer, automatically creating a personalised email and a fully customised webpage of results including the suggested products and reasons for the choice. The customer can then select the items they would like to purchase and be taken straight to the shopping cart with all of the items populated for a simple checkout process.
Results:
Customer interaction has increased with some fantastic feedback coming through from users of both tools. Through some fully integrated tracking with Google Analytics Mankind have also seen revenue come directly from the Personal Shopping tool. Although still in the first few weeks of live usage both tools have proven a very effective way of capturing, interacting and converting customers.
“We are always looking at competitor sites and other big players in various industries to see what they are doing. A lot of the time that means that whilst your content and design is fresh and unique, some of your functionality is based on something someone else has already created. What is great about these projects is that we have been able to turn around and create something new, this time we are setting the trend.”
