There were three insights that led Witchery to launch its first app this month.
According to head of digital Jeremy Eaton, the first came from a survey which found 46% of Witchery consumers were eager to shop via the digital channel. The second was by looking to sister brand Country Road, which was launched an app in October last year.
“We hypothesised that we would see increased customer engagement if we have an app across retail online,” Eaton says. “The benefit of being part of the group is we're seeing that benefit is coming true for Country Road. So that gives us the confidence to follow from a Witchery perspective.”
The third reason aligns with Witchery’s future roadmap towards “composable commerce”, a term coined by management consulting company Gartner in mid-2020. It is the act of composing commerce components into a custom application built for specific business needs.
As part of the roadmap, technology built into its new app will be reused as Witchery starts to re-engineer its website towards a headless model.
“Because it's a first step forward in our tech roadmap towards a composable commerce strategy, we actually had to do a lot of foundational work to just build out our feeds and our infrastructure,” Eaton explains.
“The other really key aspect worth shouting out is we have an amazing internal team that has led the product development for us. So they actually built the CRF (case report form), and then we pivoted them onto the Witchery app.
“We've been able to leverage all the experience that they learned from the Country Road build into the Witchery build, which meant that the Witchery build end-to-end was about half the length of the Country Road build.”
According to Eaton, the team was made up of just three people: digital product owner Georgina Rathbone, along with two business analysts. The team liaised with the external company Branding Brand during the development phase.
Eaton says the wider challenge for Witchery, and its reason for focusing on its future roadmap towards composable commerce, is the tackling of its tech debt. He says that some of the digital systems at the fashion label are up to 20 years old.
“We've done a really good job historically of insulating the customers from the pain points that legacy tech creates,” Eaton says. “It's really mired us in our ability to move and to become competitive and nimble - we need to start breaking free of that tech debt. And the app was our trailblazing project to do that.
“The fact that we're coming out with the app now is proof of concept that we can get new tech systems in place, that we can build away from our old tech stack.”
The app includes a dedicated loyalty hub allowing customers to track their status and redeem rewards, along with a wish-list.
Other features include real-time order tracking and click & collect notifications, personalised product recommendations through push notifications, a ‘Find in store’ button on every page - which includes checking for sizing and preferences - the option to contact the team in-store to place the item on hold, and a barcode scanner to learn pricing and details of each product in-store.
“In terms of planned updates, the prize for the app is in the future - we very much look at this app as version 1.0 and we'll be expanding on it,” Eaton says. “Personalisation is a perfect example of that.
“So we'll have one-to-one product recommendations based on purchase history, where we'll look at everything you've purchased and we'll gain a pretty good idea of specific items that you'll be interested in.
“But in future, what we'll be able to do is more wardrobing - so looking at items that you've purchased, and then complementary items to those items, so we can help you complete your outfit.
“Then there is trend prediction in terms of looking at look-alike customers - there's a lot to grow on in that space, and really make it feel more like a personalised wardrobe from a Witchery customer that they can access through the app, rather than marketing notifications about specific products.”
Eaton says by the end of this calendar year, Witchery is expecting around 100,000 new members to take on the app, with an aim to have 150,000 active users by this time in 2024.
"The app is going to be the best bridge between online and in-store,” Eaton says. “And it's going to become the hub for customer experience.
“So it's not just purchasing, loyalty; we expect that that's where customer service will mostly be contacted through.”
Speaking on the new website, Eaton says it will be a headless front-end migration, which he says is the customer-facing part of its mobile and desktop websites.
“We've also partnered with Refundid to offer instant returns online - we'll be looking to launch that later this year,” he says. “We're very excited about that.
“And then we've also partnered with Slyp to offer digital receipts in the store.”