October 12, 2001
Blog Entry

Buying clothing eretail a learning process

SUMMARY: No summary available.
I defy you to purchase a pair of women's corduroys at Gap.com. Every fall I trot down, without fail, to the Gap brick and mortar store in Pentagon City Mall in the DC area to get a new pair of cords. This year I was thinking deep rich brown wide wales...yummy. But then this evening I stopped myself. Why not order online? Why not literally save hours? How fun is that?



I went to Gap.com and was vastly disappointed. The site has no search function and navigation is pretty non-intuitive so it's hard to find stuff. They also offered no women's (or mens) wide wale cords whatsoever online although it's unbelievable that they don't have said cords in the stores. In fact, Gap.com seemed to be more of a branding-focused brochureware site with some ecommerce tacked on than a true online play.



So I checked out all the other stores I would normally go to in the "real" world. And ended up buying at least one item from each of the following - Target.com, OldNavy.com, EddieBauer.com. JJill.com and LandsEnd.com.



None were perfect shopping. My biggest grudge was that the check out process in each was very different, so I felt like I had to learn something new each time. I'll bet over time check out online will begin to look and feel much more alike -- just like real world check out. Which will be a boon to shoppers everywhere.



But, whining aside, I ended up buying an entirely new (badly needed) winter work-from-home wardrobe in under 4 hours. Something that would be completely impossible in real life. In future blogs I'll let you know if any of these onnline stores do anything really smart (or stupid) with email follow-ups, etc.

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