Levi’s overhauls e-commerce site to make it more customer-friendly
Levi Strauss & Co. is transforming its online customer experience.
For the past year, the denim giant has been focusing on enhancing four critical areas of its e-commerce site: performance, search, navigation and product storytelling. Here are highlights from each initiative:
Performance
Levi’s has shifted its image rendering model from predominantly client-side to a hybrid model that combines server-side and client-side rendering. According to the company, this both significantly improves page load times and search engine optimization ranking, helping bring more consumers to its e-commerce site.
The company updated the site’s loading components as well, in an effort to ensure that only the necessary components load at any given time to further optimize the loading process. In addition, site updates and releases are now pushed twice a week instead of every three weeks and performance tests are run in tandem, identifying issues and pushing fixes live quickly.
Levi’s reports results including site speed increasing by over 40% in the last year and 50% improvement in app launch time. The company says it is identifying new opportunities to further enhance the site experience.
Search
Levi’s has partnered with a third-party vendor to implement a new search solution designed to show customers more appropriate search results based on their search terms. This new search engine has driven a 10% improvement in search to product rate to date, according to data from the company.
Navigation
Levi’s analyzed the customer journey on its e-commerce site and obtained direct consumer feedback. The company then used these insights to reorganize the navigation options to better match consumers’ expectations.
For example, many customers said they expected to see products grouped by gender first, then category, and the site’s navigation now works that way.
"We were committed to listening to and learning from our consumer from the start," said Jason Sack, director of UX design at Levi’s, in a corporate blog post. "They were our North Star, we always knew to come back and align around their expectations and needs. By maintaining this level of consumer obsession, we’re able to both create an easier shopping experience for our consumers and drive meaningful results for our business."
Levi’s says that the number of visitors to its site reaching a product detail page has risen by 20%.
Product storytelling
Consumer feedback indicated that Levi’s shoppers care most about three product features — rise, fabric stretch and leg opening. To address this, the company rolled out product highlights earlier in 2024 for these three features.
Levi’s is also using elevated product imagery and videos featuring head-to-toe images and has added dynamic walk-on and walk-off videos for select products on its site designed to let consumers better understand an item’s look and fit. Both have generating increases in add-to-cart numbers, according to Levi’s.
[READ MORE: Levi’s optimizes e-commerce fulfillment with AI]
"We are constantly innovating and experimenting to deliver the best e-commerce experience for our fans," said Priya Buening, VP of U.S. e-commerce at Levi’s, in the blog post. "We are proud of the progress we have made in improving our site speed, search, navigation and product storytelling, and we are excited to continue to enhance our digital capabilities and offerings. Our e-commerce channel is a key pillar of our direct-to-consumer-first strategy, and we are committed to meeting our consumers wherever they shop and exceeding their expectations on all our channels."
San Francisco-based Levi Strauss products are sold in more than 110 countries worldwide through a combination of chain retailers, department stores and online sites. It has global footprint of approximately 3,200 brand-dedicated stores and shop-in-shops.
