Creating an Award-Winning E-commerce Experience
A. PUTNAM is a luxury women’s clothing brand that delivers comfort, style, and versatility from the golf course to the club. With unique features like moisture-wicking and stain- and water-resistant fabrics, these pieces are carefully designed to move with women throughout their day. Founder Ali Putnam was inspired to create the brand when she experienced a gap in the women’s golf clothing market and came to Fishnet for help building an e-commerce brand launch strategy.
This engagement began as a conversation about creating an engaging e-commerce experience with a brand and website launch, and we achieved that goal through our proprietary methodology for successful brand partnerships. Regardless of industry or type of client, we follow a proven process that considers a brand’s strengths and weaknesses, challenges and goals, and applies industry research, data, and purposeful strategy to deliver on the initial request and elevate the brand overall.
Building a Strong Partnership
Executing a brand launch strategy requires an agency-client partnership informed by research, collaboration, organization, and implementation. We knew we could build a strong foundation for success with A. PUTNAM; their brand leaders know their audience, understand their industry, and are aware of the problems their products solve for their customers.
Fishnet’s role was to ensure a cohesive brand identity, message, customer experience, and product presentation across all digital channels. Both teams’ commitment to consistency in e-commerce branding would prove to be a powerful revenue driver for the brand.
How Fishnet Helped A. PUTNAM Founder Ali Realize Her Bold Vision
One of the driving forces behind the A. PUTNAM brand was to fill a gap in the market. Ali, a busy mother of five boys, had become frustrated with a lack of options for women’s golf wear that was both stylish and appropriate for a busy, multi-faceted lifestyle. The trending “athleisure” styles were easy to find, but Ali wanted “athstyle” – luxury athletic clothing that would deliver elegance, empowerment, style, and functionality in a way the market hadn’t seen before. She had created the brand, designed the initial product lines, and begun introducing A. PUTNAM to women and the golf community – now, she needed a digital experience and a brand awareness campaign that would take A. PUTNAM to the next level.
Creating an Authentic Brand-Customer Connection
Ali has a unique story to tell, and her ability to balance busy mom life with small business ownership and still find time to pursue a fierce love of golf is an inspiring perspective that draws her female customers to the brand. A main goal in the creation of the A. PUTNAM website and brand awareness campaign was telling her story and forming those critical audience connections that would elevate the brand and create evangelists.
A Seamless Digital Experience to Match the Brand’s Versatility
We chose Shopify as our e-commerce platform and employed our team to craft a cohesive brand experience that would appropriately showcase A. PUTNAM’s luxury collections. We put significant emphasis on the website’s user experience to tie together the way visitors would navigate the site and Ali’s vision for clothing that moves seamlessly with you throughout your day.
We catered first and foremost to the buyer journey, designing an e-commerce experience that would support buyers in finding the brand, visiting the site, and moving them through a buying experience to become customers. A series of email touchpoints that strategically connected with shoppers after specific triggers like purchase, cart abandonment, and other behaviors helped maintain engagement.
“When I approached Fishnet initially, I was trying to navigate all these moving parts to solidify my brand and get it to a place where I had something solid to point to when speaking with customers and wholesalers. I am so grateful to Fishnet not only for the hard work of their team to bring my vision to life but for creating something that truly embodies the A. PUTNAM brand. I’m proud to say this is my brand.”
Ali Putnam
A. PUTNAM Founder
Blending Search Optimization with Real-Life Language
The balance between crafting brand messaging that resonates with target audiences and gets found in search is critical – our content team was mindful to embody Ali’s voice throughout the site so everything from the product descriptions to the blog posts would channel her passion and personality. We also wanted to keep the messaging very human, as though Ali herself were describing the pieces to each shopper.
We combined the messaging considerations with an SEO strategy that would enable A. PUTNAM to reach the right audiences. We researched other women’s athletic and luxury apparel brands and isolated keywords that would help amplify A. PUTNAM’s differentiating value proposition and resonate with busy women looking for fresh apparel options that exude style and versatility. Another consideration was making wholesalers aware of the brand as Ali has also brought her collections to golf shops around the country.
D2C Vs. Wholesale: Striking the Right Balance
With the launch of (award-winning!) APUTNAM.com and subsequent brand awareness campaigns that included emails and advertising, we both met the high standards of our client and ensured a smooth landing for this novel brand.
As our Design Director Sean Reusch always says, “Your brand is only as strong as its weakest touchpoint.” This partnership needed to be as seamless and graceful as A. PUTNAM’s clothing itself. Thanks to our strong bank of technological and creative tools and solutions, we were able to deliver an impactful brand launch for Ali and her team.
We leveraged Shopify integrations like Klaviyo for communications and Yotpo for product reviews, both of which were key solutions to support our initial efforts. These tools also bolster the long-term success of the A. PUTNAM site as they not only play well with Shopify but help make future site optimizations easier to roll out.
E-Commerce Success Through Customer Experience
While the launch was exciting and significant from a brand perspective, the world of e-commerce never slows down, so we don’t either!
The website kicked off a flood of interest in the A. PUTNAM brand, which we immediately began tracking through site performance reporting. We launched email campaigns to solicit customer reviews, offer discounts, showcase new arrivals and outfit ideas, and strengthen that brand-customer connection Ali was fostering with her customers.
We continued building momentum through targeted social media ads and blog posts, and regularly optimize the site based on several constantly-shifting factors including changing keyword trends, site performance, and the A. PUTNAM collections themselves. Ali is moving the brand at the speed of fashion with seasonal drops and new prints and colors. She has also been tirelessly showcasing the brand at golf and apparel shows and other events across the country (while donning A. PUTNAM pieces of course!), truly exemplifying a busy mom-on-the-go.
Our ongoing work with A. PUTNAM will include the development of new assets, such as product catalogs for wholesalers and consumers, to showcase and amplify the brand and all its unique product features, as well as acquire more user-generated content.
In September 2023, we received a gold Vega Digital Award for the A. PUTNAM site, which won in the Fashion category. Needless to say, the designation is a testament to the excellent partnership of both the A. PUTNAM and Fishnet teams.
We start every engagement with an agency-client partnership mindset, which is further strengthened by a focus on research, collaboration, and communication across every step. The most optimal foundation for success is built with a combination of our proven approach and our clients’ commitment to that end; and one of the best parts of this engagement has been working with a passionate, authentic business owner who is fully invested in building her brand.
Jared Lemos, Co-Founder and Managing Partner,
Fishnet Media