About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
Our stores are at the heart of our business. We work hard to create experiences customers can only find in our stores because we know they are a big part of what our customers love about Primark and what makes us different.
However, we also recognise that digital has an increasingly important role to play in complementing that in-store experience. Our social media channels have long been an important part of our marketing mix, enabling us to showcase the breadth of Primark products. As a next step, we set ourselves the objective of improving the customer journey between browsing online and shopping in-store, enabling us to reach both new and existing customers in new ways.
We have invested to transform our digital capability, designing and building a modern and scalable digital platform. To support this development, we have created new in-house functions and established trusted partnerships across the industry. We have recruited experts from some of the world’s leading digital-first businesses into roles across our Technology and Digital teams, and partnered with specialists in web design and development and with a leading global digital services agency.
In April of this year, we took a big step forward with the launch of our new consumer-facing website in the UK. Built on our new digital platform, the site features more than 9,000 products from across Primark’s bestselling ranges. It also features a fresh design, enhanced navigation and gives our customers much richer product information, including details about fabric, materials and care instructions.
Partnering with a new photo studio in Manchester, we have also been able to significantly improve both the quantity and quality of imagery on the site and to increase the number of products we display on the website from about 20% to around 75% of what we sell in-store.
This dedicated studio enables us to bring our products to life using multiple images, including items worn by models, compared with very basic flat lay imagery as was previously the case. In response to clear customer demand, we also introduced a stock checker tool so they can check the availability of their chosen products in their local store before heading in to buy them. Following the launch of the site in the UK, which will be rolled out to all our markets in the next calendar year, we have seen a significant increase in customer engagement, with a doubling of traffic compared with the old site, more time spent browsing the site and more pages visited per session. The new stock checker has proved very popular and our data suggests that these improvements have generated additional visits to our UK stores. The new site will also allow us to capture customer data for the first time, enabling us to communicate directly with customers with personalised marketing messages.
In addition to our new website, we will also be launching a Click and Collect trial in 25 stores in the north of England and Wales. The trial will offer customers a much expanded kidswear range, offering up to 2,000 options across children’s clothing, accessories and lifestyle products and catering for a broad range of family needs. Some 40% of the items available will be exclusive to Click and Collect.
The aim of the trial is to further enhance the customer experience by giving them more ways to shop more products from Primark.