Zara’s website is a confounding headache — but it’s also the secret to its success

The disorienting design of the website is also intentional, cultural strategist Tariro Makoni told Business Insider.

It’s reminiscent of the experience of browsing luxury brands online, she says, where customers looking to add a ready-to-wear item to their basket often have to find a boutique where the product is available first.

“You have to go through that same kind of hunt,” Makoni says, referring to Zara’s site.

This makes it feel like Zara has “invested a lot in the editorial,” which in turn makes it seem as if the “clothes must be better than they actually are,” she adds.

Cornering the luxury market

After experiencing boom times in the post-pandemic years, luxury brands with greater exposure to middle-income shoppers — Burberry and Gucci, for example — have started to struggle. At the same time, ultra-luxury players such as Hermès are still thriving.

Federica Carlotto, director of the luxury business masters program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, tells BI: “Consumers will tend to go either super high-end and then buy way less, or relate to brands that offer them decent quality, but the possibility to play around and consume because it’s not that expensive.”

But Zara has also benefited from shoppers becoming increasingly comfortable mixing high-luxury items with more mass-market brands.

Sokolova said that over the past decade or so, it’s become increasingly acceptable to pair luxury leather handbags with outfits from Zara.

Still, Zara’s rise might not be all bad news for the luxury sector.

Makoni says its luxury-adjacent image — bolstered by its confounding website and campaigns with purveyors of luxury like Crawford and Kaia — serves as an opening for younger generations to start exploring luxury retail: “The Zara customer when she’s 22 could very well be the Saint Laurent customer at 35.”