For today’s online shopper, any extra degree of separation between the buyer and the product causes carts to be abandoned….and fast. Digital consumers expect to be able to see the product and buy a product with no clunky interference.
This fact is one of the reasons why fashion e-tailers like ASOS and Net-a-Porter are seeing such success with their printed magazines.
“The convergence between retail and media, this is it,” ASOS CEO Nick Robertson told Flashes and Flames. “The business model for magazines, that was advertising revenues, is now clothes sales.”
According to Darcy Coutler in Contently, fashion brands have discovered the sweet spot in using print to drive sales.
“We often talk about how stitching hard sells into your content marketing is a bad look, but we should probably make an exception for the fashion industry. The world’s hottest clothing brands are proving that commerce and content can live in harmony,” Coutler notes.
“ASOS clearly understands the model that brand magazines like Porter are using to thrive: Not only does it have a glossy print mag to flip through, but it also provides a clickable version online that allows users to shop right from the page,” Coutler.
And this is where the brand has it all over other fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
“Vogue uses LiketoKnow.it to turn its Instagram into a shoppable platform, but the service is not particularly user-friendly,” says Coutler. “It requires users to sign up, like photos on Instagram to get shopping information, and then wait for an email from the company in order to figure out where they can purchase items—not the most convenient process, particularly when you compare it to the ease of use of a platform like ASOS or Net-a-Porter.”
Cosmopolitan uses a better approach with its tablet magazine. Still, as Coulter notes, “brand publishers like ASOS magazine…have an inherent advantage: there’s no extra step or degree of separation in between the magazine and a potential purchase.”