Website Functionality Benchmark 2011: Luxury Department Stores

Forrester applied its Website Functionality Benchmark evaluation methodology to the top four US luxury department stores: Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue. These luxury brands achieved relatively strong results, with both Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue receiving a positive score across the 65 pieces of criteria in the benchmark. Although Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York did not score positively, they both enjoyed individual victories and displayed best practices in their attention to purchase process basics and sorting functionality, respectively. In general, retailers in this space present strong visual content to give context to the product displayed, yet they lack many of the basic yet essential functionalities that drive sales.