Most of businesses don’t have the privilege of being a luxury brand. (And in this economy that may not be such a bad thing.) However, I cannot tell you the countless client meetings I have attended where owners and managers express their desire to “look” like a Mercedes or a Jag. And I totally get it. Traditionally purveyors of luxury goods have been geniuses at surrounding their products in romance. Whether it be geek romance (tech gadgets) or bodice ripping romance (fashion).
This romance surround is created by implementing the highest production values. Great imagery, with great lighting, superb sound and simply fabulous, to die for models. When done right, even an Imac is a super model. Images spill across pages of glossy luxe magazines too fabulous to touch, evoking wordless emotion. So it is no wonder that so many businesses hold up luxury goods as aspirational branding examples.
But the Internet has put a “spanner in the works” for luxury brands. The high production values they demand – rich media, flash and just plain sexy sites that are, really really cool but unusable – present a dilemma for those who aspire to higher production values: they are tough for search engine bots to crawl and tougher still for humans to shop.
Frankly, search engine indexing, is less important for a luxury brand, it is already well established. So luxury brands have the luxury of not really needing search. In actuality what they do require is a deftly produced social marketing program that propels their brand forward. Most businesses whose brands are less well known require both indexing and social media.
This presents a tension: how do you remain indexable while also presenting a rich experience? Sites must be developed with both needs front and center. And the best approach is often a hybrid. Enough rich media for sex appeal, just enough well-tagged text and regular updates to increase your importance to bots. And here is where many non-luxury sites fall short. It is entirely possible to have rich media with great production values without spending a fortune. Its all in the planning and the choice of talent.
For non-luxury brands, social media must be produced to be repurposed across many vibrant platforms where brand influencers come to connect and play, it must engage, it must be relevant and it must be frequent. It must also be authentic. Here is where many smaller businesses can win big. Nothing beats the authentic voice of ownership, even if it is a bit packaged and polished by an agency, it still rings true.
As for shoppabillity, many luxury brands simply ignore any rational web conventions. I suppose they build in their exclusive attitude by being impossible to navigate. Businesses ought not to use them as aspirational shopping examples. However, they should build the most streamlined, elegant shopping cart possible, minimizing clicks and clutter, getting people to the submit button swiftly – now that’s luxury!
What’s better than being a luxury brand? Looking luxury but being elegantly facile to buy from.
