Asked what trust means to him, Jason Gowans has a simple answer.
“Trust is doing what you say you’re going to do,” the chief digital officer of Levi Strauss & Co. tells me from Seattle. “Part of it is being really clear about what you’re going to do and then following through on that.”
Gowans is on that mission. Since joining Levi’s in early 2023, he’s led an effort to put the customer first and bolster the denim retail giant’s digital presence.
The e-commerce strategy behind that push has three pillars, Gowans explains: Focus on the fundamentals, evolve the assortment, and create a digital flagship experience.
Focusing on the fundamentals is rooted in three observations backed by external research, he says. “The first is that 80% of customers say that the experience matters as much as the product,” Gowans notes. “The second observation is that more than 70% of customers will switch channels depending on the context, whether it’s online or offline.”
Observation No. 3: More than a third of customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience. “Your competition is the last great experience that somebody had.”
The upshot? “You can’t think of your business as a series of channels,” says Gowans, who previously spent a decade with Nordstrom. “You’ve got to put the consumer at the center.”
Doing that means making sure that when someone engages with you, it’s a good experience, Gowans stresses. “You cannot disappoint the customer.”
For Levi.com, the fundamentals hinge on a couple of key moments in the consumer journey. One is reaching the product detail page. “How many of those customers go on to add to cart?” Gowans asks. “It’s that moment of truth where you’re trying to give the customer the information, and ultimately the confidence, that this is the right product for them.”
Evolving the assortment is a two-way street. “We aspire to be a world-class denim lifestyle retailer, and so that’s really all about head-to-toe outfitting,” Gowans says. To that end, Levi’s is leaning into tops: shirts, sweaters, outerwear. It’s also expanding its women’s business. Customer satisfaction surveys show that shoppers are asking for those things, too.
And the digital flagship experience? It’s three things: mobile app, loyalty, and omnichannel.
“This isn’t just about growing our business on Levi.com,” Gowans says, noting that the brand has some 3,000 stores worldwide. “This is using the totality of our presence and our assets to create a great experience for the customer, whether they want to shop online or go in the store.”
Levi’s now has more than 37 million customers in its Red Tab loyalty program. Besides free shipping, members get early access to events such as Black Friday sales, and to collaborations with the likes of McLaren Racing. Free hemming and repairs are another perk.
Gowans and his global team have also been chipping away at other moments that improve the customer experience, he says. For example, when surveys told them that Levi’s slow website was a barrier to purchasing, they boosted its speed by 40%.
Those efforts have paid off. Digital sales are approaching 10% of total business, Gowans says. “We’ve been posting double-digit growth of the digital channels now for, I think, eight to 10 consecutive quarters.”
When it comes to the online customer experience, there’s another key trust-building ingredient.
“The hardest thing [about] digital commerce is stirring a positive emotion, or creating an emotional connection with the customer,” Gowans says. To do that, Levi’s often looks to the “cultural moments” it creates, he says. “One such example would be our recent campaign and partnership with Beyoncé, where we brought that to life on Levi.com.”
Speaking of emotional impact, building trust as a retailer is about being excellent every day, Gowans says.
For instance, when a customer uses Levi’s Pickup In-Store service, the company must make sure not to cancel their online order. “These are things that don’t create a lot of headlines, but they certainly create an emotion with your customer when you let them down,” Gowans says. “And so we’re really focused on making sure that we do what we say we’re going to do.”
True blue.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com
