Bebe Perks Up its Mobile Payments Credibility With New Online Store, Loyalty Program

Kudos have to go out to bebe, a company that has learned the value of the online market. Learned it well enough, in fact, to shutter all its brick-and-mortar operations and focus solely on the online. That may not have been the best move going forward, but it certainly shows a commitment to the online. Now, it’s showing the fruits of that commitment with its newly-revamped online store and its matching loyalty program.

Bebe hooked up with Branded Online in order to build the new store and loyalty program, and it’s delivering quite a punch in the process. Focused on personalization, but with a healthy dose of discovery options thrown in. The new store is designed with mobile in mind, as more shoppers increasingly pick up the mobile option, and analytics are baked right into the site’s overall operation to take advantage of the value inherent therein.

The updated loyalty program, meanwhile—dubbed clubbebe—attempts to play both sides of the market at once, offering attractive offers to new customers while also recognizing return and long-term customers as well.

Branded Online CEO Jan Nugent noted “Cultivating a successful consumer lifestyle brand in the modern era requires not only astute vision and compelling product, but also personalized and connected shopping experiences, anchored by sophisticated technology. With its intuitive design and newly implemented, data-driven framework, bebe is well-positioned to scale quickly and deliver exponential growth in the online channel.”

It might not exactly have been a good move to completely shutter all the brick-and-mortar outlets; after all, we know that Generation Z has a surprising fondness for the real world. However, that might actually have been too long term for bebe to focus on right now. With the millennials still quite firmly in charge, and poised to stay that way for maybe another 10 years or so, Generation Z is still a thing to be planned for rather than addressed.

Online is key right now, and bebe is pushing that accordingly. If it’s not planning a return to physical storefronts, though, it may be poised to lose more ground than it might expect.