Without a digital marketing strategy, opportunities will be missed and businesses will be lost. The digital marketplace is constantly evolving and PLT must understand that digital marketing affects their relationship with their customer. Other strategies are needed to engage with customers’ as they will be missing a golden opportunity that most fashion brands are using to satisfy the digital marketplace and their target market.
Being digital and online is different to the traditional marketing mix, the four P’s of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. (Ryan 2014)
PLACE - The Internet - There are over 3 billion people around the world who are connected. Whether it’s through a computer, mobile device, tablet, Internet protocol television. PLT have their website, mobile platform and their social media channels.
PRICE - This is the important part, brands have to be competitive to survive on the Internet as PLT sell fashion clothing and are online only, with similar competitors, they need to make sure that the overall value proposition to the customer is compelling. PLT make sure they have un-miss-able cheap prices to compete with other fashion brands and attract their young fashion customer.
PRODUCT - As PrettyLittleThing.com is a clothing website for young, fashion conscious 16-25 year olds they have to have a fashionable, on trend clothing and accessory range in order for them to succeed in the competitive digital market. Leaving the customer with a genuine perception of value, this helps the marketers to do their job effectively so that they can engage with consumers and convince them to buy from PLT. Their targeted digital consumers are well connected they need to know that online fashion brands are trustworthy or they will turn to the competition. They show the product through the images to show quality, descriptions to show the features, occasion, warranty and availability.
PROMOTION - Promotion is everything brands do, online and offline to get the product and the brand itself in front of their prospects, to get new customer and keep their existing ones:
Pretty Little Thing’s website is the main hub of their digital world, the most important element in the digital marketing strategy, this is the most important piece of online real estate as well as their other online activity to direct their prospects. Social media - the focus of Web 2.0 and a massive growth for marketers online that can offer highly targeted advertising to social groups on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram’s, blogs and so on. They use these platforms to market their products, to send personal promotions, sales promotions, direct marketing to create brand recognition and promote their brand.
Websites appear as shop windows to the digital world, everything is channelled back to them, especially for PLT this is extremely valuable. An effective website need to have two things: business goals and the assist the needs of the target market.
PLT has a very simple and functional design - it has a good usability. Customers go on the website to shop for clothes, browse what they like, put it in their basket and go to the check out. The website design is clear, easy and simple but not so much elegant, the design is almost too simple it is quite boring, it uses a black and white colour scheme which is a good colour scheme to use, but there is nothing exciting about it. The only colour is from the main page, which is almost forgotten about once inside the website which could lose interest from the customers. Whereas, looking at companies such as net-a-porter.com they use the same simple colour scheme, black and white, but their layout and how they incorporate colour really does capture elegance, exclusivity and luxury.
Accessibility is important for websites to have so that everyone can have access. There are accessibility guidelines in place to follow when setting up websites which need to be used so that it targets as much as the audience as possible. This is something PLT doesn’t do well at all, when hovering over images of the clothes there is no description about what the image is showing which should be there to help the visually impaired. Neither is there anywhere that allows the completely sightless users to use a special, text-to-speech software. Although, the target market of PLT is for fashion conscious women this doesn’t mean they have perfect sight, having some accessibility features would mean it would be more accessible to everyone. However, ASOS do this really well they have a page for Accessibility, which they are still working on making accessible by absolutely everybody in accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium, The National Institute for the Blind and Plain English Campaign.
The design of the website needs to grab attention, gain interest, make the customer desire the products they see and consequently then purchase from the website. My first experience on PrettyLittleThing.com is after I first saw a TV Advertisement which caught my attention, I then went straight to the website to look at the clothes.
The homepage, their ‘shop window’ if you like, wasn’t very interesting with the choice of colour and the layout out of the page – nothing stood out straight away that I needed to look at. However, it captured me with the deals, offers, student discount and the fact they have prices from just £2! (Amazing). Once I started looking through the website, I lost interest, my first impression was strong, from the advert and the main page with the un-miss-able prices but once inside the website I felt the layout was almost cheap. It was quite boring, I felt the layout made the clothes look cheap, and the quality of the clothes would be poor, I think with more colour and a more exciting font, this would do the product more favours.
I felt the layout really let the brand down, the advert was so strong it really caught my attention but once on the website it wasn’t as strong and because this is the only way to shop with PLT I feel the website needs to be stronger, there was almost too much white space.
The navigation bar is good, it has a seasonal page, this is a great to shop for festive clothes and presents, but the placement is right at the top this is almost tucked away. When I look at Missguided, a very similar priced online retailer the navigation bar, is a quarter way down, loud and clear - I know I will be taking time to look at each page.
