Bazaar Voice

Johnston & Murphy carries on tradition of e-commerce innovation

Johnston & Murphy (J&M) is a pillar of classic workmanship and a beacon of American style. J&M has provided the highest quality products and set the standard for successful, professional men and women everywhere. For more than 150 years, J&M has stayed relevant in fashion. Now, its innovative approach to customer experience is clearly visible online.

Goals

As a company deeply rooted in tradition, J&M wanted a solution to honor its long history while continuing to innovate. Its goal was not to just engage current customers, but also improve products and attract new shoppers.

To that end, they wanted to ensure the unique product catalog was properly communicated to customers. J&M knew it needed a robust customer question and answer feature to engage customers quickly, clarify offerings and facilitate consumer-generated content. It also needed the rich, relevant keywords found in those conversations to be indexed and easily searchable for Google and other search engines.

The Bazaarvoice solution

Bazaarvoice provided the right technology, and also offered a customizable easy to implement solution. Furthermore, Bazaarvoice’s cloud-based platform required very little effort for J&M to innovate moving forward.

Bazaarvoice also worked with J&M to meet its specific needs. Knowing that J&M wanted to engage customers and increase sales through Q&A, Bazaarvoice customized the solution to enable more diverse, quality customer responses. Expanding with features like “Ask Product Owners” and “Crowdsourced Answers” helped consumers get the information they needed quickly. In addition, J&M implemented ratings & reviews with specific fields that aided customers at the point of purchase.

Results

Questions & answers transformed the consumer experience on the J&M site, and had a positive impact on both customer engagement and revenue. Soon after launch:

• All customer questions were answered in less than one hour, which increased conversions on the site
• J&M was able to improve product descriptions based on feedback from customer Q&A

For example, customer Q&A revealed confusion about J&M’s refurbishment services. For a small fee, the company repairs shoes that have been purchased and worn, but many customers thought that the shoes on the site had already been refurbished. J&M re-wrote the product description to improve customer experience – and ultimately increased sales.

Additionally, after implementing customer reviews:

• 50% of revenue was generated by reviewed products
• 70% of all site visitors read at least one review

Combined, customer reviews and Q&A increased engagement, conversions and generated relevant and keyword-rich content to help J&M expand both brand awareness and its customer base.

What’s next

J&M has had such success with ratings & reviews and Q&A that it is now looking to extend the reach of this valuable content through social channels. By amplifying the customer review and Q&A features, J&M hopes to reach new customer demographics including women and younger shoppers.