Louise Guay at the Club e-Luxe Summit 2009, Paris

Strategies for Luxury Website Design, e-Merchandising & e-Customization

Last June, Louise Guay and Gregory Saumier-Finch presented My Virtual Model to the luxury industry leaders at the Ritz Hotel, Paris. The Club e-Luxe Summit is held each year since 2007 by Uché Okonkwo, Luxe Corp.

Luxe.TV Interviews - Click to play

"As the creator of My Virtual Model, the 3-D visual merchandising application that enables the re-creation of the real-self in the virtual space, Louise's presentation was filled with her passion of visionary invention that transform everyone into an online star.

Louise took the audience on a journey of virtual self discovery by demonstrating how to create a personalized avatar, which enables users to try on products ranging from apparel, shoes, bags and jewellery as well as to test as many "looks" as one wishes. She also introduced My Virtual Model fashion community and its role in shaping the collective experiences of online users who are increasingly being exposed to 3D virtual interactions. The power of the online community through engagement and sharing of content prior to making purchases was also underlined.

Her proposition for luxury brands was that the online shopping experience should be fun and a celebration of the luxury brand through unique personalized experiences online."

Source: Luxe Corp Summit Book 2009

Raving Reviews of My Virtual Model

Did you ever try Google Books? A search for "My Virtual Model" returns some 150 citations. I selected these four recent books which look pretty interesting.

Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers, by Bridget Brennan, Crown Business, 2009

"The website Sears.com does the zoom function one better through its "My Virtual Model" feature. The site allows shoppers to input their height, weight, and personal characteristics--even a photo of themselves--to create their own animated online model to try on clothing. It also offers the same feature for home fashions section of the site, enabling shoppers to click and paste everything from furniture to paint colors in images of rooms. It's brilliant and totally unexpected."

Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions, by Bill Scott, Theresa Neil, O'Reilly Media, 2009

"Showing a close-up of a camera on an electronics site is a common technique. But what sets a Live Preview apart from a simple preview is its interactive nature.

Lands' End uses a tool called My Virtual Model to bring Live Previews to clothes shopping. It is based on the premise that if you can show what the clothes will look like on the shoppers, they will be happier with their purchases. While virtual models can only come so close to reality, users can personalize the model with their height, weight, body shape, and so on. Then when they select shirts, pants, and shoes, their virtual model will appear dressed with the items."

Electronic Commerce, by Gary Schneider, Course Technology, 2008

"About 15 percent of visitors to the site use the virtual model and, on average, dress the model 40 times during a visit. Lands' End has found that the dollar amount of orders placed by customers who use the virtual model is about 10 percent larger than other orders. The Canadian company that developed this Web site feature, My Virtual Model, has sold the technology to a number of other clothing retailers."

Chocolates on the pillow aren't enough: reinventing the customer experience, by Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber, Wiley, 2007

"To be effective, technology must be subservient to human ends. The software and web site features used by Lands' End to develop custom clothing designs look simple and may even seem a little hokey. (Does it really matter that My Virtual Model has hair the same length, color, and curliness as mine?) But they help customers take psychological ownership of their clothes even before they order them, providing a sense of figurative comfort that matches the literal comfort we enjoy in well-fitting clothes."

Google Insight for Search: "Shop by Outfit"

Google Insights for Search is a little-known online tool available from Google Labs. Its purpose is to let marketers and researchers peek into Google's query database for trends such as rising keywords by category, product seasonality or geographic distribution. The database provides only a subset of all online queries submitted to Google but this sample is sufficient to capture what's going on while allowing for decent performance.

The following chart shows how the use of the word "Outfit" grew in shopper queries from Jan. 2004 to Feb. 2009, relative to all searches in the Shopping >> Apparel category.

"Outfit" in category Shopping >> Apparel

As one would expect, Apparel Shopping (black) peaks in December each year. Searches for "Outfit" (blue) are remarkedly popular in October, and rising year after year. Although the trend is clear, the October peak may betray the presence of "Halloween outfit" in the sample. A closer look at the last 12 months (2008-2009) should help us here.

"Halloween outfit" in category Shopping > Apparel

"Halloween outfit" (red) has indeed a flattening effects on the whole Apparel category. Let's get more specific by searching for "Shop by outfit" (blue) in 2008-2009 instead.

"Shop by outfit" in category Shopping >> Apparel

This time, the chart shows that "Shop by outfit" (blue) is really rising amongst apparel shoppers. Google Insight for Search cannot tell exactly why people are looking for what they are looking for but as a market research tool, it can undoubtedly help anyone to improve her market insight by trial and error.