Wealthy Online Shoppers Rank Top Fashion Designer Websites; Ralph Lauren Attracts Most Frequent Visits But Bally, Chanel and Tory Burch Earn Highest Overall Rankings

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Jul 14, 2011) - Shoppers earning at least $150,000 a year reveal specific likes and dislikes about websites operated by 24 of the world's leading fashion design houses in the new 2011 Luxury Online Customer Experience Index survey conducted by the independent and objective New York City-based Luxury Institute.

Bally earns the highest overall composite score, followed closely by Chanel and Tory Burch.

Affluent consumers rated sites based on visual appeal, navigability, product selection, use of images and text in helping them better understand product features, security of personal data, ease of purchasing and access to customer service.

"Many luxury retailers execute good online experiences while others show dramatic room for improvement in specific areas like navigability or ease of use," says Luxury Institute CEO Milton Pedraza. "Luxury consumers are the only true judges of online customer experiences. They are eagerly waiting for the first luxury fashion brand that will deliver a seamless and fantastic multichannel experience."

Wealthy shoppers considered a total of 24 fashion design sites:

For greater details about wealthy customer preferences on all criteria for each of the fashion designer websites, visit LuxuryInstitute.com.

About Luxury Institute (www.LuxuryInstitute.com)
The Luxury Institute is the objective and independent global voice of the high net-worth consumer. The Institute conducts extensive and actionable research with wealthy consumers about their behaviors and attitudes on customer experience best practices. In addition, we work closely with top-tier luxury brands to successfully transform their organizational cultures into more profitable customer-centric enterprises. Our Luxury CRM Culture consulting process leverages our fact-based research and enables luxury brands to dramatically Outbehave as well as Outperform their competition. The Luxury Institute also operates LuxuryBoard.com, a membership-based online research portal, and the Luxury CRM Association, a membership organization dedicated to building customer-centric luxury enterprises.