Online Retail Usability: Barneys New York

I swear, I don’t go around to retail websites to nitpick at usability issues – with the craziness of the holiday season, I’ve been navigating through these sites much more often than usual. Today’s culprit is Barneys New York. More specifically, their check-out and subsequent registration process.

Shopping Bag Screen

So you’ve placed a nice (likely expensive) item (or five) in the shopping bag, and now you’re ready to checkout and get them itemz in your hand. After looking through to make sure the items, sizes and quantities are correct, you scroll down to hit the “Checkout” button, except wait a second… (Click on the image for an enlarged version)

After scanning all the info on the right, you have to switch to the far left in order to initiate the checkout process. From a distance, those call-to-actions on the left look obvious, but when you’re zoomed in and focused on the shopping bag info on the right side, the CTAs are nearly invisible.

As a side note: no, I did not actually buy this lovely (and very expensive) bag – hah, I wish! Anyways, let’s say you decide to register for an account, which leads to issue numero dos:

Account Registration Screen

(Click on the image for an enlarged version)

Same problem! Again! What the heck, Barneys. Also, in this view, there’s the Newsletter email “submit” button at the bottom right that provides a bit of additional confusion.

Although this wouldn’t necessarily deter me from purchasing something from Barneys’, it would be a more pleasant experience if the actions were designed as part of the form flows.

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Branded Breadcrumbs

With the frenzy of Brown Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales (plus many other near-Thanksgiving-almost-December sales), the ability to quickly navigate retail websites is crucial for an efficient shopping strategy. Yes, shopping does require strategies – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

When I look at department store websites, I like to check out all their offerings for particular brands. To my frustration, quite a few sites don’t offer a very simple and convenient user experience element – a link to the brand’s category page.

Offender Numero Uno: Bloomingdale’s

As you can see, no visible link back to Joie’s brand page.

Offender Numero Dos: Saks Fifth Avenue

Same as Bloomies. Both sites offer links to similar styles and “customers also loved…”. Why can’t they implement a simple link to the brand page?

Now that we’ve gotten the offenders out of the way, here are some examples of retailers who do it right:

Reformed Offender: Neiman Marcus

Neiman used to be an offender, but has since seen the error of their ways!

Good Example Numero Dos: Zappos

Not surprising that they’ve implemented this, given that they have an entire page dedicated to their user experience team.

Aside from the user experience benefit, including a text link to the brand category page provides value from an SEO standpoint. So really, please just do it.

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