Hunter Boots and Integrated Ecommerce

Following up on our recent post on The Three C’s and integrated e-commerce, we look today at British heritage brand Hunter.

Hunter differentiates their online shopping experience from the competition through an immersive and content-rich site that sells a lifestyle; providing visitors with an unbroken brand narrative that incorporates the customer’s discovery and shopping experience.

Contextual Commerce

Hunter is a good example of the seamless integration of content into the shopping experience that Drupal Commerce can provide. The Hunter Blog tab leads to a graphic on-site page showcasing fashion bloggers in Hunter gear–effectively putting their products into context and building an engaging narrative. This content is accompanied by a series of related products (Shop the Feature) which allows visitors to locate and purchase items used in the narrative.

It is important to site usability that customers are able to easily navigate back to products after going to an article. Clicking on a Hunter featured product leads the customer directly to the product page of the item that caught their eye, wisely avoiding dropping the shopper in a general catalogue section, as we see so often with bolt-on shops. Being redirected to the catalogue thwarts time-pressed customers who don’t want to search further for something already located on the blog.

The Hunter Blog post above, focused on styling their bubble umbrella, is on trend with a social media theme (bloggers are accompanied by their instagram handles); but also contains links to make the content sharable across visitors’ social networks–bringing Hunter content to a wider and targeted audience.

By unobtrusively weaving calls to action into the “Story of the Wellies” video page located under The Brand tab, Hunter further integrates shopping options into valuable and informative content that draws site visitors.

Access to information should be as intuitive and transparent as possible. Great navigation is an obvious way to provide good access to information, but search is also very important. Due to content integration on the Hunter site, a search term will bring up not only products but relevant blog posts.

Consistency in the User Interface

For a company as well-branded and well-known as Hunter, consistency across product research, discovery, and purchase is necessary to meet customer expectations and maintain their trust. Customers are able to move seamlessly through a consistent user interface on a single domain from the first click to the purchase stage.

Hunter has successfully carried their recognizable label originating in 1856 into 2013 with this latest digital iteration that unifies interactive media content with the shopping process, on a social commerce site built with Drupal Commerce.