Kelly Mooney's blog about the online shopping experience from the customer's point of view -- MooneyThinks.com

Zappos Hypnotizes with Free 2-Way Shipping

Zappos  seemed to come from nowhere. While the pure-play shoe retailer has been around since 1999, about a year or so ago, friends and relatives began raving about Zappos -- "You get FREE shipping BOTH ways!! You have to check it out!" And so I have. On many occasions. Here's my take. It's a visual disaster. I feel like I'm stuck in a crowd, gasping for air, hoping for a small path to clear where there may be a ray of daylight. Fortunately, the search function seems to be fairly good, which is the only thing that keeps me from clicking away from this jungle of brands and links.

And like most parents, I find back-to-school shoe shopping one of the most unpleasant experiences in the physical world of shopping. Parents are short-tempered, sales clerks are hovering at the checkout counter willing to take your money but clueless as to how to fit a shoe, kids are rummaging through boxes and leaving them scattered on the floor, and as I've found recently, the shoes we love are often not available in the sizes we need.

Embarrassed that both kids arrived at the first day of school with dirty, worn-out sneakers, I was determined to find what they wanted online, which is what led us reluctantly to Zappos. I wasn't sure what size they needed, but free shipping both ways was no risk, right? WRONG. This is just a foil for high prices. After shoe shopping at numerous online department stores, FamousFootwear.com and JouneysKidsz.com, among others, Zappos was as much as 30% higher on my kids' picks. Our purchases came down to availability. The only saving grace was that Zappos had the sizes we needed while the others didn't. I even read the reviews on Zappos to know if our selections were true to size or not. Turns out the reviews were all over the map and useless to us, as my daughter's shoes had to go back. Guess there is some advantage to free shipping both ways.

Enough of the Aggregators!

Every time I turn around there's a new shopping site rearing its ugly, uninspiring user interface. There are the old-timers like Shopping.com and MySimon, and newcomers like Mpire.com and Slide.com, both written up rather favorably a couple weeks ago the New York Times ("More Date for Online Shoppers, and Plenty of Pictures, too," 8/14/06). This week it's Pricefish.com, where "there's nothing fishy about saving money!" (Seriously, that's on their site) And don't forget Froogle, still in beta testing and recently booted off the Google's front door, but still alive and kicking.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to pay a penny more than I need to for anything, but these sites have a steeper cost in my world. This isn't just shopping at TJMaxx or clipping coupons, this is an all-or-nothing price battle. I don't want to go through life spending this much time and energy to save a few bucks, or give up my right to any kind of enjoyable brand experience. I hardly see how comparison pricing sites provide me with what Pricefish describes as "the ultimate shopping experience".

Not Much to "Experience" at Infiniti.com

Once I make a car purchase, I don't spend a lot of time on auto sites unless I have a warranty or service inquiry. But when I saw an online ad for Infiniti.com I decided to go ahead and check it out--in part because now I'm the proud owner of an Infiniti (it was an amazingly good dealer experience), and in part because the language on the ad reads, "Designed to outperform," referring to the G35, and, "Click to Experience".

I thought, if the car outperforms, imagine how great the web site must be! And I was incredibly curious how the site would let me "experience" this first-hand.

What happened when I got there? NOTHING. What a let-down! What an incredibly flat experience--especially for a car site. Lots of sexy car shots, but not a whole lot more than that. And here was the WORST thing--when I clicked on one of the models to check it out, this message comes up that says, "Loading...Please Wait," and it slowly loads a little widget that lets me rotate a tiny little car image. Tiny, not BIG! What year is this, 1996? Can you really tell your site visitors to wait? And the payoff was SO not worth it.

I was already annoyed, then I see language that says, "Experience Key Features." I thought the site would redeem itself here, but all I could experience were flat screens with more copy. Nothing's wrong with copy, especially if it's going to help you learn more so you can consider buying the car, but it was no Experience.

Shopping for Inspiration

As I've made the recent transition from summer-vacation shopping (picking up sunblock at the drugstore) to back-to-school shopping (browsing, comparing and stalking my favorite web sites for backpacks, clothes, shoes and gadgets), I've noticed that things online have changed. The world of the isolated product shot served up in a too-small-to-see thumbnail image is starting to fall away and make room for the world of inspirational shopping experiences.

It's not been overnight, of course, but with the handful of late-summer re-launches, I feel like we're on our way to more online excursions that cater to the undecided shopper and not just the "I-need-a-specific-product" shopper.

From shopping by outfit at Gap to shopping by room at Pottery Barn, and shopping by solution at Bath & Body Works to shopping by trend at Crate & Barrel, consumers are getting long-overdue permission and opportunity to start shopping the way they think and not the way businesses are structured.

Westin Conjures Up Meditation Online

I love when web sites add sensory elements. Sometimes that means a great way to add sound to a site or using imagery, language and/or movement to invoke sensory feelings.

So I applaud Westin for trying to help us understand how great the experience of their hotels is by illustrating "This is how it should feel." And I applaud them for considering the emotional and sensory aspects of the consideration on where to stay on vacation. But I'm just wondering if the Flash Zen garden and coi pond screensaver are really the right executions.

I also think it's great that Westin is pointing out how wonderful it is that they have smoke-free rooms, but all the Flash just feels like a lot of drama (and message-loading time) to convey the feeling of staying at a Westin.

