This is what European ecommerce sites do for Valentine’s Day

Tomorrow it’s Valentine’s Day. This is a holiday that’s celebrated in many countries across Europe. We checked some major online retailers to see if and how they changed their homepages to do something for this special day. And the result wasn’t that positive…

In the US, you’ve got days like the 4th of July or Halloween that are celebrated massively online by retailers giving discounts to customers. Of course, there’s also Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where there’s even more craziness in terms of discounts, the amount of website visitors and online revenues. In Europe, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are slowly gaining more and more ground as customers are already familiar with these days as they shop at American ecommerce sites like Amazon and Staples.

But Valentine’s Day is a day that’s being celebrated for years now in the US as well as Europe, where it actually all started in early modern England. Let’s have a look at some major online retailers in Europe to see what they do for Valentine’s Day.

Asos
When we checked out the homepage of Asos, we had a hard time finding only the slighest hint to Valentine’s Day. So we just started clicking around. When we clicked on the menu item “Outfits & Looks” we finally found where we were looking for. At this “Fashion Finder” there was some mention of a “Valentine’s Night” in the product carrousel on that page, as well as a banner for “The Valentine’s Guide”. After clicking on that image, there was a special page dedicated to this day. “Get in the V-Day mood with a flirty, girly outfit – think heart-shaped jewellery, sweeter-than-sweet dresses and the most indulgent beauty products. Warning: You might fall head over heels”, the descriptions reads. They shared outfit ideas for date night, by suggesting several dresses, bracelets, lingerie and perfume. Solid choice, but we would’ve expected maybe something more from Asos.

Bol.com
This all-round online retailer from the Netherlands often has special pages dedicated to certain themes. Sometimes it’s topical, for example if it’s winter they have a page filled with products like ice skates, blankets and mugs for hot chocolate, but they also have a place on their website for days like Valentine’s Day. This year they have collected a diverse variety of items, so every customer should find something for their significant other. They suggest perfume, books, dvd’s, games, but also gadgets, flowers and kinky 50 Shades of Grey toys for adults. But when we dig deeper into this categories, it seems they just collected their best-selling products. For example, is Sims 4 really a perfect Valentine’s gift?

Zalando
Zalando is the biggest online fashion retailer of Europe. It has dedicated online stores in Germany, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Finland. But when we checked out their homepage, we didn’t see any mention of Valentine’s Day. As a matte of fact, we had to google “Zalando Valentine’s Day” so see if they had anything prepared. Luckily, they did. Although it’s a lot of text and just too few products. The Valentine’s look “for her” only consists of shoes and dress, while “his look” consists of a pair of pants and shoes…

CDON
CDON is a popular online retailer in the Nordics, with ecommerce sites in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. They have a website dedicated to European customers as well. On this website however, we didn’t see anything slightly related to Valentine’s Day. But thanks to our friend Google, we managed to find a dedicated webpage on the Norwegian website of CDON. Here they sell perfume, chocolate fountains, teddy bears, lingerie, dvd’s and books, music, watches and even video on demand. These are the kinds of products we would like to see on an ecommerce site when it’s Valentine’s Day!

Yoox
Yoox is a very popular online store from Italy, but the group company behind it also owns several other online retailers like The Corner and ShoeScribe. It also has a mono-brand business line which includes the design, set-up and management of brands like Armani, Diesel and Valentino. When you say Italy and fashion, you’d suggest something special for Valentine’s Day. Luckily for us, Yoox didn’t just put some articles on a page called “Valentine’s Day”. They made a tool where you can find the perfect match for your partner. We like the idea very much, but again the products are seemingly choosen quite random.

Cdiscount
Cdiscount is one of France’s most popular online stores. They sell all kinds of stuff. For us, visiting this website is always a real trip. It looks messy, it seems to scream for attention and we always have a hard time to browse the website peacefully. So, we also had some problem with finding offers for Valentine’s Day. Again we had to use Google to find the Valentine’s Day page on this website. When we did, we saw some smartphones, whatches and jewelry, but also wine offers as well as gift cards and test rides. You can see they really put some effort in making this web page as well as finding some interesting and relevant products to promote.