Why Ecommerce is Not Ready for My Daughter or Me
by: Kimberly Krause Berg
As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often at my local mall. It occurred to me that the shopping experience for my daughter is attractive to her not because she wants to spend my money, but because the experience of buying itself is so rich to the senses.
For example, when we enter her favorite stores the first thing that hits me is the music. If it's her kind of music, we're in the right place for her. If the signs near the front of the store have sale prices and notices about markdowns, we're in the right 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 for orderliness 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 also look for clean dressing rooms and clues as to how many items she can load up on before she meets their limit. Meanwhile, she's looking at colors, sizes, textures, and styles. She glides along in her beat up sneakers touching the items as she passes by. Her hands drift along piles of sweaters as if walking through a field of daisies. A certain texture will stop her dead in her tracks and I'll get that "Mom, look!" expression from her.
It strikes me that some of the stores she insists we stop into don'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 on the walls separated by posters of half naked teenagers standing next to cars they can't possibly afford to buy. Clothing prices are hidden inside sleeves. Sale signs are taboo. But the music is hip, the salespersons are scary-looking and the smell of leather mixed with hair gel is making my wallet itch. Their website, I bet, has but one click-path designed for teens and their parents must be blindfolded so as not to read the content before handing over their credit card.
Finally in a store where I feel welcome, my daughter is admiring the merchandise and starting to find what she likes in her size. I'm avoiding the mirrors and marveling at the sales personnel with their size 3 bodies, smudged eyeliner and 35 bracelets on each wrist. For my daughter, who looks just like them, this is confirmation she's in the right store. I, on the other hand, will stop holding in my stomach when we get back out to the parking lot, or when we grab our lattés in Starbucks on the first floor.
While other mothers and myself are holding piles of clothes in our arms, or running back and forth to get something in different sizes, my mind drifts to all the ecommerce websites I find in search engines, but don't purchase from. For starters, most of them think I'm going to read 35 links in their navigation, plus their ads, before deciding which is the right path to follow. Some of them will tell me about one sale, but if I want to know more, I have to figure out where they stuck that stuff. There's nothing I can physically touch and the images are usually tiny. Sure, I can click to enlarge but how many times have I done that only to find a bigger view of the same boring, unattractive picture?
(continued...)
Why Ecommerce is Not Ready for My Daughter or Me
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