If you haven’t already been to Zappos.com, it’s definitely a go-to site to check out when searching for that perfect first date outfit. My top three reasons to love Zappos.com are as follows: their new home page, “Zeta”, their culture, and the site’s fantastic selection of items and search/filtering system.
Home Page
“Zeta” kicks the old homepage’s butt! Instead of the old home page focus on shoes, Zeta organizes items into categories delineated by pictures and links to subcategories (ie. “Women’s Clothing” links to tops, shorts, skirts, etc.). Zeta also features a “View All Departments” click-down menu in the top left corner, as well as an alphabetical brand index across the top of the page.
The bottom of the page features “What’s New” and “Top Sellers” categories sorted by Men’s, Women’s, and Kids’, as well as a “Find What You Need Quickly” section sorted by gender, special interest, and specialty site.
The homepage also publicizes some of Zappos’ uber cool policies, such as free shipping, free returns, and free return shipping, 24/7 customer service, weekly free clothing give-aways, and Zappos’ safe shopping guarantee.
Culture
Zappos is renowned in business circles for the entrepreneurial values which led to its tremendous growth and success. Zappos’ core values include, “deliver WOW through service”, “embrace and drive change”, and “create fun and a little weirdness”, and it succeeds at all three.
The site is personal, fun, and creative, with blogs on topics ranging from snacks to movies to exercise, videos, such as “How Big is Pat’s Noggin?”, and videos of real people sharing their Zappos stories. Additional features include twitter links, community involvement projects, customer testimonials, and pictures of “furry customers” and “customers-in-training”.
Women’s Clothing
Zappos has a ridiculously specific search system. When searching for Women’s Clothing, one can narrow down by item type, popular items, or a quick search feature which searches items by style, size, width, and color. Additional means of narrowing down include searching clothing category, specialty size, brand, new and sale items, and recommended items.
If you’re looking for a perfect first-date dress, click “Dresses”, and prepare to be amazed! You can narrow your choices by dress type (A-line, empire, high waist dresses, etc.), size, color, brand, and price. Below this feature, 20 pages of dresses are shown, and may be sorted by newest, most popular, name, low price, and high price.
Once you find the dress of your dreams, Zappos provides product information, complete with a glossary of terms, as well as “Add to Favorites”, “Share This Product”, and “Tell a Friend” features. Reviews are enabled, and brand information is included. Customers may even opt to be notified by email when new styles of the brand are added to the site. Zappos also offers free overnight shipping on clothing.
Written by: Lauren Blackwell - SpeedUSA Group Resident Blogger
