Most women love online shopping, but let’s be honest, not every browsing experience is amazing. So when you find an eCommerce platform that gets it right, you notice.
IMO, one of the best is Designer Wardrobe – a New Zealand-based online marketplace for buying and selling pre-loved fashion, in both New Zealand and Australia.
It’s a peer-to-peer community website where members can list items for sale from local designers to international labels. Buyers can then purchase them or make an offer, which the seller can counter, or accept. The platform handles payments and shipping information, holding funds until the buyer receives the item.
I love the fact that it promotes sustainable fashion by extending the life of clothing and reducing waste. I’ve been a buyer for a few years, but recently their personalisation game has gone up a notch. This is a brand that knows its audience and is on a mission to create a loyal, returning fanbase through smart, sticky features that use data to tailor the customer experience.
The Power of ‘Favourited’ Items
- The ‘Favourite’ (❤️) feature is standard, but DW weaponises it. It’s not just for saving items, it’s a dynamic notification center that tracks discounts, expiry dates, and relists.
- What makes it smart? Watcher competition. The platform shows you how many others are “watching” an item, which creates powerful social proof and urgency.
- And you can also see what you’ve missed out on – which can be very disappointing!
Saved Searches
- While browsing can be fun, when there are literally thousands of items to browse, their saved searches are gold.
Personalised New Listing Alerts
- Not only do the Saved Searches it make it easy to check if there are any new items for sale when browsing, you are also emailed daily (or weekly) with new listings.
Urgency-Driving Notifications
- It’s pretty motivating when you’ve got your eye on an item to receive a discount and to be reminded that you have watcher competition. DW is very good at creating urgency.
Discount Your Listing
- If your item has been live for a while but hasn’t sold, DW proactively emails you asking if you want to apply a discount.
- They will offer suggestions based on similar items, or you can choose your own price.
- And if you discount your item straight away, they bump it to the top of the search results and let your watchers know about the discount to help you achieve a quicker sale.
Curated Emails
- Their algorithms are based on brands and items searched/viewed and are actually pretty good. The weekly edit emails usually drive me back to the website on a regular basis.
Handpicked for You
- Normally when you click on a logo, it takes you to the home page. When you’re logged in, DW takes you to a page with items handpicked for you, based on brands and items searched/viewed.
Resell Your Item
- Sometimes you buy impulsively, or the item isn’t quite right for whatever reason – that’s online shopping for you. DW makes it super-easy to resell your purchases based on the same listing you purchased it from, removing the admin of taking photos and writing listings.
DW Wallet
- I love this feature, it’s very smart. From a user perspective, rather than withdrawing sale money to my account, I can leave it in my DW wallet for when I need it, which is very convenient for me.
- From a business perspective, DW gets to hold onto the money in their account accruing interest.
- Sadly Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare at the moment!
Key takeaways for similar eCommerce businesses
While Designer Wardrobe does have other features, I think these are the biggest lessons other eCommerce businesses can learn from their website strategy, including urgency, friction reduction, loyalty, data utilisation, user journey ownership, and proactive engagement.
- Make data work proactively, not passively: a standard ‘favourites’ list is passive – the user has to remember to check it. DW’s system is active, turning the favourite into a dynamic trigger point for the brand.
- Prioritise “discovery” over “search”: it’s common for logged-in users to land on a generic homepage. DW recognises that a returning user has a data profile and shouldn’t be starting from scratch.
- Urgency sells: use competition and deadlines to drive action.
- Enable sellers with data: use prompts and automatic listing boosts to incentivise sellers to price dynamically and refresh their inventory.
- Make reselling effortless: reduce friction points for users, even for something like listing an item.
- Reward loyalty/hold funds: create a reason (like the DW Wallet) for the customer to keep their money on the platform.
- Own the post-purchase journey: many brands treat a sale as the end of the customer journey, but the experience of DW shows the power of owning the full lifecycle of an item.
I’ve covered the best-in-class examples from Designer Wardrobe, but personalisation is always evolving. What is the single smartest, “sticky” feature you’ve encountered on any eCommerce site recently?
