If the Online Shoe Shopping Fits…

Because I have a somewhat odd shoe size - 10 AAA (recently widened from AAAA, but fortunately not lengthened) I order most of my shoes on line. This is a bit chancy, of course, but mostly I know what’s going to work and what’s not. And you can always send them back.

Last weekend, I spent a while on a couple of my regular shoe haunts - Zappo’s, Carl’s Footwear, and Auditions - looking around for sandals to replace my current worn out and falling apart stock - and had some success. I made purchases from Zappo’s and Auditions. Carl’s seems to have gone a bit Vegan, and their sandals seemed a bit pricey for shoes made out of soy.

Still, I did have some shopping luck, even though I’m still looking for a replacement for the ultra-comfy, cork soled black microfiber pair I’ve had for two or three years.

All of the shoe sites I was on had reasonably decent search in terms of specifying size, brand, and style, but at least one of them - and I can’t recall which one - had an odd way of handling shoes that were not in stock.

What came up when the ones I wanted weren’t available, was a list in every pair in that style - no matter what size, no matter what color - was in stock.

Now, it makes a lot of sense to let the shopper know what other shoes are available in the style and size you want, but in a different color. Or similar style.  And it even makes sense to let the shopper know what shoes in the style and color you want are available in adjacent sizes - a 9.5 AA might work, so might a 10.5 AAAA.

But, for the life of me, if I’m ordering a size 10 AAA, I really don’t care to know that it’s available in 5 B. Or 10 Wide. Or 13 AAA.

It’s not as if I’m going to say, ‘well, 5 is half of 10, so if I order two pairs they just might fit…’

Just another weird example of Too Much Information, coming from the systems perspective - we have all this data form our inventory system, and might as well share it - rather than from the customer’s perspective: what information would be useful - and might actually get me to buy something.

Whether companies are directly selling online or not, it’s not a bad idea to periodically sort through the information that you’ve got out there.

Is there so much information that your prospects don’t know where to look? Is the navigation so cumbersome and layered that your prospects will feel like Magellan, circumnavigating the globe, rather than an innocent information seeker just trying to find a data sheet? Is the information current - at least with my shoe company, I was seeing what was in stock, not reading about something that’s been off the shelves for a couple of years.

If you are selling directly online, how do you handle it when the product is unavailable? Does it make sense to suggest an alternative? If you’re restocking, do you give the prospect the due date? Do you give the prospect the option of your informing them when the product does become available - as one of my shoe companies did?

Online shopping is great - it certainly lets me buy shoes that actually fit my long, skinny feet - and for all companies, providing online information is no longer an option, it’s an essential.

We just need to make sure that the information we’re providing is useful and relevant, that’s all.

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