Smooth eCommerce
Lately I have been trying to find some really inspiring commerce sites. Sites that are really unique in displaying products but keep it simple enough so that the user knows what is going on. I stumbled upon The Affair while browsing through The FWA site and figured I would share it with you all.
Its a really simple layout, mainly black with the focus on the t-shirts. The shirts are displayed on an actual person so you can see how the shirt actually fits. I think that is one major issue with buying shirts online is knowing exactly how they are going to fit your body. If you are fimilar with the brand then its a no brainer but for someone new I think this small detail could close a couple deals. Once you click on one of the characters you are prompted with a much larger display of the shirt with some descriptive details as well as some other views of the shirt.
So far the user experience is pretty basic. The navigation arrows and icons are very easy to find and use. There isnt really anything on the page that is not useful to the consumer. Once you have chosen a shirt and added it to your cart you can then check out via their straight forward shopping cart. The only downfall is that the user is then taken to a paypal page to finish the transaction. I think it would have been a bit better to keep the transaction within the site but you know sometimes budgets may not permit.
Overall I think this is a pretty sweet and simple commerce site and have definitely pulled some ideas from this site to hopefully tie into my upcomming project.
What are your favorite commerce sites? Why?
2 Responses to “Smooth eCommerce”
Leave a Reply
bill parker on March 6th, 2009
Sweet site, slow from here in the US but I love the “open space” feel and contrast of the shirts against the blackness.
zoltan on April 13th, 2009
hi – it’s zoltan from the-affair.
thanks for the post and props. we began with a very simple insight that dressing rooms have full length mirrors for a reason, and that we wanted to add a cart that matched in interactivity the simplicity and sophistication we were aiming for in the rest of the site.
unfortunately our budget didn’t stretch to full credit card authorisation and we had to use paypal. i agree it breaks the experience, but from a biz perspective it cannot be beaten for authenticity and (relative) simplicity.
anyway we’ve just been featured in a new book on non-trad e-commerce sites called iCatching. You should get yourself a copy, there’s some nice stuff in there, or you can read a bit more about it here:
http://www.the-affair.com/blog/2009/04/10/icatching/