Personalization Audit: Pink Lily

This isn't the first time, nor will it be the last (we imagine!) that we look at a multi-brand fashion retailer. Pink Lily is a notable women's boutique on Shopify that overlaps with some of the other brands we've covered in our Personalization Audits to date (see them all here), but has some unique considerations going for it too.

The only question left now is whether Pink Lily has perfected their ecommerce personalization strategy or if they're primed to step things up.

Pink Lily personalization strategy audit

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At first glance, Pink Lily feels a bit like some of the other brands we've featured in our Personalization Audit series. It's got thousands of affordable products, like Fashion Nova. It's also got a strong social media following and is geared toward young women, like Princess Polly. It's also got a ladylike take on fashion (although with less retro quirk), similar to ModCloth.

But in a lot of ways Pink Lily is a good representation of a unique type of fashion store model that's doing well on Shopify; multi-brand boutiques that don't promote the brands they carry, but instead, curate a certain look that their customer gravitates to. Stores like Red Dress Boutique, LimeSpot client böhme, Vici, and Blondie Boutique may or may not have real-world brick and mortar counterparts, but they all generally compete for a similar market, each putting their own unique spin on style.

As with any fashion store, we'd expect Pink Lily to focus on cross-selling complete looks to drive up basket sizes, as well as personalize the experience based on their customers' tastes. So how is Pink Lily doing when it comes to personalization?

What Pink Lily got right

• Home page personalization: A lot of brands tend to overlook tailoring their home page in favor of pushing campaign content. Pink Lily strikes a perfect balance between the two by giving shoppers shortcuts to new collections, sandwiched with personalized recommendations, bestsellers, and shoppable UGC.

• Product detail page cross-sells: When it comes to cross-sells, Pink Lily goes the distance on their product pages. Every outfit's individual pieces are available in the 'Shop the look' section, right down to accessories that may not feature largely, making it easy for shoppers to curate a head to toe look. If you change a color variant, the 'Shop the look' section even updates to reflect the new lifestyle image. We also appreciated that a second block of 'Most shopped styles' that had a similar vibe to the look a customer is browsing gives shoppers another avenue to keep exploring. One small improvement suggestion? Make items shoppable from the recommendation blocks instead of having to visit a new product page.

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Areas for Pink Lily to enhance

• Social proof product recommendations: Right above the product recommendations on a product detail page, Pink Lily has this block that combines customer reviews via star ratings with a range of products. While we love the idea of integrating recommendations and reviews, this didn't seem like the most successful application as a number of the items weren't super highly rated (4-star+) and they didn't seem to have anything to do with the featured product on the page. There is another way to spotlight bestsellers and star ratings that doesn't feel quite as random as this block did.

• Recent views: The only place we saw recent views on the Pink Lily website was on their collection page. Considering how lengthy these pages are, it's unlikely most shoppers will ever get to the block. Pink Lily could add recent views to other pages - even the home page! - to give shoppers an easier navigation experience.

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Missed personalization opportunities for

Pink Lily

• Cart cross-sells: Given how detailed Pink Lily's cross-sells are on the product detail pages, it's surprising they don't carry through to the cart page. Instead customers are given a 'More you'll love' block that seems to be a little generic. Pink Lily could reinforce the cross-sells from the product detail page, as well as promote items that will help shoppers reach a free shipping threshold.

Conclusion

Pink Lily is doing pretty good overall when it comes to personalization. They offer plenty of opportunities for shoppers to boost their order size. Because Pink Lily's focus is really just about selling a particular 'look', the experience is less about being tailored to each shopper's preferences, and more about what other similar styles Pink Lily carries, or helping customers curate different looks - we'd say they're successful on both fronts.

There's still a few little things Pink Lily could be doing to make their site experience even better, and we'd definitely suggest they A/B test things like different box placement and more recent view boxes.  

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