As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I’m often at my local mall. It occurred to me that the shopping experience for my daughter is attractive to her not because she wants to spend my money, but because the experience of buying itself is so rich to the senses.
For example, when we enter her favorite stores the first thing that hits me is the music. If it’s her kind of music, we’re in the right place for her. If the signs near the front of the store have sale prices and notices about markdowns, we’re in the right place for me. Immediately there are two user needs met. Mother’s and daughter’s.
Next, for me, is how products are displayed. I look for orderliness and logical groupings such as jeans in one place, the teeny tiny things she calls shirts in another place, “hoodies” in every possible color in another section. I also look for clean dressing rooms and clues as to how many items she can load up on before she meets their limit. Meanwhile, she’s looking at colors, sizes, textures, and styles. She glides along in her beat up sneakers touching the items as she passes by. Her hands drift along piles of sweaters as if walking through a field of daisies. A certain texture will stop her dead in her tracks and I’ll get that “Mom, look!” expression from her.
It strikes me that some of the stores she insists we stop into don’t offer much for me to do or look at. The d
Tags: building websites, ecommerce, marketing, promotion, usability, web sites