Target: Way off Target in E-commerce
Shopping around the web these days has become a frustrating affair. Not only is Google serving up obscure blogs on the first page, some of the largest players like Target seem to have forgotten that an excellent shopping experience is what turned them into a household name.
For example, try shopping for bath towels on Target.com. Type in “Fieldcrest towels,” in Google Search and Target comes up first place in the organic listing. Notice too that Target has paid for a PPC ad for “Fieldcrest towels.”
However, once you get to the website, good luck outfitting your bathroom. The towel is supposed to be available in a choice of colors: white/black stripe, white/grey, white/brown, white/green and white/taupe stripes. Yet, only the black stripe photo is displayed for all of the examples. Moreover, the two white/black stripe towels that are pictured are different. One has two stripes and one has four. So not only is the customer unable to see the color so that they can match it to their sea foam rug, they also haven’t a clue as to what design they are buying.
Do you like really large luxurious bath towels to lounge around the house? Well if you do- good luck buying them online at Target. No Tarje here. Again, looking at the Fieldcrest towel example, sizes are hidden at the very bottom of the page in item details. These details are poorly places underneath the product scrollbar rather then next to the item. On the mobile page (iPhone) the product sizes for hand towel, bath towel, any kind of towel displayed a size of 56 X 30.
There are actually two “bath towel” categories on the standard website so one of them must be larger? Actually, when a customer clicks on the item it comes up as “available in store,” So does that translate into not available online? Customer confusion like this is just completely unacceptable for such a large retail company that prides itself in service and the shopping experience.
“Mama, I want Angry Bird pajamas.” Not from Target online you don’t.
Not unlike the towels going to children’s sleepwear is a nightmare. Sizes are confusingly organized first as X-small and then by actual size. Unlike savvy websites that clearly display a link to size dimensions- there is no way to determine what size the customer is looking at. Are these for toddles, bigger kids, tweens?
Furthermore in the sleepwear section the photo for Angry Birds is missing entirely without an additional click to “quick info.” Nothing quick about this e-shopping experience. Moreover, when the customer does click just on the Angry Bird product selection tab, the products are jumbled together. For example, the Angry Bird pajama pant (sold separately) is placed at the end of the 9 products rather than next to the parent set. What if your child is a bed wetter and you always buy additional bottoms? Matching items online is difficult enough without having to search for the extra bottoms. Creating additional confusion like this is ridiculous and it creates a negative online shopping experience for the customer.
Large retail websites like Target can certainly afford to make their e-commerce shopping website one of the best. The question is, why haven’t they? Furthermore, with a website filled with errors why are they placing #1 in organic Google search?
