Media Coverage: When You Got It Flaunt It

If your company or products are fortunate enough to attract media attention, naturally you would want to highlight this your ecommerce website. Not only does it add credibility to your site browsers, but it can also help new visitors to your website responding to your good press find those featured items quickly.

One store that gets a lot of media love is Rampage. Today we're going to look at how Rampage leverages its media coverage, and what it can do to take it one step further.

Home Page

The pencil skirt in the image above was recently included in a fashion segment on the Today Show. Rampage includes an "As Seen on the Today Show" link on the home page, so any visitor, whether they have seen the clip or not knows right away the media thinks Rampage is a trend-setting store. Even if you don't want a pencil skirt, the recognition of the Today Show may boost consumer trust.

The home page also links to a media coverage section -- mostly top fashion magazines. There's 17 mentions from fashion magazines in Winter 2008 alone. Each reference has a thumbnail of the magazine with details of which item was featured.

You can click through for more detail of the actual article:

From here you can click through to the product page. Rampage uses URL parameters to track which product page views came through the media area, and also to add a "return to media coverage" link on the product page for usability.

Collections

Another area where Rampage pounces on its publicity is in its unique merchandising area: "Collections." Each collection shows sets of items (much like a magazine editor's picks layout) with product details appearing upon mouseover (great usability). This is great merchandising for female fashion, because unlike sidebar cross-sells, this gives the customer a feel for how things look as an outfit. (It's much harder to visualize when product thumbnails are 4 inches away from each other.)

Again, Rampage uses unique URLs for clicks to product pages from collections, and the user is shown a "return to collection" link.

When you roll over any product in a collection, you see the product name, the price (sale prices in red), the available sizes and a fun description. If the item has been covered by a magazine or TV, this is mentioned in the rollover box.

Product Page

This is the current product page:

The product description includes a link that jumps to MSNBC.com, where the Today Show clip lives.

But this clip is embeddable, so Rampage could easily incorporate this video right on the product page. The customer wouldn't have to leave the product page. This would appeal to the "competitive" customer, as I learned from Jason's webinar last week on personality types. The "competitive" shopper is click-averse, and rollovers give you the information without a click.

Here's my concept for a new landing page with video. (I also took the liberty to trade the product color links for attractive color swatches).

This is a loooong video that also features other retailers. Rampage's item is not mentioned until the end of the clip. If Rampage could contact MSNBC.com and ask permission to show only a short clip (introducing the expert, and honing in on the Rampage feature), this would be more effective.

Many sites are introducing video with product information and customer reviews right on product pages. If media clips like this are available and embeddable, it makes sense to include these also.