10 Questions With Jana Krinsky (S1,?Ep5)

Zulily’s director of studio talks about how to stand out in a marketplace, the difference creativity can make in e-commerce, and how her team of 350 gives each merchant the right attention they deserve.

The internet is one giant mall, a place for conversation, ordering food, watching movies, and definitely for shopping. This year, it’s estimated that e-commerce sites will generate $5.529 trillion in sales, so it’s understandable that merchants want to be online. Years ago, it was more complex to set up an online store, but not today. There are many different marketplaces out there that will let big and small merchants quickly get up and running to increase sales. 

With more than 6.6 million customers on its flash-sale shopping marketplace, there’s a lot riding on Zulily to not only help consumers find what they’re looking for but also help merchants stand out and maximize their appeal. The company has a team dedicated to achieving this objective and in my next “10 Questions” interview, I asked Zulily’s Director of Studio Jana Krinsky on how she helps merchants find their identity, how to market online versus with a brick and mortar store, and what she does to manage a team of 350 employees.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity.

Explain your role at Zulily as the director of studio. What drew you to design and e-commerce?

I have the privilege of leading a team of 350 creative professionals — that means photographers, copywriters, stylists and more — in Zulily’s two offices in Seattle, WA, and Columbus, OH.

What really drew me to studio, and in particular, Zulily’s studio, is how different and dynamic the work is. In traditional retail, you have physical storefronts or seasonal catalogs that are very calculated and take a year plus of planning. At Zulily, our work is agile — and what we create and design today makes an immediate impact on our business tomorrow. Creative is integral to every part of the e-commerce process — it’s how a customer identifies your brand, shops your app, and stays a loyal customer. Plus, we have an incredibly unique business model that adds quite a bit of complexity to our work. Every day, we launch thousands of products across hundreds of sales — and products are typically only available for 72 hours. Also, we have a low-inventory model, which means that unlike most retailers, we don’t buy merchandise before it’s sold to the customer. That means that my team has to move fast to pique shopper interest and to communicate what makes each product a must-have.

My team is a direct line into bringing a little fun to our customers’ lives, whether it’s showing them how a garment looks on people of every size via video or doing a custom editorial shoot with a vendor to bring their brand to life. To me, e-commerce is an industry where there is so much potential; there are so many ways that creative can push the industry forward as more people around the world shop via mobile. Design and creativity are at the heart of what will move the industry forward.

Zulily launches a new store daily so in what ways does your team ensure that the design matches individual stores? What’s the process of customizing attention and support to ensure customer happiness?

One of the most compelling characteristics of Zulily is that we respect our customers as individuals; we honor each of them by listening to them — our leadership team and customer service team read and react to the messages sent in regard to creative execution. In studio, we also need to consider who the primary purchaser of the item or brand is — for which studio closely partners with our merchant and marketing team to understand. We also have to think about the fact that there are millions of versions of the app/store experience because our technology customizes the shopping experience for each customer. This means that categories will line-up in a different order based on shopping priorities, making consistency in the Zulily brand and the uniqueness of the stories very important to the overall experience.

Also, we continually A/B test the imagery for each sale during its 72 hours on the site. Since we have a short window of time to inspire customers to shop, we constantly need to optimize and test the images early in the sale window — whichever image is most effective at getting customers into the event, where sales are driven, is the one that stays live in the app, site, and ads.

We work closely with our merchants who have 15,000+ vendor partners to grow their business. For household name brands, we love to spotlight what makes that brand unique and highlight their brand value proposition. And, for boutique brands that are still building market share, we may opt to include the product in a curated sale based on what we anticipate a customer would want, like a furniture sales event based on a theme, such as coastal chic.

In terms of overall creative vision, my team works closely with marketing to ensure we have a consistent brand look and feel across the app as well as our social channels — a key part of how we connect with customers. In fact, this year we unveiled a new brand look and feel, the first one we’ve done since our first sale in 2010. The new logo and colors are all about optimizing for mobile, and meant to build on our existing brand equity: 92% of orders come from repeat customers. The colors were meticulously picked, and a lot of research was done to ensure our new look and feel would really inspire and energize current customers — while driving recall to our new customers. And, the new design really ensures that each product we sell really pops off the screen, highlighting our brand partners.

What advice would you give to merchants looking to set up shop when thinking about marketing their products?

Retail is at an incredibly interesting inflection point right now. Not only has mobile completely changed the way shoppers interact with brands, but customer expectations are higher than ever. 

I think smaller brands have an advantage in marketing their products because they have natural expertise in what they make. Customers love to connect with the people behind products — they want to know your story. So, when marketing your product, lean into what your unique story is, and tell it! And because channels like Instagram, Facebook, etc. are free for brands to use, take full advantage of those channels to build a following, test products and listen directly to your customers. 

When a brand is in its early stages, invest in the creative that helps your customer best understand the product. That may come with a need for high-end photos and video upfront, but chances are, the phone in your pocket might have what it takes to show your products’ authenticity and uniqueness. A well-told and honest story can be incredibly effective, no matter your size, scale, and resources.

Describe the power of imagery when it comes to stores.

Humans are so incredibly visual — a picture is worth a thousand words, right? But it’s no secret that more commerce and retail is taking place on mobile. So, imagery — and increasingly, video — will need to fill that smaller format space. 

