I was recently contacted by the Head of Ecommerce for leading clothing retailer Superdry and asked to carry out an appraisal of their website and propose a digital marketing strategy for the super-cool brand.

Now, it’s not everyday you are contacted directly by such a well known fashion brand, let alone one which is currently going from strength to strength. The company recently floated with a value of £395m and have posted sales of £139m with profits up 83% on the year before. Not bad ehy for a company who has only been around for 7 years! However, there digital presence could be working much harder for them.

I fall in to the target market for the brand and already own a number of their products. Together with my unhealthy appetite for all things digital, I have a relevant personal as well as a professional interest in their online efforts.

A copy of the presentation can be found here, but for those short on time, 5 key online areas of opportunity for the brand include:

- Optimise site user experience
- Allow users to filter & share products
- Enhanced eCRM programme
- Integrate offline & in-store digital strategy
- Embrace social media & ‘outside looking in’ thinking

Now don’t get me wrong, Superdry have a fantastic product (which is often half the battle), as mentioned I already own a number of their products, they do have a cult following (no pun intended!) and you don’t achieve the success they have without being on top of your game. However, if we specifically look at their digital communications, they really do have an unbelievable opportunity to take their business to the next level and maximising online revenue simply through re-assessing their digital strategy.

They are guilty of ‘inside looking out’ thinking as opposed to ‘outside looking in’ thinking, which of course is nothing new for a business. But the marketer’s job has changed from creating and pushing messages to one that now requires listening, engaging and reacting to both potential and existing customer needs. However the rewards are there for those who embrace this shift.

One example of the current approach can be found by carrying out a product search. For example, clicking on ‘t shirts’, generates 135 results with no option for the user to filter by colour, size, in-stock, style or even to ‘view all’ filtered results on one page. Instead users are expected to scroll through all the results.

One suggestion would be to make it easier for the customer to find exactly what they are looking for, which will ultimately make it easier to purchase, result in a more pleasant user experience, reducing shopping cart abandonment and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Another example is through the existing email programme, where recipients are currently sent details on non-gender specific items – a more beneficial and targeted approach would be to segment the database so that recipient ‘A’ who is Male – only receives details on products for men along with the details of the nearest stores, thus making the communication more relevant and work harder. A nice touch would be to also allow the recipient to share the email with their social network on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ultimately SuperGroup are in a fantastic position, there are vast opportunities to do some really cool, unique and interesting digital comms with this brand whilst making a fundamental and positive return on investment. By making a few tweaks here and there and adapting their digital strategy the brand could really take their online presence to the next level and continue to experience phenomenal growth.

I for one will be watching with fascination over the coming months and hope this has provided some food for thought for others with a similar product or offering.