Saks Fifth Avenue relaunches website with emphasis on personalization

Dive Brief:

Saks Fifth Avenue has relaunched its website, with its first "comprehensive website replatforming and redesign" in the last five years, the retailer said in a press release on Friday. The new site emphasizes "fashion, ease and personalization" and will let users filter for certain fulfillment options, like BOPIS, same-day delivery, preorder and currently available.
The new site will have segmented homepages and navigation for men's and women's, which the retailer hopes will help better serve its growing men's customer base. It will also include product recommendations and curated content.
Along with those features, Saks' "New Arrivals" section is more prominently placed on the new website, and the "Edit," which features shoppable editorial content like trends stories and influencer curations, has been "significantly expanded" and will now include a "Designer Spotlight" section.

Dive Insight:

Saks' website refresh is focused on creating a seamless shopping experience, with a few of the improvements aimed at easing the path to purchase. As part of that focus, customers can now add items directly to a wish list or their cart from the product array, and product pages will have a "Complete the Look" section that lets shoppers add items directly to their cart.

As is true for other apparel retailers, Saks Fifth Avenue has had to adjust to COVID-19 conditions. In August, the retailer laid off employees, but a spokesperson for the luxury retailer declined to disclose how many. The layoffs were part of a strategy that emphasized personalization, a theme that has been carried through to the website refresh.

Saks joins a growing list of companies venturing into shoppable content, including LG, Macy's, Google, TikTok and Shopify. All of the new digital features are meant to make the luxury retailer the go-to place for high-end fashion, Emily Essner, chief marketing officer at Saks, said in a statement.

Though the redesign is just in time for the extended holiday season, research suggests that consumers aren't exactly shopping for luxurious items and the overall sales growth will be modest this year. A recent report from Adobe said that online holiday sales could reach $189 billion this year and the holiday shopping season will start well before Black Friday.

Meanwhile, the International Council of Shopping Centers and CBRE project that this year's holiday sales overall will grow less than 2%. Not all apparel is in danger, though. A report from the NPD Group predicts purchases of comfortable clothing, such as sweatshirts, sweatpants, active bottoms and sleepwear, will make up 31% of U.S. apparel spending during this year's holiday season.