I’ve currently undertaken a 12 month placement with the fast fashion brand Boohoo, and am part of the Ecommerce team. I sourced this placement myself looking on many job websites, finding job specifications that I loved the sound of, and thought would highlight my skills and qualifications. My dream place to work has always been somewhere like Boohoo as I wanted to be part of the fast pace and exciting industry. In order to get this placement, I attended an Assessment Day which consisted of teamwork, an interview and a presentation in front of Boohoo’s HR and E-commerce team. At Boohoo my role was to look after the websites for several different countries for both the women’s/men’s section on boohoo.com. I controlled all the content from the menus to the homepage, basically everything you see onsite. Throughout the 12 months I gained more responsibities and made decisions based on the websites. This reflective journal will outline all the responsibilities, tasks and daily duties I’d complete, the new skills I learnt/expanded on throughout this opportunity, how these differ and change as the months go on. Below is the presentation I gave on my assessment day at Boohoo:
3 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
3 MONTHS INTO PLACEMENT:
Within the first 3 months of my placement I was given tasks to allow me to understand how boohoo ran as a business, my role/duties included the following tasks:
SCREEN GRABS OF COMPETITORS- analysing the visuals competitors were using to catch the eye of consumers, see what promotions they were pushing to establish whether boohoo were matching this or were advertising an even better deal-this completed daily then a summary is sent out to the team.
WEATHER REPORT- completed every 2 weeks. I collated and summarised the weather forecast for the next two weeks, then sent this out to Ecommerce and marketing teams, as the weather would determine what products we’d push on the website and socials.
KEY DATES- completed weekly, in preparation for the upcoming date this information would have been sent out weeks before, to allow departments such as Ecommerce and marketing to prepare. This email contains information on the upcoming bank holidays for different regions, this would have to be mentioned onsite too, due to it possibly effecting deliveries. Additionally, I’d mention any important dates coming up e.g. international women’s day, that we could incorporate within the website or social media.
HOTJAR- completed weekly. A website Boohoo use to show customers responses/opinions on the website. The Hotjar website collates the percentage of negative responses, neutral and positive. We’d send out the comments/responses the customers left in an email, allowing us to make improvements to the website, to see what customer’s liked/didn’t like and if there were any issues with the website the customers were having that the ecommerce team weren’t aware of.
SPOOFING- I had to spoof the sites. This meant thoroughly checking the different regions/countries sites, making sure the correct promotion is advertised on all the touchpoints (topstrip, kazstrip, desktop, mobile, homeslot 6, call out message) and to make sure the promotion was working on the correct products showing correct mark down. Spoofing also involved making sure the correct splashes (artwork) was on the page for that week, as there’s weekly updates, and checking they were all linking to the correct category, or that the link was broken.
SERVICE AND PAYMENT PROPOSITIONS- This excel document had to be updated every start of the month- this included looking at competitors to see what return/ delivery options they’re providing e.g. how long the customer has to return a piece of clothing, how long it takes for refund to go back in bank and what options they have to return e.g. the places to drop the parcel off at. Additionally, the payment part was looking what payment methods competitors were using.
BEAUTY RESEARCH TASK- I was set a research task, as boohoo were about to relaunch their beauty page as a more prominent feature on their website, as they were adding a landing page dedicated to beauty and a new beauty menu tab. To assess how competitors pushed/displayed beauty on their websites. I created a presentation that I presented to the ecommerce senior executives, I pitched my own ideas too.
3 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
GDPR- I was in charge of the GDPR doc, when there was a change or update made to any sites, I’d log this in the doc and take screenshots of the changes as evidence ensuring all sites were updated with correct date and version number.
BEGINNING TO SCHEDULING- At first, I was put on the smaller regions that weren’t viewed as key regions so didn’t have as many visitors, the first regions I was put on is Scandi, which included Norway, Denmark and Finland. For these sites I’d update the splashes (artwork for category) on the homepage for both men’s/women’s, update the promo artwork to match the new creative. I’d brief in the lower boxes if there were any influencers going on these sites and do any promotional changes that came through.
MORNING CHECKS- Arrive at work an hour early, complete a full site check of all the regions, making sure everything is correct.
After 3 months in my placement I feel comfortable with all the research tasks that are done regularly, I’m being introduced in more depth to the software used to schedule the website, this is still a bit daunting as I’ve never used a software like this before so will have to learn from scratch, this is quite challenging, I’m still asking a lot of questions as I don’t feel comfortable just scheduling on my own yet. Within the first week of starting my placement I was lucky enough to attend some social events allowing me to get to know my team more which helped me settle in. When training on different tasks, different team members taught different topics, allowing me to be one-to-one and ask questions. My favourite tasks at this point are the research ones, as I’m enjoying the beauty presentation I’m creating. The areas I’d love to develop within the next 3 months is being confident scheduling the regions I’m on, using the software's.
