Boden: Tailoring customer choice

A sizing tool shows real understanding of customer needs and buying habits.

The Site

Clothes retailer Boden features a ‘My sizes’ catalogue filter in its online store. A prompt next to the Shopping Bag icon at the top of each page links to a tick-list showing a full set of Women’s, Men’s, Girls’ and Boys’ size options. The form requires no log-in details and allows multiple selections so that customers can save sizes for more than one person. Once users have saved their preferences the site will only show the relevant available products.

Within product sections a prompt in the left-hand navigation provides a reminder that the My Sizes filter is switched on, with a clear ‘Click to see all items’ option. My Sizes can be edited at any time.

The Takeaway

With a target market of busy professionals and young families Boden’s simple sizing tool shows a real understanding of customer needs and buying habits. It allows customised research and shopping on behalf of other people or family members, and saves time. In bricks-and-mortar terms you can go straight to the relevant part of the rack in any department, but only if what you want is in stock.

Part of the tool’s beauty is that it tailors basic easy-to-use web technology to a universal customer issue (‘have they got what I want in the right size?’) to improve the shopping experience immeasurably. The clever lateral thinking exploits information that is built into the site, and makes good retail sense. Saving users the frustration and time wasted searching through unsuitable items makes for happier shoppers, while streamlining the journey to sale maximises the likelihood of purchase.

First published on 21 March, 2006