Diane von Furstenberg gets sales boost from UK co's personalisation tech

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Aug 23, 2018

With more and more retailers implementing new technology and finding sales rising as a result, we heard on Thursday that Diane von Furstenberg has been applying AI-powered personalisation technology from UK-based Qubit to its e-tail business this year. And it said that 11% of its revenue is now attributable to the more tailored offer it can give customers.

Other businesses to adopt advanced tech include Forever 21 and H&M in the US, which have both implemented sophisticated visual search solutions in recent weeks. 

At DVF, as part of a major website redesign, it has used Qubit’s Pro and Aura (for mobile) solutions to introduce personalised e-commerce experiences for each visitor across web and mobile, providing what it said is “a social media-like experience with trending products, basket reminders and user-specific offers, dictated by an individual’s online shopping behaviour and intent.”

And as well as that 11% of revenue figure, it also said that the user-specific offers have driven a 20% conversion rate, while it has seen four times higher conversion on mobile.

Qubit said DVF has leveraged its proprietary machine learning tech “to create in-the-moment experiences - serving the right message, offer or product in the right place and at the right time, increasing brand engagement and customer loyalty.”

As well as all the basket reminders, user-specific offers and more on its main webstore, on mobile, the company also implemented a version of the technology that allowed users to see “more of the product catalogue and more of what’s relevant to them within a few swipes and interactions.”

Qubit said that “with hundreds of products available at any one time, artificial intelligence is the only way DVF can ensure relevancy on mobile, especially given the confines of the small screen and attention spans.”

That’s particularly important because mobile now accounts for over 50% of its traffic and continues to grow. The challenge is that mobile revenue is significantly less than 50% of web revenue and using tech to drive the value upwards makes good commercial sense.

“As a brand, we’re under pressure to maintain growth and revenue in a highly competitive landscape, particularly from online-only retailers,” said Felipe Araujo, Senior Director of Ecommerce at DVF. 

“The luxury industry itself has seen a major shift towards e-commerce, with 40% of purchases now influenced by online content. Previously luxury brands defined themselves by an exclusive in-store experience; this change in focus, combined with an online presence that required updating, was the catalyst behind our decision to implement [the new technology].”