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What about perfume brands and their websites ? Do the luxury brands who create these wonderful fragrances make the customer live on their websites experiences as exceptional as their creations ? The concept of Luxemosphere created by Luxe Corp and Uché Okonkwo can help us to make a sensorial analysis of this. This kind of approach keeps being inexperienced but is really fruitful. After viewing these slides, you will not wonder anymore why the thema of the Club e-Luxe Breakfast Seminar 2013 is exactly : Sensory Luxury - Using digital media as the 6th sense to connect the Online & the Offline Worlds of Luxury (http://www.luxe-etc.com/fr/index.php/events/club-e-luxe-breakfast-seminar-2013-announcement-page/ ) ...
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Perfume brands websites and sensoriality
Perfume and website
• A fragrance cannot be tested without beeing smelled. That is why it is alwas accompanied by a universe, a dream, values.
• The problem is especially acute on a website : except concerning experimental devices, a fragrance cannot be smelled through the web.
• So how to make Internet users experience indirectly a luxury perfume ?
3 points that must be kept in mind
1. Creation of universes’ potential on the web has a priori no limit.
2. The presence of luxury brands on the web is still discussed today. As a consequence, creativity and avant-gardism of these brands are seldom deployed on their websites (save for some exceptions).
3. On the other hand, luxury consumers are expecting them to create as extraodinary experiences on their websites as they do in their flagships.
The problem : how can a luxury perfume brand website satisfy new expectations
of luxury consumers ?
starting point : the « Luxemosphere »• Lorna Chicksand (Birmingam Business School) and Rachel Knowles
(Brandscape) brought into prominence the concept of « webmosphere » during the IBM e-business conference in 2002 : it is about developing a specific atmosphere on the Internet context. In their view webmospherics is directly linked to five human senses.
• Luxemosphere is a concept created by Luxe Corp’s analysts and its CEO Uché Okonkwo, who explains it in her book Luxury Online. Styles, Systems, Strategies.The matter is now creating a prestigious atmosphere on a luxury brand website, as exceptional as it can be the case in the other interactions with the brand. « It is about creating an exceptional online experience for every person visiting and revisiting the website ». As for the webmosphere, luxemosphere is linked to the senses.
Testing fragance house websites with luxumospheric criteria (1/4)
Sight•Strong welcome page introduction
•High-impact home page
•Brand specific design concept
•Harmonized color scheme
•High-pixel and relevant images
•Clear text font style
•Legible text font size
•Full-screen mode
•Relevant avatars
•Balanced graphics
Testing fragance house websites with luxumospheric criteria (2/4)
Aural•Brand identity-specific sound
•Music variety
•Multiple music options
•Sound control tools
•Section-specific background sound
•Click-sound necessity
•Voice narration choices
•Balanced tone, pitch and tempo
•Text listening options
•Text translation possibilities
Testing fragance house websites with luxumospheric criteria (3/4)
Smell•Scent emission
•Samples
•Descriptions
Testing fragance house websites with luxumospheric criteria (4/4)
Tactile•Universal and selective zoom
•Relevant slide shows
•Full-screen videos
•3-D product view
•Interactive views
•Flash animation
•Horizontal navigation
•Close-up shots
•Avatar option
•Demos
websites analysed
the results
Analysis by brand 1/2The two-centered websites
The three-centered websites
Analysis by brand 2/2Weakly multisensorial Strongly multisensorial
Multisensorial
Sight : used by all the brands
Aural : overlooked by half of the brands
Smell : used by all the brands but two
Tactile : weakly stimulated by all the brands
The main trends• Only Thierry Mugler’s website is really luxemospheric because of its strong polysensoriality.
Two others are not far from having a luxemosphere : Viktor & Rolf and Paco Rabanne.
These 3 brands are young and avant-gardist compared to the other small or traditionnal perfume makers.
• All the brands stimulate smell except Chanel and Hermès. They either explain the smells or describe universes related to the fragrances or send samples.
There is de facto a relationship between sending samples and having an e-boutique. Although it seems logical, these relationship is a priori not a necessity.
Some of the best practices 1/2• http://www.muglerstore.com
Very strong universe
Balanced graphics
Samples
• http://www.viktor-rolf.com and especially its Secret Service :
Brand identity specific sounds
Brand specific design concept
3D experience
Exceptional and rich universe
Some of the best practices 2/2• http://www.pacorabanne.com/ and especially http://www.pacorabanne.com/blackxs/uk/your-
rockstar-experience/
Very strong and immersive universe
A real interactivity
One of the most interesting experience
Couldn’t other brands and especially luxury brands learn from these practices and get websites as exceptional as they are offline ?
Discussion to be continued
• https://twitter.com/LionelMillet
• http://www.scoop.it/t/son-of-luxury
THANK YOU FOR HAVING READ THESE SLIDES !
Note : Some remarks about Okonkwo’s criteriaWe can easily imagine 2 kinds of limits :
• In themselves :
• Lack of precision
• Lack of objectivity of some of them (« strong welcome page », ...)
• Need to be explained, especially by ergonomic criteria. That is what we did in order to give marks to the websites.
• In regard to a luxury website :
• Semantics is nearly neglect
• Don’t take into account user’s path into the website
Not only sensoriality, but spirituality too should be taken into account in a luxury website analysis
