Taking Shape boosts revenue and conversion in three months

Taking Shape is a Melbourne, Australian-based, size-inclusive fashion label that’s been leading the way in women’s plus-size fashion for over 35 years. The brand serves up beautiful, quality styles for curvy women, with the belief that fashion is for all to enjoy, at any size, shape, or age. As Taking Shape’s Head of Digital and Customer Engagement Stacey Crommelin puts it, “it’s all about fun, being fabulous, and living your best life.”

Taking Shape needed to integrate social with e-commerce

Already having a strong social base, engagement, and user-generated content (UGC), Taking Shape had a leg up in the social space. Taking Shape’s very engaged audience was helping bring in a steady flow of natural, organic UGC for the brand.

“It’s tough economic times, and one of the values we focus on is building relationships with our customers and embedding trust. UGC and our social channels are just one way we’re building that trust by authentically showcasing what normal people look like wearing our plus-size clothes,” Crommelin said.

While leveraging UGC and leading with a social-first strategy were great first steps, Crommelin acknowledged a missing piece.

“We didn’t really have that interface and integration that would help our customers seamlessly move from interacting and engaging on social media channels into that easy shopping experience,” Crommelin explained. “That’s one of the reasons why we chose Bazaarvoice — to help us improve our online digital experience for our customers and help guide them to purchase.”

“Social commerce is a nearly $2 trillion industry globally and a growing industry, so it’s a no-brainer why we wanted to invest in this as a potential growth area,” Crommelin said. And, boy, did they ever!

 Reveal-ing shoppers’ next great find

Taking Shape is one of our star customers that uses all the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce tools. Yes, they took one of everything — Showroom, Reveal, Like2Buy, and Galleries. And the best part? The brand was fully up and running with Social Commerce in just one month.

“Having previously used the [Ratings and Reviews] interface, which I know is one of the best-in-class interfaces in the market, Social Commerce made sense. Without having used the product before, it’s that professional, trusted partnership that we could rely on,” Crommelin said.

We agreed on a phased approach, so first to roll out was Reveal, which turns any photo into an actionable experience by letting consumers discover and shop for products by hovering over them.

Taking Shape creatively uses Reveal photos on their blog posts, which drives traffic to their product detail pages (PDPs) as well as boosts conversions, average order value, and time on site. For example, a user may be reading a style story and comes across a photo with a particular look they’re wanting to shop for. Taking Shape can then put Reveal tags into that story for those photos for a seamless flow into a shopping experience.

“We also partner with influencers and really make use of the Reveal imagery to make it easier to shop across our website,” Crommelin said.

Showroom and Like2Buy make it easier and faster to shop

In addition to creatively using Reveal, Taking Shape has really made Showroom its own. With Showroom, Taking Shape can turn any photo or video into a storefront, driving engagement and introducing shoppers to the products. The brand’s social posts often feature in-store stylists wearing the clothes, including a Showroom link where shoppers can view the individual pieces and shop the look themselves.

With these Showroom links on their Facebook posts, Taking Shape achieved a phenomenal 43% CTR to PDPs on site.

In addition, Taking Shape leverages Like2Buy, Bazaarvoice’s link-in-bio solution that allows users to browse a brand’s shoppable Instagram feed, make a purchase, and more. Rather than customers having to spend time searching for particular products on-site, Taking Shape puts the links straight into Like2Buy, further optimizing their user journey and increasing revenue. Using Like2Buy on Instagram helped Taking Shape achieve a 77% CTR in just three months, which Crommelin said delivered a more seamless shopping experience and incremental sales for the brand.

“Those links help people shop faster and seeing the products on customers and store staff really helps inspire them,” Crommelin explained.

One of Crommelin’s favorite things about the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce platform is seeing all the relevant stats, helping the team make informed decisions about what works and what doesn’t. She recalled a holiday campaign, where the Taking Shape team was able to track the revenue generated from individual posts and see how Like2Buy and Showroom contribute.

“Our Christmas dresses, holiday outfits, and some gift-giving guides were really powerful throughout the holiday shopping period. It’s a really great example of an improved experience for our customer in which we were able to track those interactions and impact in detail,” Crommelin said.

Stunning Galleries boost engagement and conversion

Some of Taking Shape’s most impressive results come from their expert use of Bazaarvoice Galleries, which lets the brand display authentic social photos and videos in shoppable collections that show off their clothes. Currently, Taking Shape features a gallery on its homepage as well as a full-page, style inspiration gallery.

Taking Shape saw a 216% lift in conversion, 15% lift in average order value, and 58% lift in time- on-site when users interacted with Galleries versus those who didn’t. The results were also significant when looking at individual Galleries: In three months, the brand saw a 16% conversion rate and 11% CTR to PDPs from the full-page inspiration gallery, plus a 10% conversion rate on the homepage gallery.

The Taking Shape + Bazaarvoice partnership

Taking Shape has clearly done well with Bazaarvoice Social Commerce, and Crommelin views it as an essential asset to their business, helping the brand facilitate a seamless omnichannel experience by linking their social and e-commerce experiences.

Looking at the bigger picture, Crommelin said she values Taking Shape’s partnership with Bazaarvoice because it easily integrates into their workflow, enables different collaborative touch points across the business, and improves the overall customer experience and trust in the brand.

“The pace in which retail works is frenetic — you’re constantly working on new promotions and then delivering those communications out to the market,” Crommelin said. “And so it’s a best-in-class partnership where we know we can implement something quickly, and that will help us deliver the benefits we want [to customers], giving us the ability to move on to other projects.”

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