Saturday, January 31, 2009

A step forward in online shopping...

Although virtual shopping has a long way to go, more and more sites are trying to give you a taste of a real dressing room experience. One of the companies who is trying to give you more informatin about is Coach. Although handbags might seem to be an easy online buy (its not as if they won't "fit"", your size and height, relative to the bag's size is of concern to certain customers. So they have introduced the "try it on" feature that allows you to see your bag of choice on the arms of a customizable silhouette with 3 different heights. Also, the feature allows you to see how the bag looks over your shoulder, in your hand or even crossbody (with certain styles) on your custom sized-mannequin.

While not a ground breaking technology, the ability for customers to get a sense of size is crucial to purchases and is becoming more of an issue as online shopping beceomes increasingly poplular. 24 inches doesn't mean much till you realize in a picture that its the length of your entire arm!

Check it out at http://www.coach.com/content/product.aspx?product_no=12569&category_id=1951

1 comment:

SK Lee said...

A simple, but elegant feature, one that is long overdue. It's hard to get an idea of size when viewing a product against a non-descript background. Coach.com also groups bags by how they can be worn, which is absolutely brilliant. Unconventional cataloging, in my opinion, not only helps put products in physical perspective for consumers, but puts the product in context of how it works with their personal life than simple categories like color, sizing, and matter-of-fact description.

A good example is Piperlime.com which has categories for shoes such as "The Weekend Shoe" and "Comfy and Cute." When you look at the shoes in the "Comfy and Cute" category, there's a range of products (pumps, platforms, sandals, etc.) that fit the description. The words convey more information for the consumer and makes her aware of the products out there that can work for her personally.