Polyvore? Yes, Please.

Capturing loyal customers can be a mixed bag. With an abundance of competition, it’s frustratingly easy to lose out on a sale before you had knowledge that you were in the running! Naturally, price point, delivery, and other residual factors play a key role. But the wise seller will strategize on viewing competing sites as secondary opportunities. 

How? By taking advantage of the ability to share in the client’s overall buying choices. This is Commerce 101 in the fashion and interior design industries, where collections intersect with color palettes and variant styles.

Enter an inventive social platform called Polyvore, a novel co-op of sorts that showcases products from a variety of vendors from all over the web, combining them based on specific criteria entered by customers in search of an entire look.

Visualize a traditional shopper who’s not engaged in online shopping. A trip to the mall involves collaborating separate pieces from separate stores, creating a “set” for a room renovation, or an outfit for an occasion. Polyvore offers an invaluable opportunity to let online customers assemble sets and collections that fit their particular objectives.

Not convinced of the utility of such a site? Try this: there are more than 80 million individual products available for perusal on Polyvore. Even more impressive? Users of the site create 4 million new sets each month.
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Savvy consumers have had nearly two decades to perfect their online shopping strategies. They’re educated and selective, and willing to buy across retailer platforms in order to suit their wishes. Offering up your inventory to Polyvore introduces new customers to your site, increasing the chances of a sale based on their ability to visualize a multi-piece purchase.

Polyvore is not a new entry into the ecommerce arena. Started in 2007 by pioneers with clear vision of how the Internet marketplace may continually advance, it focuses on product categories, allowing customers to input search criteria to effectively create a set of fashions and accessories that work well together. Its Home section is expansive and visually friendly, displaying substantially sized images on its main page. 

Narrowing criteria to genres, eras, styles, and other considerations, it delivers accurate results that are more likely to incorporate offerings from a vast array of ecommerce entities – including your own.

By carefully selecting products that display well as images, or are more unique, your chances of appearing in a customer search increase. All other basic marketing rules apply: Create an attractive product title and generate compelling copy that whets the appetite of potential clients who will become familiar with your site. 

​Consider Polyvore a third-party sales tool that faces competition head-on and offers an invigorating challenge to set your site apart from the rest. You will never lose sales opportunities, but you may very well become a new household name to millions of consumers.