With social campaigns and television spots driving the use of this hashtag, Marshalls wanted to incorporate influencer photos and videos into their site to showcase great shopping finds at surprising prices. Improving SEO results was also top-of-mind with an upcoming e-commerce launch.
Strategy & Analysis
As Marshalls was gearing up to launch their e-commerce platform, they decided to pivot their influencer strategy and the types of content they were publishing. Their user-generated content was fragmented across the current Marshalls website, which was our primary assignment to address. I developed a phased experience plan that integrated social content into a unified destination at Marshalls.com, flexibly supporting different paths to purchase goals before and beyond the launch of e-commerce. We used existing blogs to help build SEO rankings, then decommissioned this content with the introduction of new e-commerce features. Before moving into interface exploration, I presented a competitive analysis of the UGC marketing landscape, examining user experience best practices, elevating influencers as a campaign tactic and auditing executions across a range of fashion and home goods retailers.
Prior to E-commerce
In exploring different options for the interface, it was important to understand where the Marshalls team would be inputting their own content, versus what was driven by third-party social integration. With callouts to social channels minimized in the existing page framework, I strategically reinforced the #MarshallsSurprise hashtag and included icons for Instagram and YouTube to drive better awareness and usage. In addition to featured influencers, a UGC gallery and the blog archive, this page wrapped up with callouts for key actions in the consumer journey: instructions for being featured in the UGC gallery and finding your closest Marshalls store.
Launching E-commerce
We refined the UGC strategy with the launch of e-commerce to elevate paid influencers as Marshalls’ “style gurus,” while also allowing the wider community of shoppers to be recognized. To this end, I enabled functionality allowing shoppers to share their photos right on the Marshalls site, either from this social hub or from product detail pages. The upload flow opened with tips and examples to ensure shared content would be on-brand. This page also included plenty of hooks into the shopping experience. With their merchandise moving at a rapid pace, these shopping links guided consumers into category pages, rather than driving to product pages where merchandise may be out of stock.
