Crocs has launched a new site (http://www.crocs.com/) and I thought it would be interesting to take a look and talk a bit about what an ecommerce site looks like in 2009. Crocs is also a direct-to-consumer brand, and there is a lot of action in D2C ecommerce right now, so looking at this site with a D2C perspective adds an added layer of relevance to this site. I welcome your input of the assessment and look forward to hearing what you think of this or other new sites.
HOME PAGE:
The new Crocs site has implemented a large background image as their design theme – a trend that The North Face seems to have made popular and other apparel sites are mimicking. The Crocs site also has a wide-page feel rather than tall pages, which is another trend found on apparel sites such as TNF. These treatments give a clean feel with very good brand immersion. Crocs is using a classic large carousel as the main tile on the homepage. Given the size of the carousel on Crocs, I would have liked to have seen more interactivity similar to BestBuy.com. Though the rotation icons do not seem to have pictures, I am guessing this is likely just the newness of the site. Some of the products in the carousel reference specific shoes, but all clicks seem to land on the product catalog with the promoted shoe listed first. I am surprised the product detail page was not listed so I could just buy the shoe I was interested in.
CONTENT & SOCIAL:
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any social stuff on Crocs.com that I could find – not even basic social bookmarking or blogging. I would think Crocs would have big appeal for features like top-10 lists of the most popular configurations, or some fun-in-the-sun type user generated content would be a good to drive brand, traffic and loyalty. Suggesting anything Zappos, Facebook and Twitter seems cliché, but maybe some branding content like Timberland’s community and eco-friendly content, or Life is Good’s customer feedback ‘Fuel’. Ray-Ban’s wall of user-generated imagery might be a fun approach (http://www.ray-ban.com/usa/neverhide) although this implementation should really be associated more with product detail pages to drive sales and not just traffic. The high-fidelity multimedia content on Puma’s L.I.F.T is sexy (http://lift.puma.com/) – especially the ‘see shoes’ section, which is a super-cool image zoom, no? And the production does not seem too expensive for this piece.
This CONTENT & SOCIAL section is really where a brand can separate itself from a regular ecommerce experience, and a lifestyle brand like Crocs that people really connect with can really use these aspects of a site to help them pop.
PRODCUT CATALOG:
The product catalog page has color selections similar to an Endless.com, but this particular implementation is smoother. This implementation is more like Nike.com. The size of the ‘new’ icon found on the product catalog seems a bit too large and dominant for the page. There is no ‘quick-view’ which I think would have been a nice touch to navigate around the product catalog, especially given a guided search is available.
SEARCH:
The guided search feature is smooth, especially with the little ‘x’ that shows up when you want to revert a selection. The page anchors back to the top of the page when a selection is made. A better alternative would be to leave the user where they were as they are making various selections, so they do not need to scroll back down the page each time they perform a search. Search also has a type-a-head, bonus point for that. The search results page is a product catalog view which is nice, but the guided-search elements are not available, I wonder why – it would seem this is the perfect place for them?
PRODCUT DETAILS:
The product details page is tabbed-out, again trying to keep the page from getting too tall, very nice. One of the most interesting features is Enlarge/Zoom, where the image expands over the center and right-hand columns of the page. Nike.com does this as well, but Crocs seems to be doing it without the use of Flash – mad SEO props for that! And the very large imagery gives a great looking overall page showing the full shoe without a zoom popup. The only caveat of this effect is it covers the Add-to-Cart button, which is ecommerce sacred ground. Nike.com also covers the cart, but I am not sure they really care as much about conversion as they do general branding. Maybe Crocs could have slid the cart down to make the Add-to-Cart still available? The product details page keeps the left-hand navigation as well, which can be confusing given guided search elements like ‘shop by color’ are there and can be confused with the product’s color swatches. The North Face removes the navigation for their product details pages, avoiding this issue altogether.
CART and CHECK-OUT:
The Add-to-Cart is a drop-down, with a Gap.com-like promotion in there – bravo! The checkout process is a bit of a wizard (4-steps) rather than a single-page, but is relatively standard. A guest checkout is available, which is nice feature to see maintained. They do not remove the primary navigation from checkout, which I think is a nice direction as well – those blank checkout pages that are so afraid of abandonment seem a bit sterile to me.
What are your thoughts – any other new sites on the block you have seen that shows the state of ecommerce today?
-Adam
