I do a lot of online shopping. (Well, I do a lot of shopping, period).
I always prefer websites that are plainish. The have good colour pictures of the products from various views. A zoom feature (i.e. ability to see the product close up). Size guide, prices easy to fine, etc. J Crew is a good example. The new Antropologie is good too.
I really, really don’t like it when product is zooming around and I have to try to catch it to see it. I don’t like scrolling item lines that whip accross the page. Things zooming in and out of focus when you pass the mouse over them.
These ‘features’ really frustrate me and make me less likely to go back to a site, and much less likely to buy something. However, I assume that SOMEONE must like these features.
So, online shoppers, do you like these types of features when you’re trying to shop?
I agree, I like them plain & easy to navigate. For one thing, the ones with all the frou-frou extras tend to freeze up way more often, and if it gets annoying enough I’ll just leave & not buyin anything.
I don’t like the pics that woosh around. My shirts don’t need to woosh, they just need to cover my torso (and look good. But I can’t tell if something looks good when it’s wooshing).
Yes, exactly. When I’m in an IRL store I don’t hold things up and whip them around or run back in front of the shoe rack to add more excitment to my shopping trip.
I have never been on a site where the product whooshed around and doubt that I would have the patience to buy anything from one that did.
I buy a lot of jewelry findings and stuff on Teh Interwebs, and I do like the feature of seeing an enlarged photo on mouse-over. It keeps me from constantly having to click to get an enlarged view then hitting the back button.
I want pages that load fast, work on whatever Web browser I’m using that day, show clear pictures of the products, and have an indicator on each page of what’s in your shopping cart.
The only “fancy extras” I like are the ones that show a bigger picture in a pop-up window when requested, and the ones that change the picture when you change options like clothing colors.
And one more thing, if a clothing site doesn’t let you search by size, I won’t use it. I spent a horribly frustrating hour on a site that had a whole bunch of shirt designs I liked, and every one I picked wasn’t available in my size. I’m never going back to it.
“Oohhh… Shiiny… We like shiny so our customers do too.”
Umm… No numbnuts. We don’t. So we don’t come back.
The reason this practice is still persistent is because the few people that do like that crap are the ones who leave feedback saying how wonderful it is.
The majority of us that hate it just walk away in disgust and don’t say anything. Or we open a thread on a message board that the offending sites never see.
eta: InvisibleWombat. Did you tell them why you weren’t going back? Or did you just drop off their radar?
Really, I’ve never seen a shopping site where things whoosh and fly around. I don’t like Flash-based sites, and I prefer something simple and predictable, where I can at least zoom in on the product image, get specs, and maybe seen customer feedback.
Amazon went to the left-side menu only because of the sheer number of item categories they have. With the horizontal layout, there is no way the menu could clearly be displayed without side scrolling. Thus, the left-side menu was resorted to.
To answer the OP, I, of course, prefer a clean and simple site, but I’ll put up with all the flash and even a browser crashing if it means I’ll save $20 or get free shipping (or both!).
Actually, the story may have a happy ending yet. I sent an email to them explaining my complaint, and got a response from their president (I presume it was actually from an assistant) saying that he was sorry and they’d try to implement a search by size in their next major update to the site. We’ll see if it happens…
I won’t. Life’s too short for malfunctioning shopping sites when there are so many functional ones (and so many brick and mortar stores, too).