I’ve been a big fan of Zappos.com and their culture and work environment for awhile. So I chose this site to look at from the standpoint of usability. When you type in “sandals” it populates with a lot of different types of sandals to choose from. I noticed that if you choose one of the choices, it is defaulted to show you women’s shoes first. I picked of pair of shoes and then got different options as far as color and size before adding to cart. Once added, Zappos.com requires you to sign in. I get why they’re doing this, they want my information to get me hooked into their marketing. However, I want the option to just purchase as a guest and move on to the purchase process. Everything else in the checkout process is pretty much as I would expect and didn’t cause me any heartache to complete the purchase. The other thing I noticed about the site is that they limit the amount of hovers that they use. Even the horizontal menu across the top requires a click to bring up the next window. This seems like an extra step from what I’m used to in online store experiences. Overall, the site is aesthetically pleasing. I would say that the assumption that I’m looking for women’s shoes makes sense but is an annoying one as a man looking for shoes.
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