Thursday, July 17, 2008

Searching through the Jungle of the Online Store

My friend Joanna Pineda wrote a funny blog post about the failure of Levi's site search to adequately market their products.

She has a good point; there are numerous times when I have found myself frustrated by online store searches. My two points that I'll add to hers:

  1. Country of Manufacture should always be included in the keyword search, and displayed in the description. Sometimes it is not, so I am left to wonder. And if I am looking for Made in USA items, you've lost me.
  2. If an item has been discontinued or no longer available, I'd like to know it, please. I encountered this on the Old Navy Store. I ordered a sweater and loved it. I went back to order another one and couldn't find it. But as I am database savvy (hee-hee), I was able to use the database ID and construct the URL, and that is when I confirmed that the product had been removed from the database. But I wish that they have kept it there with a big red "No longer available" on it, and maybe some links to similar products. That would have, perhaps, sold me a different sweater. As it went, I left the site.

1 comment:

Joanna Pineda said...

This is Joanna and I could not agree more with your comments.

I ordered a pair of pants from Nordstrom. I love them and want another pair, but now I can't find the pants. Heck, I can't even access my order history to click back to the original product. What if I were able to go back to my original order, and reorder? And if the product wasn't available, perhaps the store could suggest another pair?

Is that too much to ask? I want to buy another pair of skinny black pants!!!!