All content and creative must be implemented in a way that inspires dialogue, connection, and conversation that is relatable in a thumbnail. To make this tiny image or video powerful takes a lot of thought and consideration. More is not always more. I also think this brings the power of words back into play. The copy provided is crucial to the customer really understanding the story, but also the details of the product they are purchasing.

Please share some examples of creative ways your team has done to help merchants engage their customers, drive transactions, and increase sales.

We know customers come to discovery shopping platforms like Zulily because they want to be entertained and to connect with a brand. That’s what makes our kind of retail unique: we don’t push for transactions, but rather entertainment and inspiration. 

Our team has started to create content that is not all about the item or the sale. They are elevating the experience with tutorials or best-practice videos, also with fitting and styling. We want to put that sales expert back in the store with them that not only sells, but also supports their education and confidence in wearing or using the product. 

What is especially cool at Zulily, is we are often able to utilize the merchant, an expert in the category or even invite the vendor to participate. We do this often on our social channels or even embed the content within the event. Some recent examples are education on bra-fitting, how to choose a rug that fits your space, or just simply how to style your go-to graphic tees.

How did Zulily come up with its “voice” and what thinking went to make sure that it was consistent with all your customers?

Though we started as a flash sales site for moms, babies, and kids, our offering has expanded to just about everything: men’s apparel, snacks, pet gear, home décor. Our target customer is a smart shopper who wants to find incredible value for everything she’d need for herself, her family or her home.

We are very intentional with our voice, especially with our recent rebrand, refining our voice via thorough research in conjunction with our brand team. Our entire organization — not just studio, but anyone who represents Zulily as a brand — are guided by our key brand traits: we are playful, inclusive, confident and energized. We keep consistency by following our thorough brand guide, and by constantly collaborating across divisions.

How is designing for online stores different from physical brick and mortar properties?

In e-commerce, there’s more opportunity as a retailer to be of service to a busy and smart shopper. By leveraging mobile especially, retailers can listen closely to a customer, get direct feedback and improve faster.

There are quite a few differences between designing for an etailer compared to a brick-and-mortar store. Unlike with a traditional brick-and-mortar store, where you can pick up and feel the item an online store relies solely on the images and product descriptions for the items we sell. An etailer also has the opportunity to fit into the lifestyle of our customers more easily. At Zulily, 73% (Q4 2018) of our orders come from mobile, we know our customer is shopping on the go, and by allowing her to shop on the app we are able to more easily fill her needs.

You operate with a team that is spread out across the U.S., what process do you have to manage everybody and still handle all you need to do at scale?

With over 300 people on the studio team, it is vital that we communicate in a clear way and that managers feel empowered to make decisions for their team. It’s also important that each team member knows what their role is and how their job impacts what a customer sees on the app.

My approach is to first empower my front-line managers to be clear and supportive with their staff. We have biweekly all-hands as a studio team to ensure we’re all keeping on task and problem solving as a group, and also taking the time to connect with one another.

Second, it’s all about giving our staff a clear north star. In our case, it’s taking to heart the promise to the customer: Every day, you’ll find the unexpected at Zulily. New and unique finds at prices you can brag about. For yourself, your family and your home.

We have very clear goals as a team, and as a group, we are all about helping each other to achieve any task or initiative at hand. We know that to succeed, we have to win as a team. Last, our team is not just limited to studio — creative does not exist without our counterparts in merchandising, marketing and beyond — we never forget we are part of Zulily, not just creative!

How does your team use technology in their creative workflow?

Technology is at the core of Zulily, and we use proprietary tools built by in-house engineers that allow us to ensure we’re producing the right breadth of images and video on time. Every individual creative project has its own timeline and needs, and our system keeps us optimized. Additionally, our tools help us track the success of images, helping our creative make decisions on how we style and photograph products that range from home to apparel to consumables, allowing our team to learn from customer behavior.

For example, we have found our customers more often respond better to more emotive images that showcase a person with a few focused products, as compared to images that highlight the breadth of a collection. Additionally, because we are a data-driven culture overall, my group keeps a close pulse on customer data such as product reviews and returns, and take that data into consideration for how we make creative decisions at the production level as well.

What new things are your team experimenting with that merchants could expect to see in the next year?

Something that our studio team is working on is the use of video and animated content — with more and more shopping online, our customers are expecting different ways to engage with a human through the product. Video is a great way to both catch someone’s eye, to educate them with a tutorial or brand story, or simply show them more product detail than a static image can provide. Video can aid in closing the gap on some of the big complaints of online shopping. You can see how garments fit and hang and move on the body — truly bringing the product to life.

We are also experimenting with how we serve up new growth categories like consumables to our customer. This is an area where we have to figure out how to not only engage our discovery-based shopper but also how to ensure she has all of the information she needs to make a purchasing decision for her and her family.

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Special thanks go out to Jana Krinsky for participating in this discussion. “10 Questions” is a project designed to learn more from the people in tech and how it relates to businesses. If you’d like to be interviewed, I’d love to hear from you — send me a note on Twitter (@thekenyeung), Facebook, or here on LinkedIn. You can also find this entire series shared on Flipboard and also on Medium.

#tech #design #ecommerce #business #creative #shopping #marketplace #retail