CX in the wild: a Rothy’s deep-dive
As someone whose teenage years coincided with the indie sleaze era, a time when you could easily spend an entire day perusing the big Topshop on Oxford Street, I’ve had mixed feelings about flats.
On the one hand, they make your feet look elegant and beautiful; even my size 7.5 flippers looked dainty in a Faith (RIP) ballerina or leopard print French Sole. However, just as fondly as I remember how the shoes looked, I also have acute memories of how they felt, specifically after you’d just trodden in a freezing puddle at the bus stop or the end-of-day ache of your foot arch as it screamed out for some support.
Fifteen years on, changing fashions and an increased desire for comfort means I have become an almost-exclusive trainer wearer day-to-day. Trainers are comfortable, long-lasting, waterproof and provide a good amount of space between me and the filthy floor of my beloved London.
Big Topshop, downstairs. Who else remembers the smell of the cafe?
Cutting edge fashion, in every local shopping mall. I still think the non-secular rebrand was a mistake.
Alexa Chung modeling flats with cat ears. I think I had a pair of dupes like this from Primark.
I was first introduced to the Rothy’s brand by friend of Factory Nicola Becerra, when she wore a pair to an event we were co-hosting with Sourcerie. When asked about them, she informed me the chic, pointy flats she was wearing were a) made from recycled plastic bottles and b) could be put in the washing machine. I was immediately bought into the brand. Could I be convinced to re-embrace the ballet flat in 2024?
Size selection on the PDP
Fast forward a few months and I had surprised even myself at my level of self-restraint in not making a purchase. Instead, I had asked my parents for a pair of their best-selling The Point II flats in Lollipop Red for Christmas. How festive, I thought! I tore into the simple, recyclable packaging in a post-turkey sandwich haze on Boxing Day, pulled out the shoes and put one on my foot. Or, I tried to. The only way to get the shoe on was to scrunch my toes and arch my foot. ‘True to size’ the website had claimed. That’s when I looked at the box. My sweet mother had purchased me an American size 7.5 - a UK size 5.5. Back into the box they went.
Looking at the PDP, I can see the problem. Whilst the URL denotes we are on the UK version of the site, the sizing chart on the PDP always defaults to US sizing with a small and difficult-to-see caret allowing you to manually switch to UK or other country-specific sizing.
My suggestion would be for Rothy’s to look into the viability of dynamically updating the default sizing to align with the market a customer is visiting from, and perhaps make the caret that indicates different size charts more noticeable. A UK customer shopping on a site with an /en-gb/ URL and transacting in GBP is likely to assume that the sizing is also UK specific.
Delivery, Exchanges & Returns.
Not willing to do a Hans Christian Andersen ugly-sister and cut off my toes, we resolved the shoes needed to go back. Rothy’s clearly states that ‘holiday purchases’ are eligible for return until the end of January. (Top marks to Rothy’s, any brand not offering this as standard really missing the mark in 2025.) Unfortunately, the shoes had come all the way from America and so a return or an exchange would likely take some time and I was impatient to start 2025 in my new ballet pumps era. I was also sad to think that these shoes, made out of recycled plastic bottles, would be making their way back across the Atlantic by air or sea because of an easily-fixed UX problem.
In fairness, Rothy’s do list one store on their store-locator in the UK: their concession at Liberty’s. I will never be sad to have to go to Liberty’s, even if it means contending with every single tourist in London and TikTokers doorstepping you for interviews. However, though it is listed on the Rothy’s store locator I learned from the home-page that the concession was a pop-up and the Liberty website only boasted a very small selection of the full product range, not including the shoes I wanted. Bon voyage to the shoes, then. I would simply re-order a new pair in the correct size. They arrived less than five working days later and I would share a photo, but we don’t post free foot content on Offcuts.
My thoughts here are: would it have been useful to highlight whether a store branch or concession accepts exchanges and returns made online? I wasn’t able to find this information on the website and so my mother must now make a pilgrimage to a drop-off-point or worse, a post office.
A pop-up suggests Rothy’s are exploring the viability of a permanent UK presence. Perhaps, if and when that time comes, they could invest in a similar technology to Jigsaw that allows customers to establish where their nearest store is, and whether the product they are looking for is available in stock in their size?
Onsite Search.
Once I’d started down this rabbit-hole of the Rothy’s customer experience, I took a further look at their website - not to pick holes, but because it’s a fantastic example of a great e-commerce experience that could still be better. Let’s take their search, which my browser extension suggests is powered by Constructor.io:
A search for ‘returns’ immediately redirects me to the returns page. A great start, and a feature of most search platforms that is under-utilized - but I almost missed this feature because the auto-suggest menu only displays popular product search terms and, for reasons that will remain a mystery to us all, wristlet bags.
Longer-tail search queries also fall a little flat: my search for ‘size 7 women’s flats’ returns a just 7 products, including one pair of children’s shoes and one pair of men’s.
In my previous career as a solutions consultant, what I’m doing here is known as ‘search-shaming’ so let me be clear: I’m not attempting to shame anyone, least of all Rothy’s, simply highlight that it’s not always enough to invest in an enterprise search tool. You may need to fine-tune it, switch on certain features or improve the quality of your product data for it to work effectively.
Reviews.
Rothy’s utilizes a super-engaged customer base and YotPo to power UGC and reviews. The reviews widget is placed well below the fold, which means they can get away with using large product images and displaying a higher number of reviews on the page without things seeming crowded. I really like the way the reviews highlight specific concerns a customer had, making it easy to scan for a review that assuages a customer’s specific concerns.
Brand USPs.
Having recently designed and launched a new site for a client who wanted to very clearly educate the potential customer about the virtues of their product, I am really impressed with how Rothy’s communicates their USPs.
Even offsite their meta-descriptions promote the brand positioning statement super clearly:
Their sustainability messaging is present on the homepage and across the site without needing to be their central tenet, with a lot of additional informative content in their sustainability section if you’re interested:
The main things Rothy’s wants you to understand about their product are reiterated on the PDP with simple but playful iconography:
They utilise press feedback from trusted sources aligned with their customer base on the PDP further highlight that this product is used and loved by many, and their USPs are genuine:
Product Upsell & Cross Sell.
Rothy’s ensures there are no dead ends on-site, even when you hit a 404 page. Generic product recommendations are present on every page, with a record of your recently viewed products available in your account section.
Rothy’s also sell kid’s shoes, and have an effective but unobtrusive way of letting you know that they have a matching kids pair available in the pattern you’re looking at by slotting this into the ‘You May Also Like’ recommendations on the PDP.
If you’re coming from the opposite direction, they have a great upsell feature on the kids PDP. I like that this feature only exists in this direction, so that it doesn’t alienate shoppers who aren’t interested in kids' clothing (or who wouldn’t spend £69 on a pair of shoes for a child.)
Conclusion.
So that’s my two/three/fifteen cents on the Rothy’s site. Somehow I’ve managed to spend all this time exploring and still haven’t purchased a second pair for me or a first pair for my niece so that we can match. Given the great work they are doing, and the enticing nature of the brand, I imagine it’s only going to be a matter of time.
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