6 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT:
SCHEDULING- I was confident scheduling different regions, before the 6 month mark they’d already put me on a key/big regions, I was currently looking after Ireland and Mens uk site, these were classed as key/big regions, I was also controlling/making changes on the Europe site too.
Men’s UK is a busy region to look after, you have to be on the ball as many changes come through to increase sales and compete with competitors. When on this region there are many peaks that need to be scheduled, which means throughout the day there are lots of different offers being pushed, can be up to 6 offers a day.
6 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
PREMIER DAY- Boohoo create this experience called premier day, for customers who have already bought premier delivery, which is free next day delivery for a year, and customers who have yet to purchase premier delivery. Therefore two different experiences needed to be created for each of the two customer groups, as the offers being pushed were completely different. For example on the homepage for customers who already had premier delivery Ireland was pushing 30% off everything, then the homepage for non-premier customers, people who haven’t purchased the premier delivery yet the offer was, 25% off with premier at 9.99 euros (instead of the normal price of 11.99 euros).
The first time I scheduled this I made a couple of mistakes, such as the ranking of different slots which is the content consumers see, showing wrong offer on some touchpoints. I learnt to make sure I was spoofing using the correct setting on storefront using this platform we called ‘staging’ which helps us to check our sites whilst scheduling/amending things before it goes onto live site. I also learnt to triple check everything and to ask lots more questions when I feel slightly unsure about something, as this was all a new type of scheduling to me.
My first time scheduling premier day didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped, I asked whether I could have another go at it, as I’d completed a full training day on how to schedule premier day, therefore felt a lot more comfortable. The second time went perfect and there was no amends.
ON CALL- consists of taking your laptop home after work and working till 10pm and throughout the weekend too. This was in case any changes needed to be made on the website due to sales needing to be increased. This also included answering customer service emails for example, why isn’t a promo code working on a particular product, we’d look into this and amend it or explain why it isn’t working e.g. it may exclude all sale products. On call I learnt a lot; how important it is to be efficient, how to work well under pressure and tight time scales. Whilst on call you also had to look after the other brands such as boohooMAN, Misspap, Karen Millen, Coast and NastyGal. This was challenging as the backend (the software) we used to schedule the website was different for each brand, therefore you had to be attentive using your skills to problem solve.
PROMOTIONS AND CODES- A daily task where marketing would request promotional codes that would need making to be distributed for students such as Unidays, Student Beans or influencer codes for sponsored posts. The student codes were made so it can only be used once by one person, whereas the influencer codes can be used unlimited times.
Within these past 3 months I’ve learnt so much, things are really beginning to click into place for me and make sense. I feel confident in scheduling my regions daily and don’t need much assistance at all. I’m beginning to get more responsibities too, being in charge and control of bigger regions which I’m really enjoying. Going forward I’d like to have more insights on new tasks the ecommerce may take on and how these begin to get implemented.
6 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
9 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT:
SCHEDULING- within the team we often rotate what regions we look after to get fresh eyes and ideas on how to make the front end of that website the best it can be. I was placed on the regions, USA, Canada, Spain and Italy. This was by far the most challenging set of regions I had to look after, as the USA was one of their biggest regions so there was a lot of changes to be made frequently, I had to be on the ball, making sure I was extremely organized, making lists to make sure my priorities for US were clear. Additionally, Spain and Italy were translated sites so when scheduling you had to be more intricate to make sure that translations were correct, I’d use the translation doc continuously to send off the new translations I needed for the week. This was a lot more time consuming, meaning time management was very important.
BEAUTY- beauty is a section that’s going to experience a massive growth in popularity for fast fashion brands such as boohoo. I was asked to assist boohoo improve their beauty section. This included attending meetings with senior members of staff, people from Buying and merchandising, visual merchandisers, SEO, marketing and obviously ecommerce. Attending the meetings at first, I was nervous as I didn’t know what to expect, I made sure I was prepared bringing notes with me to pitch new ideas I thought could work. The first aspect they wanted to focus on was the menu. The research I conducted at the start of placement was useful as I founded that a couple of competitors split their menu into subcategories such as beauty as a header, makeup, hair care and brands. I pitched this idea. This is now implemented on the site.
Within this beauty project, I worked alongside different departments which I really enjoyed, as I worked with visual merchandising very closely, myself and a member from this team came up with ways we could easily integrate all the changes so that teams could easily keep track of the updates.
The beauty buyer suggested we use specific cat banners, {this being the rectangle image behind all the different brands}. I oversaw implementing these on to all the sites for all regions.
I really enjoyed working on the beauty project, it gave me insight on how they implement changes to the way they show products they sell and how all the different departments integrate and work together to form the best customer experience possible. I enjoyed the responsibilities this project brought and making decisions on new ideas we should implement.
Within the past 3 months having the chance to work alongside different teams and converse with different levels of management have allowed me to really develop my communications skills when translating my ideas, making sure the explanations I give are clear and using relevant Jargon. My presentational skills came into practice allowing me to pitch my research, these tasks really helped push my confidence. My time management skills also developed as all my tasks had to be completed to a certain time/day whether that was for a meeting or a time it had to go on site, this also enhanced my prioritising.
