flip-flop-flit
I have always been advocating the point of providing physical store experience over the online stores. The idea is to provide great usability experience. A customer entering the stores normally looks after the labels and gets the product. He might flip- flop through various brands within the store.
Recently I was purchasing an airline ticket over one of the Travel agents website. I entered my travel details and got few options. I checked out one of the hot (cheapest with convenient timings) options and went to the order confirmation page. As soon as I confirmed it, I got a message that it is already sold out and I will have to select another option. Now as a customer this is irritating as I have to go all the way again to select another close to hot option and check out again with no guarantee that I will get it. In a physical store one the product is out of stock either the shelf is empty which tells that you cannot take the product or the section itself is removed. Is it so difficult to provide similar experience in an online store?
Hmmm…well good point…Have you ever thought of finalizing a product which you want to purchase after going through several stores unless you are brand conscious and go for a particular store + brand product. Yes you go out on the shopping street where normally most of the stores are located. You flip –flop & flit through various stores and then finalize a store where you get suitable product.
Don’t you want the similar experience over the web where you go to a shopping street where all the stores are located or in other words you do not have to open the website of each of the store individually rather you are provided a gateway to it. Katie has explained about one such website which provides good features in her article on Wall street Journal section.
You can enter a search keyword for example. Shoes and search for it.
You will be shown various stores containing the products and you can browse to any store to purchase the product.
You can browse the new site and also return to the flit site as there are some buttons which can bring you back.
Seems to be nice idea of creating market area. Though the site has to improve certain things like search which can bring results for the stores which do not have inventory for that particular product but from customer experience point of view this is great.
And I am sure that there will be usability improvements in the coming days which can bring e-shoppers and normal shoppers at the same level? Any more ideas which you can share.
Comments
This would be great even if you are physically in the market. You can cut down on the no. of stores that you walk into if you can access this app on mobile as well.
Posted by: Ritesh Arora | March 17, 2010 4:22 AM