eLuxury.com

Introduction

Launched in June 2000, eLUXURY.com is the premiere online boutique for luxury goods and designer fashion. Offering seasonal must-haves and seasoned classics of women’s and men’s designer apparel and accessories, hard-to-find beauty and children’s collections and an exclusive Louis Vuitton boutique, eLUXURY.com's array of prestigious brands includes Christian Dior, Tod's, Fendi, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, D&G Dolce Gabbana, and many more.

eLUXURY's expansive selection caters to the tastes of everyone on your gift list. eLUXURY is owned by Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the world's leading luxury goods group. For the most desirable brands in fashion, home, travel, and beauty, the unrivaled destination is eLUXURY.com.

Purposes

eLUXURY gathers all the top, fashionable, luxury brands at one site, in order for their users to search and purchase the best within the comfort of their house. This brings about convenience and reduced transaction cost for their users.

As for eLUXURY, it will also benefit because setting up as a virtual store increases its reach and dis-intermediation. As a result, eLUXURY aims to boost sales especially of the increasing popularity of the Internet now.

eLUXURY only works with top brands, thus, consumers can shop with confidence knowing that authenticity is guaranteed and will be assured of getting quality items when purchasing at the site.

Features

Business Model

eLUXURY.com operates as a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) virtual storefront. B2C is a concept of online marketing and distributing of products and services over the Internet. Consumers are now expose to real-time information of any particular product and will have it ship to their doorstep within days. It not only benefits the consumers but also to the retailers as a virtual storefront could now serve as a advertising tool to attract consumers. The virtual storefront also helps to facilitate business of the organization and extend their business hours to the consumers. Consumers could also have easy access to all the products that are put up for sales promotion with ease as they no longer have to queue or squeeze through the crowds in the store or look through the big pile of products that are all thrown together under the sales item categories. Organizations could also clear their goods in the shortest time and also save on the rental of space to sell or store these off-season or overstock products.

Payment Scheme

Bill Me Later® has been deployed by eLUXURY, a payment service that allows users to conveniently & securely make online purchases without a credit card. Bill Me Later delivers a smart, safe and speedy solution for users and an attractive alternative payment solution for merchants as in they are able to simplify the payment experience to capture lost sales, increase customer loyalty and maximize profit. At checkout, users need to only provide their birthday and the last four digits of their social security number and their purchases are complete.

By implementing Bill Me Later, eLUXURY provides its users the additional convenience and flexibility of no payment for 90 days. This extends the superior quality offered by eLUXURY in their product selection and customer service to the purchasing process; overall it offers existing users an improved shopping experience while attracting more high value users.

Other than Bill Me Later®, eLUXURY accepts VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB.

Key Characteristics

Firstly, eLUXURY.com allows its registered users to personalize their accounts. Users are able to store their billing and credit card information, review their order status/ history, store multiple names and addresses and reminders of important occasions (e.g. birthday) associated with an individual. All these reduce the hassle of re-entering information as the information will be available during the checkout process. It is convenient and speeds up the ordering process, thus brings about an improved shopping experience!

Secondly, eLUXURY provides gift wrap options. Their signature silver gift box tied with a purple fabric ribbon is provided at no additional cost. Louis Vuitton items will be shipped in a LV gift box. Users may also choose to send a gift card and will be prompt to enter a pre-printed message of up to 60 characters during checkout.

Thirdly, users are able to modify their unshipped orders with the assistance from eLUXURY’s customer service officers through toll-free calls, live chat or email. Users are able to determine whether or not their order has been shipped by checking the “Order Status & History” section.

Lastly, users are able to obtain recommendations, gift suggestions and the latest eLUXURY fashion trends from eLUXURY’s personal shoppers’ service. Personal shoppers will provide one-on-one guidance on their purchases and they can be reached via toll free call, email or the online form.

Design

eLUXURY’s simple and neat layout allows it consumers to navigate easily. It has a central layout with few columns, communicating less information more clearly at a time to its consumers. The clearly identifiable navigation bar which is positioned permanently on top of every page, apart from the contents, complements the site’s information architecture.

Basically, the site is categorized into ten sections– Brands, Louis Vuitton, Women’s Apparel, Shoes, Handbags, Accessories, Beauty, Gifts, Kids and Men. There is also a “Sales” section which offers up to 30% off some of the items displayed.

The photographs of each item are well-structured and the site offers alternate view and zoom functions which allow one to clearly see the details of each item.

Strength

As mentioned, eLUXURY.com is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Consumers can simply find what they want with a glance on the website. The website is sort by different brands or categories which cater to different needs of consumers. For example, if they want to shop for handbags, they can simply click on the button and select different category like shoulder bags, totes, handheld and clutches. Furthermore, if they want to shop by the brands, the website has categorized the brand names in alphabetical order which makes it easy for consumers to browse and select.

Other than the strength in the technical features of the website, eLUXURY’s strength is that it is able to guarantee that the products are absolutely of authentic by the various designers’ goods. They also have a 100% satisfaction and fraud protection guaranteed.

In addition, privacy of the consumers who visit their website is of primary concern of eLUXURY. eLUXURY.com will automatically gather important data required for the purchase process from consumers who visit their website while other information is obtained at discretion of the individual. This purpose is to enhance the experience of individual shopper on eLUXURY (for example, to tailor special offers to the users or to survey users of their shopping experience).

Besides that, eLUXURY.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program, it is able to build up the user’s trust and confidence in using the website which forbid the disclosure of private personal information. This helps to gain more loyal customers.

eLUXURY.com also provides free shipping for total amount of US$150 or more, this further attract consumers and generate additional sales. Other than the free shipping, eLUXURY.com is also able to provide free gift-wrapping for consumers and make shipment to the receiver directly. This helps to enhance the services that eLuxury.com provide to consumers. There are also other promotions available throughout the entire year which include sales, clearance and discount promotion. These promotions further boost up sales level of eLUXURY.

Weaknesses

Currently, eLUXURY.com only ships to the contiguous 48 U.S. states, plus Alaska and Hawaii. Shipments to other international destinations and U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam are unavailable in eLUXURY.com. This might reduce and limits its sales as consumers from other parts of the world.

eLUXURY.com also does not have website in other languages like Chinese, Japanese or Italian. This limits the consumers’ choice in selecting and understanding of the website in their own languages. This is an essential point which they need to improvise on, to cater to different types of consumers.

Furthermore, eLUXURY.com does not provide much pictures of the products they are selling, the website does not provide the all-rounder views of the product but only the front views or enlarge views.

Critical Analysis

In today’s market, consumers are more IT savvy and wishes to seek for ways to shop with ease and comfort. Thus this website has provided this kind of service to allow potential consumers from all over the world to shop for high end products at their comfort at any time.

In addition, it’s able to cater to all kind of ready to wear apparels for both the young and old as well from men to women and provide guaranteed quality products. However if eLUXURY.com is able to improvise its weakness, they will be able to reach out globally and capture more loyal customers.

In the United States, electronic commerce activities are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. These safety measurements taken further boost the usage of E-commerce.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-pace environment where consumers seek for real-time information, businesses could no longer depend solely on brick and mortar. In order to capture large masses of audiences and market share, E-commercing is essential so as to reach out to consumers globally. Through the use of e-commerce, customer now can access to immediate information on any product or service. Furthermore, as consumers are becoming more IT-savvy, they are within reach of a wider scope of products and services. Nevertheless, organization that wish to gain more market share and provide excellent customer service to their potential customer any time, any where, businesses will definitely have to adopt click and mortar.