Front-End Features to Launch For NYFW

Written by Edi Bouazza, Team Lead @ Diff

Every February the fashion world descends on New York to celebrate the honoured tradition that is  New York Fashion Week (NYFW). NYFW, since its founding in 1993 by the Council of Fashion Designers, has gone through several major transformations: moving from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center to Spring Studios and ending its partnership with longtime sponsor, Mercedes-Benz.

The shift that Diff is particularly excited about is NYFW’s growing online presence. Ever since IMG began streaming shows in 2011, fashionistas across the world have been tuning in in droves. The move online has given brands incredible reach to global audiences and has put a spotlight on their ecommerce websites. NYFW isn’t just about what’s happening on the runways If you’re a retailer in the fashion space, this is a time where you can turn millions of eyes into sales.

Here are the top features you should consider launching following NYFW to turn the increase in site traffic in to  sales:

Shop the Look

Fashion Week is a time to showcase style and outfits. This is an opportunity to bundle products together to sell as full outfits. Pairing multiple items together – such as a top, pants and shoes – will entice the customer to purchase all items together to create the look they see.



Shop the look can be executed in a few different ways. In its simplest form, a static page can be quickly put together, with multiple products that form an outfit, linking to their respective product detail page. Having photography of the full outfit, styled and worn by a model, will take away the need to imagine the pieces together. By adding add to cart buttons directly to the products, you can make sure the customer never leaves the page to purchase items. Adding a single button to add all products to the bag in one click will reduce the amount of clicks to purchase even further. A bundle discount can be further incentive to purchase the whole outfit together.

Advanced Content Search

Forrester Research has shown us that 43% of visitors go straight to the search bar and are twice to three times more likely to convert. How are you preparing for customers going to the search bar? Most websites will return searches on the product title, description and tags. This is fine for customers who know exactly what they are looking for, but how is it helping those who don’t? Your website’s search can become a guide to your brand.

At the minimum, the search bar should be dynamic, returning results in real time as the user types. Also think about returning featured or popular searches, to use as a starting point for their journey into your store. At its best, the search bar can make suggestions the customer would never even think of typing: “dress worn by Rihanna”. Staying on the pulse of the Fashion Week can help create trendy suggestions based on what’s happening and what people might be looking for.

Featured Filter Categories

On large catalogs, filtering is vital to find the right products. With so much choice, it’s easy to lose a customer to overwhelming choice. Filters should already be an integral part of the shopping experience on the store, and can be enhanced for key periods like Fashion Week. Much like search suggestions, they are a starting point to browsing a collection and should give the customer a head start in digging through the long list of products.

Creating featured, context-specific and trend-aware filters can give a new avenue in finding products. Much like creating a featured collection for Fashion Week, filters can be specific to the event going on. For example, the Tops collection of a clothing store might already have filters for color, sizes, and cut. For a limited time, additional filters can be added to put a spotlight on featured products: “NYFW Ready”, “Seen at NYFW”, etc.

Cart Recommendations

The cart is a great place to add recommended products before the customer completes their purchase. It’s important to keep in mind the real estate of the cart and to avoid overcrowding it, as it’s an important conversion point. Properly executed, however, this can become an opportunity to add last second items to the cart.

As always, tailoring the cart recommendations to the current contents will make it easier for the customer to add to it. “Other customers also bought”, “Goes well with” and “You might also like” are all categories that can be featured in the cart. Think about pairing this with the Shop the Look feature, to show other pieces of an outfit before the customer completes their purchase.

With these features, you can optimize your visitor’s time on your site, and tie into an event happening right now, driving a sense of urgency and relevance. All of these features personalize the user experience and make the shopping experience more interactive. Online shopping is becoming increasingly tailored to our digital selves, and tapping into real events such as NYFW  is just another way we can have a more organic experience with a brand.