9 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
9 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
12 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT:
DAY TO DAY- picking up my morning checks so any improvements that have been flagged on earlies for my regions, checking my emails from the night before as changes may have come through on call, attending morning catch up’s with the team and managers, outlining different tasks. The seniors explain any more tasks we need to do for the day. I work through all the daily tasks, change any promotions and schedule for tomorrow. Once all my regions have been scheduled for the next day I spoof, checking my work is correct and no links are broken. I complete codes for the day such as Unidays and Student Beans, or any influencer if they are doing a sponsored post on Instagram. Therefore organization, time management and attention to detail are the key skills I used daily.
Additionally, there are monthly menu updates, for example all clothing get updated in accordance to the season or whether there are any events e.g. Christmas, new year’s or valentines etc.
Research tasks are completed regularly to acknowledge what competitors are doing well, that we’d use as inspiration, for example I was on USA one of the key events that came up was the superbowl after this event passed I collated screenshots of what competitors did this year that we could use as inspiration for next year, the presentation for this research is below:
12 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
12 MONTHS IN TO PLACEMENT ...
For the Super Bowl this year, I worked with the graphic designer to come up with artwork that would match the rest of the site as well as being obvious that there was Super Bowl deals on the site. I came up with the phrase 'Touch down! score 50% off everything" which was used on the live site. My work is shown on screenshot below:
Research task based on payment methods, seeing how competitors were pushing payment options such as "Afterpay", and present screenshots of the touchpoints they were using to promote payment methods:
Below is another example of a research task I completed, the ecommerce team always uses messaging to promote an offer, however there are generic ones that boohoo always seem to go for. They challenged me to create a PowerPoint of possible messaging ideas we could use to promote offers. At the end of the PowerPoint I listed my suggestions I thought could work. I sent this presentation to the team for inspiration when they were briefing in artwork for new offers and messages.
WHAT I'VE LEARNT:
Throughout my placement year I’ve acquired so much new knowledge as before this opportunity I’d never done anything to do with ecommerce in the detail I’ve experienced over this 12-month period. I’ve learnt how to navigate my way through software confidently such as Demandware, where everything is scheduled for websites. I’ve picked up key touchpoints big fast fashion businesses use to promote their offers to persuade consumers to purchase, such as, where the offers they will be placed and advertised on site. I’ve gained knowledge on what fast fashion businesses aims and objectives are.
I’ve learnt I’m a good problem solver, this is definitely a skill I’ve acquired on placement, as I used problem solving every day, e.g. if I’d scheduled something onsite for a certain day but when spoofing it wasn’t showing, I’d have to work my way back and try to understand why it wasn’t showing by trying different things. Additionally, I learnt to prioritise more effectively, which helped as my strong skills were already time management and organization. I’ve gained a lot more confidence and now understand what it really means to work as a team, with communication being a huge part, as this business is very fast pace, tasks had to be completed within a certain time frame and sometimes as soon as possible, therefore communicating whether you would have enough capacity to complete these tasks was extremely important as failing completion could be detrimental to the business or rushing it could lead to mistakes. Therefore, delegation to other team members who had more capacity was also a skill I became more comfortable with.
One of my weakest skills is presentations. However, during my placement, I developed these skills, after completing a presentation training session. Within this training session we broke down the most important aspects of presenting and the aspects we struggle with whilst presenting, such as eye contact and slowing your speech down. Throughout the training we’d do a range of spontaneous presentations helping me build massively on these skills and gaining confidence.
When working at boohoo I learnt a lot about the business such as the personality they portray, the culture, relationship they want with consumers, physique and self-image.
Using kapferer brand identity prism boohoo is the below:
I learnt they’re extremely competitive within the fast fashion industry, each day they check the offers/promotions competitors are offering and offer a better discount to consumers.
In conclusion, this placement has strengthened many of my skill’s I already had, but also enabled me to develop new skills, I think due to boohoo being a very fast paced and high-pressure business I learnt these very quickly. I’ve never used or edited HTML before this placement but now feel very comfortable at editing websites. The main skill I wanted to improve was presentational skills, which I feel I definitely strengthened. I loved working at boohoo, it has cemented the fact that I definitely want to pursue a career in the creative fashion industry.
In my final year I want to develop my research skills even more as I now understand how to collate relevant information for a certain topic and analyse this accordingly in a very detailed way. I feel this will help me with my university projects. With having an insight to the fashion industry I’ll now be able to determine the key information to make a good research project, knowing what the industry look for. Also learning a lot about brand identity on my placement will help me create strong, consistent creatives depending on what my work is based on, which is an important skill to have whilst studying fashion promotion as it will help me express the meaning to my work. I’d like to develop skills you need for teamwork, as I’m good at communicating, listening and making an input but I’d like to take more of a lead role when discussing tasks which will be important when completing the fashion enterprise unit as its mainly group work.