Saks Fifth Avenue has jumped on the blog bandwagon with The Saks Point Of View.  This blog profiles designers, trends, innovative designs and everyday life in New York City to showcase the brand’s unique perspective and take on fashion.

Launching blogs is nothing new for luxury department stores, as Barneys launched its B-Sides blog last year and Bergdorf Goodman launched its 5th at 58th blog last May.  Saks POV is similar to these blogs in content, as all the blogs feature designer interviews and showcase items that can be bought at their stores.

What makes Saks POV a little different from the rest is that it’s a mix of insider information, branding and editorial-style writing — sandwiching it in between BSides‘s casual and personalized writing and 5th and 58th‘s formal and magazine-style articles.

According to Denise Incandela, the president of Saks Direct, Saks’ foray into editorial writing and blogging is a response to customer demand:

“We find customers respond very well to that, they look to us as a fashion authority for that. If you look at us now versus two years ago, you will see a big shift there. It’s very well received by customers, and we measure that in terms of traffic as well as sales conversions.”

Moreover, Saks POV (saksPOV.com) has its own domain for its blog, while B-Sides (bsides.barneys.com) and 5th and 58th (blog.bergdorfgoodman.com) are on subdomains of their brands’ main sites.  This suggests that Saks is intending that its blog go beyond being an extension of its brand, perhaps taking on a persona of its own.

With Saks’s new blog and its recent incorporation of customer reviews on its website — letting customers have a voice and an opinion about the items they like and dislike — it seems that Saks is truly trying to attend to its customers’ needs and wants online.

Good Customer Service Is IN, Poorly Designed Blogs Are OUT

We can tell you right now, Saks’s new blog is no NOWNESS or Club Monaco Culture Club. While many luxury brands and retailers have been slow in joining the online realm, they’re making up for it in launching their own content and killer creative designs. But Saks Point Of View falls short.  Because of the wealth of resources available to them, big names can no longer cite lack of resources for poorly designed blogs. The sky really is the limit today, especially when you have the money to invest in professional web designers, photographers and bloggers.

We hate to be the mean girl that points out the boring/ugly design Saks has chosen for its blogging debut.  We honestly expected more from Saks.  Like the perfect food and wine pairing, we expected great content and functionality to be paired with great design. We wonder why Saks store events, store locations and online shopping areas are so poorly integrated into this design.  We also wonder why Saks followed Bergdorf’s lead in disabling comments on their blog.  While you can share information via Twitter and Facebook, it appears that they don’t want to be bothered by readers’ comments (which starkly contrasts with the goals of customer service and social media).

Hopefully Saks POV will evolve in a way that makes its content and its visual elements equally aesthetically pleasing.  After all, that is one of the beauties of blogging — if you have great content and a supportive readership, it will only get better from here.

To take it a step further, if you launch a blog on a separate domain, it should be used to drive traffic and engagement back to the main SAKS properties.  The main point of a branded blog is ENGAGEMENT. And for Saks, that does equate to online engagement followed by customer purchases, no?

Saks should take a look at NOWNESS and Culture Club. Though they are pure inspiration and editorial style writing,  they drive us to the brands’ sites or deeper into their website if the content is connected.