Week4 - Web Design

Interactivity of Levi’s website

I’ll take Levi’s as a sample retailer to discuss the web design.

Koufaris et al., (2002) stated that interactivity provides a hedonic benefit of enjoyment. Park et al (2005) found that creating a positive emotional state and a hedonic experience triggered buying behavior of fashion goods. What’s more, Dennis, Fenech and Merrilees (2004) stated that increasing interactive features would lead to more online activity. Therefore, I’ll analyze the interactivity part of Levi’s.

Interactivity mainly has two functions, enticing communication and fashion inspiration. (McCormick and Vasquez, 2009)

Charles Dennis (2004) said, “Most of the interpretations of interactivity have a strong communication element, which builds on the analogy with the salesperson interaction in the offline world”. There are four elements to entice communication.

Suggestions

In Levi’s online shop, there is a banner said “Best sellers”. People are always interested in popular things, so they will try to click on it to find something new. Mutually, it gives suggestions to consumers to drive their purchase.

Email updates

When you register with Levi’s, they will promise you that you will receive their member-only offers sometimes. Normally, I will receive an e-mail from a certain fashion brand immediately after registration, like NEXT. But I haven’t received anything from Levi’s since I registered. So I think Levi’s should do some improvement in Email updates.

Add on/recommendations

They will provide some other pieces when you have chosen one piece to look, like personal selling. It may have correct recommendations which you really like. Or you can take the recommendations as reference. It may help people to find what they exactly want and entice communication as well.

Promotional offers

People always will be attracted by “Sale” banners. It will win a lot of clicks.

For fashion inspiration, Huang (2008) said, “Entertainment and surveillance are motives for visiting website”. In this branch, there are six elements. Fashion photography, new product information, fashion advice/blogs, journalist text, trend information – look books/fashion forecasts and daily updates – daily fix information. Levi’s has covered two, changed two, and missed two.

Levi’s has provided fashion photography and new product information in their front page as attraction. Besides, it has an amazing change in fashion advice/blogs. Unlike other brands which only give some current popular style advice, Levi’s created a small quiz in order to let customers know which jeans will fit them perfectly. You follow the steps and choose the bodily form you are in, then, it gives the result of a certain jeans model that this is your jeans! Since consumers can not try jeans on in online shop, it is the best way to make up this block. Moreover, Levi’s use videos to tell consumers about their news and events instead of journalist text, which makes it more vivid and enjoyable. On the other hand, since jeans have become an everlasting style, it can not create as much fashion elements as other brands. So trend information – look books/fashion forecasts, and daily updates – daily fix information are the segments they do not need to pay much attention to.

People like to try jeans on personally since they think it is the only way to find fittest one. Levi’s online shop has given a wonderful performance to cover it. It’s really a great job!