Personalization Audit: Cettire

Cettire is built on the same model as many other luxury multi-brand department stores that have become smash successes, like Farfetch and Net-a-Porter. One key difference? Cettire is on Shopify. Shoppers at these other premium retailers are used to a premium shopping experience as well. The question is - how is Cettire measuring up? Keep reading to find out the answer in our ongoing Personalization Audit series.

Cettire personalization strategy audit

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There's no question that as of writing this, Cettire is the biggest luxury department store on Shopify, housing collections from designer brands like Prada, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Valentino.

This makes Cettire a bit an anomaly in the Shopify ecosystem, which typically lends itself more to single-brand DTC businesses (like ThirdLove or Rothy's) or multi-brand affordable fashion boutiques. The closest comparison we could come up with was actually Kith, another brand (with more of a luxury streetwear slant) that we've audited.

Why do we bring this up? Well for one thing, we'd expect a store like Cettire to be willing to invest a bit more in personalization. In particular because compared to pretty much every other Shopify merchant we've audited to date, the brands Cettire carries are much more important than the Cettire store brand itself. This means there are infinite ways for Cettire to segment their audiences and personalize their experience, whether it's by collection (women, men, kids) or by preferred designers - similar to some of the feedback we gave to DTLR and their focus on adidas vs. Nike.

What Cettire got right

Well...this is a little awkward. We were surprised at how little personalization Cettire has on their entire site. The only place we saw product recommendations was on the product detail pages and the cart, but as you'll see in the next section, there's room for improvement.

Other than that, no part of the site seems to adapt to reflect a returning shopper, nor a shopper's geography, preferences, or browsing behavior. There are no promotions designed to drive bigger basket sizes either. In short, this audit is going to be more about all the ways Cettire is leaving money on the table.

Areas for Cettire to enhance

• Cart and product detail page product recommendations: The recommendations on most Cettire pages were a little puzzling, often pulling in items from other collections (like men's track jackets on a women's leather jacket or a kids' dress as shown in the screenshot above) that didn't connect with the featured product. While the placement and visibility of Cettire's product recommendations is great (including the fact they're on the cart page), the actual recommendation engine could use some fine tuning. We would also recommend that Cettire go beyond 'related items' and offer up complete looks, possibly as bundles, given they have the full scope of products to do so.

Missed personalization opportunities for

Cettire

• Tailored content by designer: Unlike most of the brands on this list, Cettire is one of the few multi-brand retailers we're looking at, which opens all kinds of interesting possibilities based on shoppers showing affinity for specific brands. Cettire could re-sort their collections so that products from a shopper's preferred lines are highlighted at the top of a collection. They could also send tailored emails promoting sales of specific brands, and change their home page promotions to spotlight new drops from favorited brands, making it easier than ever for customers to go right to their favorite designers.
• Home page: As per the suggestion to curate the site by designer preference, Cettire could also let smart algorithms do the curation for them by adding recommendation blocks on the home page that curate product suggestions on a 1:1 basis. Again, this helps customers feel like they're in the right place and immediately draws their focus to products they might like.
• Recent views: If Cettire does anything to boost their personalization strategy, adding 'Recent views' would be a great place to start. This not only helps customers navigate more easily, it can also boost AOV by reminding shoppers of what they already loved on a site.

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Conclusion

Of all the brands we've looked at in our Personalization Audit series to date, Cettire by far has the least amount of site personalization going on. For a brand with nearly 10,000 products at high end price points from luxury brands, this is pretty shocking.

We would categorize Cettire as being at the beginning of their personalization journey, and would suggest some simple steps to advance the shopping experience. Better product recommendations, promoting bundles, and using recently viewed boxes are all simple fixes that will make the shopping experience that much smoother. But the bigger opportunity Cettire is missing out on is tapping into what makes their shoppers tick, and tailoring the shopping experience accordingly, putting beloved brands at the forefront for every individual shopper.

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