Kathmandu Creates Shoppable Online Lookbook with Stackla
Since 1987, Kathmandu has been designing gear that adapts to and endures all the different weather conditions and terrains their adventurous customers may encounter throughout their travels. As this New Zealand-based company likes to say, adventure begins when you pack your bag.
So when they set out to launch their Winter 2017 collection, they wanted to create an online experience that highlighted how the latest evolution of their products could be used to improve people’s everyday travel – from city life and commuting to day trips and in-transit travel.
“We wanted to present a lookbook to showcase the new gear we had coming through for winter, and we knew it needed to be a fully responsive, digital experience,” said Paul Lester, Social Media Manager at Kathmandu.
“Our visual merchandising team does a lot of work in our physical stores to make our products stand out and be engaging for customers. The lookbook was our chance to take that approach in the online space.”
Building An Interactive Lookbook
As Paul stated, the goal of Kathmandu’s Winter 2017 Lookbook was to “bring the collection to life in a way that elevates the storytelling beyond just a traditional product page that features product details and the price.”
We wanted to bring the collection to life in a way that elevates the storytelling beyond just a traditional product page that features product details and the price.
Paul Lester, Social Media Manager at Kathmandu
However, they quickly ran into some technical challenges when they began developing their vision for the lookbook. “When we were working through lookbook concepts, we realized we’d have to expand our technical capabilities to create the interactive functionality we wanted.”
Luckily, they had recently invested in Stackla’s platform to help augment their existing CMS technology. “We showed the lookbook wireframes to our dedicated Stackla representatives and it quickly became clear that we could use their platform to roll out our interactive lookbook,” Paul said.
By building custom templates that supported Stackla widgets in their SilverStripe CMS, Kathmandu was able to avoid purchasing additional software while also cutting down on production time. “We used Stackla to leapfrog a bit of development and really bring the lookbook to life on mobile and desktop. That’s been a big win for us.”
Shop the Look(book)
The lookbook went live early May 2017, beautifully displaying Kathmandu’s winter collection in real world scenarios for every kind of travel experience.
Even though Stackla is primarily used to showcase user-generated content, Kathmandu was able to use the platform to create an engaging, social feel using their own branded visuals. Paul said, “With Stackla, we could easily bring in our own branded assets and be confident those images and videos would be presented in a nice, engaging way on our site.”
“We wanted to visually demonstrate how a single jacket or pack can be used in a number of different situations and environments. With the lookbook, you can easily see how a particular jacket, for example, is adaptable throughout different stages of your travels.”
Not only could people see the products in unique situations, they could also shop them right then and there. Leveraging Stackla ShopSpots, Kathmandu was able to turn the content within each travel setting into an interactive, shoppable experience – effectively making the lookbook more engaging and shortening the path to purchase for interested shoppers.
The Results
“We’ve never done anything like this before so we didn’t know what to expect from the people who engaged with it. This was a test and learn experience for us.”
Although Paul explained they hadn’t set any hard goals around the lookbook, they diligently tracked the online behavior of people who interacted with it. “What we primarily looked at was the cohort of people who visited the lookbook webpage and what they did afterwards – whether they stayed on the site, purchased items, etc. – versus people who didn’t visit the lookbook at all.”
As it turned out, the people who visited the lookbook went on to view 32 percent more pages on the website and their session duration was 44 percent higher than average.
“Stackla has allowed us to bridge the worlds of social and content to create truly engaging digital experiences that bring our products to life for online shoppers and drives real results for our brand.”
Going forward, Kathmandu plans to use an iteration of this online lookbook for their upcoming Summer season. Make sure to check it out in September 2017!