Reasons to shop
Without an established brick-and-mortar presence, he said, the company has had to work hard to create a brand and a reason for well-off customers to shop there.
There are four keys, he said.
The first is to simply make sure the site can do what it promises. In Red Envelope's case, all of the merchandise it sellsâ€"-other than perishable itemsâ€"-is stored in a warehouse and is available to be shipped the day it's ordered.
Next, customers are given three ways to talk to the company: phone, live chat or email. Up to 30 percent of customers choose live chat, with the remainder split pretty evenly between e-mail and the phone.
Then the company "reinvented" the site's navigation, choosing to focus it on gift-giving events rather than on specific products. Categories include occasion (Mother's Day, Valentine's Day), recipient (for him, for her) and lifestyle (the romantic, the spa seeker). Finally, McClanan said RedEnvelope decided to invest in quality content. The company pays particular attention to making sure the photos it uses are high resolution.
"That's your store, your merchandise. You have to take time with it, just like you would if you were working on your store windows," McClanan said.
Overall, however, its multichannel approach has been the most important element of RedEnvelope's strategy, he said. "If you were completely tied to online, you're in a pretty horrible environment. Being strictly online is not a great way to sell an upscale brand."
Of course, not all luxury sites are doing everything right. Giga's Telleen said even successful luxury sites such as Mercedes' have a tendency to rely too much on flashy technology and a big brand name to attract users.
"People who use luxury sites must not have visual impairments, since few of the sites are equipped for text or audio," Telleen said. "They must have fast modems, since the sites tend to be loaded with extra gadgets and graphics. And they must have lots of time on their hands because most of these have superfluous default intro screens."
