Bloomingdale’s Doubles Down on Digital

American luxury department store chain Bloomingdale’s is a storied brand known for its upscale shopping experience. Founded in 1861, this New York native has grown steadily, expanding its product and service offerings and establishing a strong online and offline presence. While the brand’s brick-and-mortar locations remain widely popular among shoppers, Bloomingdale’s faced heightened consumer demand for seamless omnichannel experiences and increased competition from digitally native retailers including Amazon, The RealReal, Birchbox, and Casper.

To stay competitive and meet the ever-evolving retail landscape, Bloomingdale’s knew it needed to invest in its digital capabilities—starting with a mobile app redesign.

The brand’s mobile commerce app had several limitations, including an aging user interface (UI), outdated branding and design, low engagement and stickiness, and minimal personalization features, making it difficult for the company to compete with digital-first retailers.

Dedicated to providing its customers with the best possible shopping experience, Bloomingdale’s turned to Astound for its strategic leadership, design, and user experience (UX) expertise.

Astound worked with the company to revamp the app’s UI, developing digital-centric brand elements and features, making it easier to navigate for a more intuitive on-brand shopping experience. Astound also added new features to the app, including a personalized wish list function so shoppers can save their favorite items and receive notifications when they go on sale, a searchable and shareable gift registry so friends and family can instantly find and purchase desired items, and a loyalty program to encourage repeat business.

Additionally, the Astound team incorporated strategic in-app placement of user-generated content (UGC) by way of product reviews and social sharing features to create a more-engaging shopping experience and promote use of the app. The team also improved the My Account page so shoppers can easily locate their account details, brand rewards dashboard, and order information, and designed a personalized loyalty dashboard so shoppers can view their points, rewards earnings, and My Loyallist member benefits. To encourage app engagement and drive online and in-store sales further, Astound incorporated prominently featured app-exclusive offers and real-time in-store sale notifications as well as designed an interactive style quiz to provide style suggestions and match shoppers with in-store stylists.

The newly invigorated app was well received by Bloomingdale’s customers and contributed to increased revenue, engagement, and loyalty. Owing to the improved design and UX, shoppers can quickly find and purchase items, and the app’s enhanced personalization features create a uniquely compelling shopping experience with every interaction. The redesigned loyalty program dashboard readily surfaces the user’s point balances and rewards milestones, encouraging repeat business, while the style quiz helps shoppers find and purchase products and apparel they may not have considered before. Overall, its redesigned mobile app was a success, winning multiple w3 awards for shopping mobile apps and UI, and has helped Bloomingdale’s remain a top player in today’s omnichannel retail landscape.