The Body Shop is rolling out a £10 million digital transformation project to expand its global eCommerce footprint and create a seamless online experience. As part of the project to streamline The Body Shop digital offering, the retailer has launched a mobile-first eCommerce platform which integrates content and commerce. The Hybris-based digital platform has been designed so The Body Shop’s customers can engage more effectively with the retailer’s products and ethos – a complex task given its international scale. Rather than creating a ‘one-size-fits-all’ platform, The Body Shop has accommodated regional variations in its development, meaning it can be adapted to each market’s consumer preferences for merchandising, payment and delivery fulfilment.
The new digital platform launched in 11 countries, including UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil and Indonesia, and will be rolled out to over 20 more countries in 2017. It will be a hub for all of The Body Shop’s content and also features a number of tools that appeal to today’s knowledge hungry shopper, such as a live appointment booking service for in-store consultations, as well a personalised skincare diagnostic tool. It incorporates click and collect functionality which will launch later this year. The platform also makes it easier for The Body Shop to communicate its wider activity online, allowing customers to engage with its ethical campaigns digitally, including the Bio-Bridges programme which aims to protect 75 million square metres of threatened rainforest by 2020, with projects in Vietnam Indonesia and Malaysia.
With 52 per cent of The Body Shop’s existing online traffic from mobile and 11 per cent from tablet, the impact of The Body Shop’s digital investments is already being felt, with a +19 per cent YOY growth in global eCommerce sales in 2016 – double that of the previous year. A global trend of increasing eCommerce sales across the retail sector, means the British retailer’s digital transformation is well-timed. It is anticipated that 20 per cent of The Body Shop’s sales will come from eCommerce
Harriet Williams, chief digital officer, at The Body Shop, says “With the successful launch of a responsive, content-rich digital platform, we have established a strong foundation to support our future innovation agenda and global rollout. The Body Shop is a big business, operating in a large number of countries with both franchise and non-franchise markets. The platform needed to strike the right balance between global brand consistency and local relevance, being flexible enough to meet the needs of each individual market. With a number of new digital innovations in the pipeline and continued in the consumer retail experience investment, we anticipate that eCommerce will form 20 per cent of our total sales.”
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