Asics Sound Body Alliance
Project Highlights: Strategy / Technology / User Experience & Interface
Consumers in the Amazon era research purchases more than ever before — meaning peer reviews are no longer a nicety, but a necessity for conversion.
The Asics Sound Body Alliance takes e-commerce a step further by giving opinion leaders special pricing and early access to performance footwear, apparel, and accessories. Asics knew by encouraging key influencers — fitness trainers — to try out the latest Asics gear, they would be more likely to recommend that gear to their clients.
As veterans of e-commerce and advocates for user experience, COPIOUS was just the team for the job. Our challenge: create a branded private sales experience for this influential group of users.
Strategy
Far from your run-of-the-mill ecommerce site, the Asics Sound Body Alliance was designed to build deep relationships with influencers. With that purpose came a unique set of needs and goals.
Goal 1:
Breed brand advocacyTo turn loyalty into advocacy, we needed to build a personal bond with users. Incentivized pricing was a start, but a unique loyalty program provided the solution. Users earn points by purchasing products or referring fellow trainers — which they can cash in for exclusive "points-only" products, like limited edition gear.
Goal 2:
Stay true to the brandOn-brand execution is always key, and was especially vital for Asics, as this effort marked their first foray into ecommerce. Our demonstrated excellence in branded ecommerce gave the client confidence that we could stay true to their well-established and iconic brand, while covering new territory.
Technology
To build an airplane the Wright brothers studied birds for lift, bicycles for balance, and ship rudders for control — our method is much the same.
Deconstruct the challenge, then find what works elsewhere and learn from it.
With nothing quite like VIE on the market, being experts in interactive really paid off. We drew inspiration from outside the vertical: online banking to video games, and social networks to software.
As a private sales site, the Asics Sound Body Alliance site has a purposefully-selective user base. The limitation raised the stakes for each prospect, making it vital to eliminate all possible barriers to conversion.
Our deep technical expertise enables us to find creative solutions to technical issues. By partnering with Braintree, an emerging payment gateway, we removed a major hurdle in the checkout process.
Our product-driven approach dictates that we choose the right tool for the right job. In this case, a custom Magento site proved the best fit to power a great sales experience.
Our expertise in interaction technology took Asics beyond the limits of what they thought was possible — and solved problems they didn’t even know they had.
Multi-store Core Setup
Advanced Loyalty Marketing System
Catalog Presentation Customization
Braintree Secure Credit Card Storage
Custom Magento Payment Module
Enterprise ERP/Inventory Sync Integration
User Experience & Interface
Our audience's demand for detailed and specific specs upped the ante on the product detail page. Up to the challenge, we dived deep into custom Magento capabilities to include features important to our users. Embedded product videos and a unique graph showing each shoe’s pronation profile, for example.
