GUESS Eliminates the Guesswork in Delivering Optimal Shopping Experiences

An antiquated image management system, incompatible with modern browsers, was making it increasingly difficult for GUESS to deliver an exceptional user experience to the thousands of shoppers that use its website each day. After discovering on WebPageTest.org how Cloudinary optimizes images and minimizes page load time, GUESS made the switch. With greater automation and continued technological innovation, GUESS’s creative studio, merchandising team, and developers gained greater efficiency and organization in the workflow, while significantly improving performance for even the most image-rich pages.

ABOUT

GUESS

GUESS? Inc. designs, markets, distributes, and licenses a lifestyle collection of contemporary apparel, denim, handbags, watches, eyewear, footwear, and other related consumer products. GUESS products are distributed through branded GUESS stores, as well as department and specialty stores around the world, and via e-commerce sites available to 55 countries. GUESS websites act as virtual storefronts that both sell their products and promote their brands. These sites showcase GUESS products in an easy-to-navigate experience, allowing customers to see and purchase from its collections of apparel and accessories.

THE CHALLENGE

Modernizing Image Management

For years, GUESS was relying on Adobe Scene7 to manage images for its online store. However, Scene7, a Flash-reliant product, made workflows and modern technology updates more challenging. With modern browsers phasing out Flash, GUESS developers struggled to deliver the high-quality web experience it wanted to offer customers.

But that wasn’t the only problem. “Even before browsers stopped supporting Flash, we had many concerns about image optimization, page speed, and overall bloat that the system was adding,” says Sasha Mattison, Senior Frontend Developer and UX Manager at GUESS. “Optimized images were often heavier than the originals we uploaded.”

The system GUESS used was so volatile that it created regular bottlenecks. Image uploads failed, and photo editors had to crop photos with extra white space to ensure they’d appear appropriately on the site. Sometimes images wouldn’t look as high fidelity as the original once rendered on the web.

These challenges weren’t just a big deal for the development team. They frustrated potential customers as well. Heavier images meant slower page load times, and unnecessary bandwidth usage by visitors. “Optimizing images is important when people don’t have unlimited data,” Mattison adds. “We didn’t want our customers to incur unnecessary data charges or go over their monthly limits.”

In assessing its site performance on WebPageTest.org, the GUESS development team discovered Cloudinary and saw firsthand how its image optimization solution could significantly improve page performance. After learning more about the capabilities and potential business value of Cloudinary, the GUESS CTO made the switch.

THE CLOUDINARY SOLUTION

Simplified Workflow and Improved Customer Experience

GUESS did a global migration, replacing Adobe Scene7 with Cloudinary within its workflow. “From day one, the support we’ve gotten from Cloudinary has been amazing,” says Lidia Rojas, Senior Frontend Developer at GUESS. “We have had so much guidance and expert advice from the Cloudinary team, making what could be a complicated transition a great, seamless experience.”

Once images are shot in the GUESS photo studio or created in Photoshop, they’re easily uploaded in bulk via FTP directly to G-Image — a custom solution that, via APIs, acts as a conduit to Cloudinary. This process allows images to be sorted and labeled properly. “The ability to organize in Cloudinary is so much more robust than our previous solution, which really improves our day-to-day workflows,” she adds.

Then using Cloudinary automation to adjust image URLs, GUESS is able to ensure that all images are optimized for size, format, and render properly, regardless of the device or browser. GUESS uploads a single version of each image and uses Cloudinary to automatically scale images based on viewport, browser, and other factors without much manual intervention. This is much easier than the previous solution, which required extra steps from the photo studio, such as custom cropping and padding, to ensure images displayed properly.

GUESS also improved performance of product detail pages (PDPs) by replacing two solutions, Scene7 for desktop and Swiper as a mobile touch slider, with the Cloudinary Product Gallery. “We were frustrated that we needed two different products for what we were trying to accomplish as Scene7 wasn’t touch-friendly. And though Scene7 did move to HTML5, it still fell short because you could see all the pixels building together as the page loaded,” says Mattison.

The vast majority of customers (76%) look at products on smartphones, so when GUESS redesigned its viewer, they wanted to deliver the best mobile experience possible. However, the company also had to take into consideration that many customers completed their purchase on the desktop. Cloudinary’s auto-responsive Product Gallery provided GUESS the flexibility needed to deliver the same, high-quality user experience, regardless of device.

Using the Cloudinary Product Gallery enables GUESS to ensure that image quality looks excellent. “For the image to show up, with speed on mobile and look great, makes our users feel confident in their purchase and drives them to add to the bag,” she says. “With our new PDP viewer developed by Cloudinary, this is evident.

THE RESULTS

Performance Optimization and Increased Conversions

Ensuring the right resolution, format, and quality of image is delivered, regardless of the device or bandwidth a customer is using, has resulted in significant performance improvements and a better customer experience. “That’s a priority for us. We are nothing if we don’t have great visuals. And with Cloudinary we are confident that our customers are always getting the best experience,” shares Mattison.

GUESS also reduced page load time and realized significant improvements in performance of its product listing and detail pages. As soon as the GUESS site switched over to Cloudinary, the company saw an increase in conversions.

The support from the Cloudinary team also played an essential role in GUESS achieving the results it sought. With Cloudinary’s support, GUESS developers customized the store’s image viewer on product detail pages, achieving the desired results faster than the company anticipated.

Agility is vital in other aspects too. GUESS has been able to streamline its internal workflows with Cloudinary’s bulk upload and cache clearing capabilities, and eliminate the need for manual workflows. These features helped GUESS launch new products and deploy creative, interactive landing pages. The new workflow increased productivity by saving hours of time throughout the work week.

“Cloudinary specializes in images. Learning from, and working with, a company that is an image expert provided us with knowledge and capabilities that we didn’t have on our own. It would have been expensive and resource-intensive to train developers and accomplish what we’ve done so quickly with Cloudinary.” says Lidia Rojas, Senior Frontend Developer at GUESS.