The challenge for John Lewis last Christmas was, as Pointon put it, “How do you create an experience that people want to come and visit?” While this might have been an easy question to answer prior to the pandemic, customers in 2021 were still wary of returning to physical stores, or perhaps might not have seen the need now that they had reoriented some of their habits around online and ecommerce. Those who did come into stores also had expectations of a more connected experience: “The reality is, customers experience your brand and they just expect it to be connected,” Pointon said.
John Lewis achieved this connection via QR codes, which Pointon noted were “very low-cost to put in.” Thanks to the QR codes on product displays, which would take shoppers to the same products on the John Lewis website, customers were given a choice as to whether to purchase then and there in-store and take the products home, or buy them online for later collection or delivery.
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John Lewis also took camera footage of the Christmas Emporium (a term used to refer to a select number of festive shopping displays that incorporated workshops and events) at its flagship store in Oxford Street and recreated it online for shoppers to tour virtually. This was something that the retailer first trialled in 2020 while stores were closed due to the lockdown, as a way of bringing the magic of that carefully-curated Christmas display to life online and letting online shoppers discover its Christmas range as they would in a store.
Bringing the virtual tour back again in 2021 meant that shoppers could still enjoy that experiential element of the Christmas shop from the comfort of their homes – but it also might inspire them to go out and experience the range in person now that shops were reopened.
Pointon outlined three “pillars” that she believes are key to good experiential retail:
“Technology has to inspire people to take action”. Browsing the physical Christmas display at John Lewis, customers could scan the QR codes to bring up products online and purchase them. In the virtual version of the Christmas display, little interaction points allowed customers to learn more about a product or range and view it on the online store.
“Ease needs to be at the heart of it.” It goes without saying that an experience shouldn’t make browsing or shopping difficult or introduce more friction, so everything about the experience needs to work seamlessly.
“It needs to be shoppable.” To Pointon, it isn’t enough to simply give customers more information about a product or a different way to experience it; they need to be able to buy if they feel inspired to.
Pointon gave two other examples of Christmas experiences that pushed the boundaries of what the retailer had previously accomplished with technology. The first saw John Lewis build on the introduction of a feature called Virtual Sofa to its iOS app in early 2020, which enabled consumers to use augmented reality to visualise the placement of a new sofa in their house, helping them to gauge the size and style fit with the space. As Christmas 2020 approached, the team alighted on the idea of introducing the same feature for Christmas trees.