Designing for China

Design Driven 12.03.14

Why China?

$102bn Luxury Goods Market

60% of Luxury Good bought Overseas

Preference for Online/Mobile Shopping

$9.3bn+ on Single’s Day 2014

Unique opportunity and positioning

What is MVP?

We had a low bar.

Designing to allow Gilt’s Chinese Customers to shop, purchase, and interact in the ways most familiar to them.

What is Familiar?

VIPShop

Scrolling side bar

Infinite scroll

Busy and full pages

Internal side ads

What is Familiar?

Alibaba

$25bn IPO

Marketplaces for everything

- Taobao

-Tmall

-Alibaba

Product click = new tab

Intentional Choices

Deciding what Gilt will and will not design for

Balancing our brand

Ensuring the entire end to end experience is adequate

What Users Couldn’t Do Before

We weren’t letting Chinese customers…

Navigate in their own language

Pay with their own payment methods

Access cheaper shipping rates

Speak to customer support in their own language

Bad shopping experience

Language Localization

Created system for static

localization

30% site/mobile is localized in

Chinese

Dynamic to come

Payments

Alipay and UnionPay =

~75% of Chinese online payments

Visa, Mastercard, American Express =

<2% of Chinese online payments

Shipping

Old model - sometimes 30 day shipping

User expectations -China created 3-hour

shipping

Needed faster delivery, returns and reliable

tracking

Mobile

China mobile internet >desktop (84% penetration)

50%+ already mobile on Gilt

Alibaba Mobile –43% of Single’s Day

Page & Content Loading

Internet Content Provider (ICP)

License

CDNs Inaccessible

Optimized Site Load Experience

50% load time reduction

Social

Social Validation

Getting the “V”

Official presence

Customer Service

Customer Service

Ensured FAQs were translated

~20% singles day traffic to FAQ

Hired Customer Service reps that spoke/write in Chinese

Chat > Phone, email

So What?

Impact of our 4 month effort

Officially established a presence for Chinese customers

Huge increase in revenue

Huge increase in daily new users

Singles Day was ramp up for Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Not even close to being done.