J. Crew virtual beach house.
Courtesy: J.Crew
In a brown-shingled beach house tucked behind stalks of reed grass, J. Crew customers experience a new shopping experience.
Just beyond a set of wooden steps and a wraparound porch, shoppers can explore a series of white-panelled rooms, a boathouse, and a secret lighthouse that illuminate the brand’s history and some of its most popular apparel.
In the rooms, shoppers can view farm jackets, turtlenecks and rugby shirts. Bathing suits hang on a washing line outside on the veranda.
While customers can select and purchase items like any J. Crew store, the beach house has one key difference: it’s completely virtual.
To mark J. Crew’s 40th anniversary, the brand is launching its first immersive shopping experience on Friday with e-commerce platform Obsess, which creates 3D virtual stores for retailers that customers can access from their phones or laptops.
Derek Yarbrough, the chief marketing officer of J. Crew and Madewell, told CNBC that the company is planning a series of events to celebrate the brand’s anniversary. But they’re usually in places like New York and Los Angeles, which limits the number of people who can attend, he said.
“With Obsess, we were really looking for an exciting activation that we could run for a wider audience and reach more people who love the brand in a bigger way,” Yarbrough said in an interview. “We really wanted this to be a passport to explore the world of J. Crew… and while the team was brainstorming about it, taking the form of a beach house kind of felt like a no-brainer.”
J. Crew virtual beach house.
Courtesy: J.Crew
Obsess was launched in 2017 by its CEO, Neha Singh, a former Google software developer. It aims to transform traditional online shopping into something more immersive, keeping shoppers engaged rather than losing interest as they endlessly scroll for their next purchase.
In Obsess’ virtual shop windows, customers can create their own avatars. Depending on the retailer, they can also play games that can unlock more content, promotions or other bonuses that will keep them in the virtual stores longer, the company said.
“What our platform does is it empowers brands to create a much richer and more immersive digital experience that borrows the interface from gaming,” said Singh. “Nowadays the experience is so generic. Aside from font and color, there’s really no difference between brands’ digital presence, but their physical retail presence is so different. So how can we bring some of those elements online?”
Virtual storefronts on the rise
While the metaverse may be dead for now, virtual storefronts are growing. Obsess now powers more than 200 virtual stores that tens of millions of customers have visited and purchased products from.
The company’s clients include American Girl, Elizabeth Arden, Dior, Ralph Lauren, Corona, Laneige, CrocsCoach, MattelMaybelline, Johnson & Johnson and even NBCUniversal, among others.
The virtual storefronts allow retailers to bring a version of the metaverse to their customers, without the need for expensive headgear or other steep barriers to entry.
J. Crew virtual beach house.
Courtesy: J.Crew
“Technology never stands still and will continue to evolve, but it has to be something that is easy to use, right? And parts of [the metaverse] are not user-friendly yet,” said Singh. “We launched the company before metaverse was a hot topic, and it was really just about how can we use the latest technology to actually create a better customer experience?”
When e-commerce was born in the 1990s, Amazon was at the forefront of its online bookstore, which had a white background and icons of books with text describing them.
Since then, little has changed when it comes to the basic interface of online shopping.
“When you think of e-commerce, the typical kind of interface these days, it’s a grid of thumbnails on a white background; whether you’re looking for fashion, beauty or home, it’s really all the same,” Singh said. “The interface looks like a database that really hasn’t changed in 25 years [since] it was made for the first time.”
Gamify shopping, drive engagement
Shoppers who visit J. Crew’s virtual store have access to a series of interactive games, including a scavenger hunt and catalog cover quiz, where shoppers are asked to guess what year they were published.
Once they go through all the rooms and complete the quests, customers will be able to access the secret lighthouse.
J. Crew virtual beach house.
Courtesy: J.Crew
“We’re actually seeing a 10x increase in cart additions as people join and complete the game. So typically there’s an element of gamification in all of our virtual stores now, and it’s very naturally embedded in the flow of the store,” Singh said.
“The more interesting you can make the experience and keep people engaged and give them content and games, the more they shop,” she said.
Some companies offer discounts or promotions as a “prize” for completing a game, which could contribute to higher checkout rates.
Obsess said one of its clients, a luxury jewelry brand, said the average order value on its virtual store was 111% higher than on its traditional e-commerce site.
However, J. Crew’s Yarbrough said he’s most excited about how long the virtual store can keep customers engaged.
J. Crew virtual beach house.
Courtesy: J.Crew
For example, at American Girl’s virtual store, shoppers spend an average of six to 10 minutes per session, which is 1,000% longer than the average time all shoppers spend on the company’s website, Obsess said.
One luxury fashion brand said the amount of time people spent in their virtual store was 74% higher than the time they spent on their traditional e-commerce site, according to Obsess. Overall, introducing avatars increases time spent by an average of 73%, and when customers create an avatar, they are on average 184% more likely to proceed to checkout, Obsess said.
“In today’s landscape, it’s so hard to not only get people’s attention, but hold them — usually you get a few seconds,” Yarbrough said. “So if I can get someone to participate in an experience for a few minutes or even longer, oh my God, that’s such a rich opportunity to really get someone hooked.”
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
