La Sportiva Digital Redesign
- Daniel Honey
- Jan 16
- 6 min read
The market for climbing equipment and shoes is dominated by 5 companies, Scarpa; Evolv; Black Diamond; Five Ten; and La Sportiva. La Sportiva, being my chosen company, sells products with involvement in climbing, mountaineering, ski mountaineering, hiking and mountain running. They are regarded as an industry standard best however when it comes to consumers looking for these products it becomes confusing and very technical. This causes the majority of buyers to use third party reviews on sites such as Youtube to select a company. This takes the selection process away from La Sportiva, resulting in the company losing sales. In this project, I attempt to transform La Sportiva’s online presence to increase consumer understanding around their products to increase sales and interaction.
Current Website Landing Page:
Improved:
La Sportiva’s landing page has the traditional layout of sporting equipment stores, with direct comparisons to its competitors such as Evolv. This consists of a slideshow banner with their most recent promotions. If a website visitor does not understand what a page is about in just a few seconds, they leave (Smith & Zook, 2020). Therefore, this idea should be kept but adjusted to fit our new concepts of consuming information. The website then scrolls onto a section with links to other areas of their website and their most recent clothing releases. This is inefficient as the information presented is not immediate and a customer’s attention is only held for a few seconds (Smith & Zook, 2020). This suggests that if they desire to access this information, they will use the drop menu instead of scrolling. Finally, before the social media advertising and privacy policy (which needs no improvement), they have a section with posts from existing consumers using the hashtag LaSportiva. This is perfect for the landing page as it adheres to the 90-9-1 theory (Nielsen, 2006) by increasing the incentive for the 1% to produce content, with the aim of being on the page. With the 1% increased, this then inflates the 9% of consumers who interact, ultimately producing a higher net interaction with the brand. When looking at the new design of the landing page, we see an application of Hicks’ Law (Smith and Zook, 2020), with an expanding potential of choices, causing the user to remain on the page for longer. This will improve the chance of the user interacting with more areas of the site and therefore improving sales. Expanding on the 90-9-1 theory, the short form videos used in the category selection increases the amount of people creating content, in hopes of being the ‘face of climbing’ for the brand’s website. The use of short form videos enforces the theories of “site attachment” and “internet addiction” (Zhang, Wu & Liu, 2019). Site attachment has been repeatedly proven to contribute to the loyalty pattern of online shopping (Jiang and Dong, 2008), combined with the evidence that “People are becoming increasingly habitually dependent on these apps for creating and sharing short videos. Consequently, attachment to short-form video apps leads to frequent use and energetic participation, which increase the likelihood of addiction” (Zhang, Wu and Liu, 2019). This is a critical method of presenting new information to consumers. This allows the user to create an emotional bond with the website (Kim et al, 2016) which will increase revisits to the site. The final section of the landing page consists of local business promotion. By accessing the users location, it will be able to highlight regional climbing gyms which sell La Sportiva products. This will both inspire customers to visit local businesses and buy our product, thus increasing the need for climbing gyms to sell our products. This aims to promote exposure from one of the biggest named climbing brands.
Current Social Media:
Improved:
When examining the existing Instagram of La Sportiva you are met with a lack of diversity, a static feeling, and poor engagement from a large follower base. With extreme events being portrayed in photos or uninteresting long style documentaries, they lose all engagement, as social media should be attention grabbing and short. “As a brand gets a more diverse customer base, it reflects that in its advertising.” (Kelley & Sheehan, 2021). The presence of female athletes has only grown (Iberdrola, 2024), therefore advertising that provides a visual depiction of societal diversification will lessen perceptions of segregation (Henderson, Mazodier & Khenfer, 2023). Prominent product placement (Liu, Chow & Liao, 2015) is critical to create a blend between their social media and products. “A prominent placement has a higher recall than a subtle placement” (Law and Braun, 2000) which is demonstrated in the new iteration. Subsequently the use of micro-influencers is key to a successful social media. "Micro-influencers are considered to be more cost effective, generate higher social media engagement, and have certain knowledge in the product domain and hence are more trustworthy compared to celebrity influencers" (Gan et al, 2019). The other fault with their social media is the lack of short form videos with attention grabbing characteristics such as extreme human achievement or ‘stunts’. By having a static website, the marketing communicators are not aware of the subtle meanings of symbols, and therefore are liable to communicate the wrong message." (Engel et al, 1994). Using Red Bull as a case study we see their use of extreme sport videos effectively boosts audience engagement across all social media platforms (Shastri, 2024).
Current Online Advertisement:
Improved:
This online advertisement is a collaborative article with Adam Ondra, a highly regarded climber with over 21 medals in world competitions awarded. In this article, Adam is expressing how his favourite shoe is La Sportiva. "Influencers can have a much bigger impact than any of your other marketing efforts. You must identify and connect with influencers in your industry." (Smith, Zook, 2020). This is not reflected in the online advertisement as a casual viewer with no context would not know who it is and whether the shoe is being promoted as positive. A simple change to this to include details will trigger a social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), making the viewer feel they need these shoes to put themselves into the category of 'great climbers', such as Adam Ondra is.
Reference List.
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Jakob Nielsen (2006), The 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ [22 October 2024]
Xing Zhang, You Wu and Shan Liu (2019) Exploring short-form video application addiction: Socio-technical and attachment perspectives Telematics and informatics 42. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334228518_Exploring_short-form_video_application_addiction_Socio-technical_and_attachment_perspectives [22 October 2024]
Jiang, Y., Dong, D.H. (2008) Strengthening consumer loyalty to a retail Web site: an attachment theory perspective. In: Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2008 International Seminar on Business and Information Management, pp. 71–74.
Myung Ja Kim, Choong-Ki Lee and Michael W. Preis (2016) Seniors’ loyalty to social network sites:effects of social capital and attachment International Journal of Information Management. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0268401215300086 [22 October 2024]
Larry D. Kelley and Kim Bartel Sheehan (2022) Advertising management in a digital environment: text and cases Routledge Abingdon, New York
Iberdrola (2024) Women and sport, a successful alliance Available from: https://www.iberdrola.com/social-commitment/women-sport/other-sports/women-sport-today [22 October 2024]
Conor M. Henderson, Marc Mazodier and Jamel Khenfer (2023) The positive effects of integrated advertising, featuring diverse ensembles, on societal identification and mainstream brand value Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Accessible from: (PDF) The positive effects of integrated advertising, featuring diverse ensembles, on societal identification and mainstream brand value [22 October 2024]
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Tian Gan et al (2019) Seeking Micro-influencers for Brand Promotion 27th ACM international Conference on Multimedia. Available from: Seeking Micro-influencers for Brand Promotion | Proceedings of the 27th ACM International Conference on Multimedia [22 October]
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