Faber relaunches website for 'luxury brand' sales

Faber has relaunched its website to offer a greater focus on selling books  and a "luxury brand" experience.

The new site, at www.faber.co.uk, has been set up with the partnership of e-commerce agency Lewis, and will allow users to create wishlists of titles to share with friends, as well as featuring product bundling  and using PayPal for sales.

Matt Haslum, Faber's consumer marketing director, said: "Our strategy for the new Faber site was driven by adding value for our readers and this informed all parts of the planning and build process. We wanted to work with an experienced e-commerce-led digital agency like Lewis, who have extensive luxury brand experience, so we could develop a high value aesthetic more akin to a lifestyle site than a traditional publisher site coupled with a quality user experience and slick functionality."

The new site follows Faber's announcement last week that it was creating a new division, Faber Press, led by former digital head Henry Volans. Faber c.e.o. Stephen Page told The Bookseller that part of the impetus for creating the division, which will combine arts publishing with digital strategy, was to create new routes to market. He said: "It’s harder for literature to find people, not because of a lack of readers, but because discoverability is harder online . . . we used to have six high street book chains and now we have Waterstones, which does a great job, but [it] has to do its own thing. So, we need to build our own channel. We want as many channels as possible, and one of those is ourselves."

Faber has also set up a physical pop-up shop in London's Cecil Court for the run-up to Christmas.

Other publishers are also developing their direct to consumer strategies, with HarperCollins relaunching its own website in August selling books directly to readers.

Page said of the new site: "We set out to build a site unlike other publishers' sites with readers at its heart, and more akin to lifestyle brands. The team delivered on this brief brilliantly and I hope our visitors will feel the same."