By the time I finished placing the rocks in my Zen garden I forgot all about actually making a reservation.

Discovery Store Has Perfect Timing

If you have half an interest in space science or a school-age child, you probably heard earlier this week about the vote of the International Astronomical Union. The big news: (potentially) 3 new planets. Very exciting (even if it's less of a discovery and more of a change in definition for what constitutes a planet).

What does this have to do with the online experience?

An associate here at Resource (and an amateur astronomy buff) forwarded an email he  received from the Discovery Store. Turns out that within about a day of the announcement about the new additions to the solar system, the Discovery Store sent this email playing into the big news.

And more than just the relevance of the news to this audience, I loved the fact that they weren't just selling a few telescopes, but promoting their Telescope Finder, a tool to help you find the telescope that fits your life--whether you're a beginner or an expert.

We talk a lot about the flexibility of the online world, how nimble marketers can be and how much easier and faster it is to act--for whatever reason. Kudos to the Discovery Store for jumping on this opportunity to provide a relevant promotion to a targeted audience.

Hertz Needs to Try Harder

...oops, isn't that Avis? Oh well....maybe Hertz should take a play out of the handbook designed to compete with them.

Before I go on, I need to point out that I've been on the road (or, rather, in the air) quite a bit lately. And I have to say that the customer experience in the offline world hasn't quite lived up to expectations, and it's something I need to blog about.

To me, Hertz just isn't what it used to be. Has anyone noticed this? Sure, travel couldn't be less fun, less convenient, less glamorous right now. But no matter how many airport delays, meals substituted with peanuts, I've always looked forward to that big board in the rental car lot. That big yellow Hertz board with my name in lights. Ahhh....relief. No lines. No waiting. Keys in the car, ready to roll. A hotel and a short night's sleep seemed within grasp. Hertz was always that sure thing at the close of a long day. But lately, Hertz just seems like a different company.

During one recent 1AM airport arrival, my car reservation wasn't ready. Apathetic counter representatives behind the glass were too disinterested to provide assistance. A long wait for a manager was required. The only option available to me was a souped-up Mustang called a Shelby. Never heard of it and after seeing it with double-wide gold metallic stripes on the hood, I decided it was not "consultant-appropriate" for an appearance at a thrift-driven client. In numerous airports, they simply haven't had cars available, even to a Gold and Platinum customer. Numerous colleagues have complained about their unfulfilled promise of a certain type of car or any car, for that matter. To Hertz's credit, they did find the laptop I left behind in a hurried rush and sent it back to me -- after the less-than-happy lost-and-found representative scolded me and sighed throughout our conversation.

On the flip side, I've noticed that airport and airline employees -- particularly security -- seem nicer, more pleasant, more human recently. Even though their job just got harder....maybe they used to work for Hertz.

Zafu Masters the Art & Science of Fit

Ladies, if you haven't seen this yet, check it out. A new short cut to a fab-fitting pair of jeans.

Every woman knows that finding jeans that fit her own body quirks can be so difficult that once you do, the end result is nothing short of a love affair. Enter zafu, essentially a match-making service for women and jeans from the people who have helped Lands' End and others offer customized clothing.

Being a jeans-kind-of-girl, I'm in love already.

Zafu is a small company in California that has "measured, assessed and photographed thousands of women trying on hundreds of pairs of different jeans." They put all their data and algorithms into a lovely little web site that, once you answer a few questions, spits out a plentiful yet manageable number of recommendations that you can purchase--not from them, but from various online retailers.

So of course I tried it out. Unlike many self-assessments, this one was easy to fill out. Nice visuals and straight-forward, fun questions. And it doesn't feel like I have to climb a mountain of personal questions to gain access to their coveted info. Check out how casual this is–they don't ask you to register until you're staring at a page-full of jeans picked just for you. And it's not that you even have to register, but by then you want to SO bad, so as not to lose them!

I love the wait screen that reads, "your patience has been rewarded"....then you get to see all your options.

How'd I do? It served up 6 options, one of which I'd already discovered worked for me, but only after years of denim research. I'd never thought I'd see the name Hilfiger or Baby Phat in my closet, but they might just  be worth a try.

Highly Shoppable Ads from Crate & Barrel

As a supporter and instigator of multichannel integration, I find it difficult to admit sometimes that I don't think a company's ads belong on their web site. Sometimes (for some companies) they do, of course, but not always, not unless there's a good reason--like historical significance or high consumer demand or, check this out, tying them into the shopping experience.

Now, backing up a step, I do enjoy Crate & Barrel as a brand. I've overcome hiccups in their shopping experience and still keep them on my short list. Call me crazy, but I've even torn Crate & Barrel ads out of magazines for their clever messaging or just their aesthetic appeal. But I can't say that I would have ever clicked on their "Ads" link at the bottom of the homepage to view them--especially if I was on the site to purchase something specific.

But I found this part of the site on accident. While enjoying this week's email (see image above), I clicked on the featured product and found a treasure trove of shoppable ads. What you land on is a page that looks pleasantly  and surprisingly like the email you've come from, but with each product singled out, named, priced, described, and, oh yes, linked to its individual product page. (See image below.)

Crate & Barrel doesn't just archive its ads/emails online for entertainment value, it's clear that these pieces are valued as another path to get to purchase and the company works hard to keep that open and accessible.