They have a good website interactivity with their blog and links to their social media platforms throughout their website which engages with their customer base and their target market. Overall, the website fits its purpose, it provides on trend fashion products and un-miss-able cheap prices, it engages with its audience and has excellent social media platforms.
Being digital and online is different to the traditional marketing mix, the four P’s of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. (Ryan 2014)
PLACE - The Internet - There are over 3 billion people around the world who are connected. Whether it’s through a computer, mobile device, tablet, Internet protocol television. PLT have their website, mobile platform and their social media channels.
PRICE - This is the important part, brands have to be competitive to survive on the Internet as PLT sell fashion clothing and are online only, with similar competitors, they need to make sure that the overall value proposition to the customer is compelling. PLT make sure they have un-miss-able cheap prices to compete with other fashion brands and attract their young fashion customer.
PRODUCT - As PrettyLittleThing.com is a clothing website for young, fashion conscious 16-25 year olds they have to have a fashionable, on trend clothing and accessory range in order for them to succeed in the competitive digital market. Leaving the customer with a genuine perception of value, this helps the marketers to do their job effectively so that they can engage with consumers and convince them to buy from PLT. Their targeted digital consumers are well connected they need to know that online fashion brands are trustworthy or they will turn to the competition. They show the product through the images to show quality, descriptions to show the features, occasion, warranty and availability.
PROMOTION - Promotion is everything brands do, online and offline to get the product and the brand itself in front of their prospects, to get new customer and keep their existing ones:
Pretty Little Thing’s website is the main hub of their digital world, the most important element in the digital marketing strategy, this is the most important piece of online real estate as well as their other online activity to direct their prospects. Social media - the focus of Web 2.0 and a massive growth for marketers online that can offer highly targeted advertising to social groups on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram’s, blogs and so on. They use these platforms to market their products, to send personal promotions, sales promotions, direct marketing to create brand recognition and promote their brand.
Websites appear as shop windows to the digital world, everything is channelled back to them, especially for PLT this is extremely valuable. An effective website need to have two things: business goals and the assist the needs of the target market.
PLT has a very simple and functional design - it has a good usability. Customers go on the website to shop for clothes, browse what they like, put it in their basket and go to the check out. The website design is clear, easy and simple but not so much elegant, the design is almost too simple it is quite boring, it uses a black and white colour scheme which is a good colour scheme to use, but there is nothing exciting about it. The only colour is from the main page, which is almost forgotten about once inside the website which could lose interest from the customers. Whereas, looking at companies such as net-a-porter.com they use the same simple colour scheme, black and white, but their layout and how they incorporate colour really does capture elegance, exclusivity and luxury.
Accessibility is important for websites to have so that everyone can have access. There are accessibility guidelines in place to follow when setting up websites which need to be used so that it targets as much as the audience as possible. This is something PLT doesn’t do well at all, when hovering over images of the clothes there is no description about what the image is showing which should be there to help the visually impaired. Neither is there anywhere that allows the completely sightless users to use a special, text-to-speech software. Although, the target market of PLT is for fashion conscious women this doesn’t mean they have perfect sight, having some accessibility features would mean it would be more accessible to everyone. However, ASOS do this really well they have a page for Accessibility, which they are still working on making accessible by absolutely everybody in accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium, The National Institute for the Blind and Plain English Campaign.
The design of the website needs to grab attention, gain interest, make the customer desire the products they see and consequently then purchase from the website. My first experience on PrettyLittleThing.com is after I first saw a TV Advertisement which caught my attention, I then went straight to the website to look at the clothes.
The homepage, their ‘shop window’ if you like, wasn’t very interesting with the choice of colour and the layout out of the page – nothing stood out straight away that I needed to look at. However, it captured me with the deals, offers, student discount and the fact they have prices from just £2! (Amazing). Once I started looking through the website, I lost interest, my first impression was strong, from the advert and the main page with the un-miss-able prices but once inside the website I felt the layout was almost cheap. It was quite boring, I felt the layout made the clothes look cheap, and the quality of the clothes would be poor, I think with more colour and a more exciting font, this would do the product more favours.
I felt the layout really let the brand down, the advert was so strong it really caught my attention but once on the website it wasn’t as strong and because this is the only way to shop with PLT I feel the website needs to be stronger, there was almost too much white space.
The navigation bar is good, it has a seasonal page, this is a great to shop for festive clothes and presents, but the placement is right at the top this is almost tucked away. When I look at Missguided, a very similar priced online retailer the navigation bar, is a quarter way down, loud and clear - I know I will be taking time to look at each page.
They have a good website interactivity with their blog and links to their social media platforms throughout their website which engages with their customer base and their target market. Overall, the website fits its purpose, it provides on trend fashion products and un-miss-able cheap prices, it engages with its audience and has excellent social media platforms.