The Kate Spade Website

As mentioned last week, Kate Spade is a globally-recognized lifestyle brand that began in 1993. The company hopes to become a $4 billion business and part of accomplishing that goal is to understand its audience. According to chief marketing manager Mary Beach, The Kate Spade woman “lives in a ten-floor walkup but has champagne glasses. She doesn’t take hours doing all of her holiday cards perfectly, she has a glitter party with her friends."

Kate Spade's push techniques include marketing in the form of advertisements and billboards, an online mailing list and brick and mortar stores, in particular dazzling and often elaborate exterior displays. Below is an example from the Sloane Square shop in London. 

Pull marketing techniques include banner ads, especially when Kate Spade was promoting its new line Kate Spade Saturday, website SEO (which concentrates on key phrases such as designer clothing and women's handbags), a blog, social media and a sign-up option for the newsletter, which offers 15 percent off the next purchase. 

 

The Kate Spade website is designed and executed specifically for the ideal Kate Spade woman: colorful, adventurous and sophisticated. And as it is the company's "fastest growing channel of distribution," the design is extremely important.

Here is the front page. It has an eye-catching and colorful graphic, featuring the same pair of eyes that have been printed on some products and a model wearing one of the latest dresses. The graphic is advertising Kate Spade's 2014 campaign, Travel Colorfully. The logo is front and center and even without it, a familiar consumer would be able to recognize the brand. The site is extremely easy to navigate, and everything is spelled out for the user.

Fresh content on the website comes from the blog, which is updated a few times a week. The blog is very travel heavy right now to correlate with the brand's current campaign. Blog topics include "The Most Unusual Venues in the World to Hear Live Music" and "How Do You Say That In Kinyarwanda?" and it provides most of the content for the brand's Facebook page. 

The website is mobile-friendly, and it maintains relatively the same look while utilizing a less busy graphic. Again, the logo is front and center.

Social sharing buttons are located at the bottom right corner of the home page and sharing buttons are also available on each blog post. Right now, Kate Spade is encouraging a #travelcolorfully hashtag on Instagram and a feed of the brand's picks rotates at the bottom of the home page, and it's a nice bit of integrated marketing. 

I would recommend the social media buttons be moved to a more prominent position on the home page, as they are a bit harder to find all the way at the bottom. Of course, the top of the page is prime real estate so that might be why the company is using it to promote their smaller brands, Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade. I would also recommend that Kate Spade utilize a pop-up for their newsletter sign-up instead of a small box at the bottom. Many brands push their e-newsletter this way. However, in order to see any of Kate Spade's major sales, you must enter your e-mail and zip code so this method may be working out better for the brand. Overall, Kate Spade is very consistent across all platforms.