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Why Ecommerce Is Not Ready For My Daughter Or Me
By Kimberly Krause Berg, Sat Dec 10th
As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often at mylocal mall. It occurred to me that the shopping experience formy daughter is attractive to her not because she wants to spendmy money, but because the experience of buying itself is so richto the senses. For example, when we enter her favorite stores the first thingthat hits me is the music. If it's her kind of music, we're inthe right place for her. If the signs near the front of thestore have sale prices and notices about markdowns, we're in theright place for me. Immediately there are two user needs met.Mother's and daughter's. Next, for me, is how products are displayed. I look fororderliness and logical groupings such as jeans in one place,the teeny tiny things she calls shirts in another place,"hoodies" in every possible color in another section. I alsolook for clean dressing rooms and clues as to how many items shecan load up on before she meets their limit. Meanwhile, she'slooking at colors, sizes, textures, and styles. She glides alongin her beat up sneakers touching the items as she passes by. Herhands drift along piles of sweaters as if walking through afield of daisies. A certain texture will stop her dead in hertracks and I'll get that "Mom, look!" expression from her.
It strikes me that some of the stores she insists we stop intodon't offer much for me to do or look at. The décor is dark,black, and limited to a few racks mixed with hanging things onthe walls separated by posters of half naked teenagers standingnext to cars they can't possibly afford to buy. Clothing pricesare hidden inside sleeves. Sale signs are taboo. But the musicis hip, the salespersons are scary-looking and the smell ofleather mixed with hair gel is making my wallet itch. Theirwebsite, I bet, has but one click-path designed for teens andtheir parents must be blindfolded so as not to read the contentbefore handing over their credit card. Finally in a store where I feel welcome, my daughter is admiringthe merchandise and starting to find what she likes in her size.I'm avoiding the mirrors and marveling at the sales personnelwith their size 3 bodies, smudged eyeliner and 35 bracelets oneach wrist. For my daughter, who looks just like them, this isconfirmation she's in the right store. I, on the other hand,will stop holding in my stomach when we get back out to theparking lot, or when we grab our lattés in Starbucks on thefirst floor. While other mothers and myself are holding piles of clothes inour arms, or running back and forth to get something indifferent sizes, my mind drifts to all the ecommerce websites Ifind in search engines, but don't purchase from. For starters,most of them think I'm going to read 35 links in theirnavigation, plus their ads, before deciding which is the rightpath to follow. Some of them will tell me about one sale, but ifI want to know more, I have to figure out where they stuck thatstuff. There's nothing I can physically touch and the images areusually tiny. Sure, I can click to enlarge
but how many timeshave I done that only to find a bigger view of the same boring,unattractive picture? Most shopping carts don't give me shipping dates or availabilityinformation as I make my selections. (Just recently I orderedsomething, only to hear from the merchant via email that theirsoftware wasn't working and the color and size wasn't recorded,so they had to contact me for that information.) We assume ecommerce have functional websites. We assumeincorrectly. We assume they built them for many types ofcustomers, but again, we've assumed wrong. We assume that thetop 20 sites in search engine results are the best of the bestbased on our search keywords. That, I'm afraid, is the saddestshock of all. Top rank doesn't equal the best online experienceonce you click into that website. That part of usability wasn't tested for you by the searchengine or directory. That's not their job. My daughter looks good in everything. So did I when I was ateenager. If I still had that body I could order from anylingerie site on the Internet and feel quite sure I'd look asfantastic and sexy as their starving models do. But, I never buysexy lingerie on the Internet because quite frankly, they're notselling it to me. One look at their models, their poses, theirages and their airbrushed faces tells me their target market ismen who dream of making their women look like that too, if theyjust buy that lacey thing for them. Fortunately I have a levelheaded daughter who loves to hunt forbargains. The last time we shopped at the Mall together wasbecause I wanted to get her a gift for making the DistinguishedHonor Roll that marking period in school. She found something ather favorite teen store for under $20. We splurged at Starbuckson our favorite coffee fixes, which was the logicalchoice after doing so well at the clothing store. Online, after a sale, I'd be alone staring at my monitor at a"Thank you screen" and likely not directed to go anywhereinteresting next. This is another common ecommerce practice;dumping the customer off after the last screen of a shoppingcart. Instead, they should try suggesting a related site (viapaid sponsored link?) or a reminder to bookmark the site forlater shopping or better yet, how about a quick "Did you findwhat you were looking for?" survey. One quick question, onebutton click is all it takes to say "We hoped you like yourshopping experience but if not, please tell us how to make itbetter." This is what the cute pierced nose sales clerk said to us when Ihanded her the $20 for my daughter's new shirt. I gratefullyaccepted the receipt from the nail polished hand attached to the18 year old face with a pimple on the forehead, multi-coloredhair and glittered eye shadow. You just can't get mimic thatkind of user experience on the Internet yet.
About the author:Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner ofUsabilityEffect.com, Cre8pc.com, Cre8asiteForums.com andco-founder of Cre8asite.net. Her background in organic searchengine optimization, combined with web site usabilityconsulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
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