I did my laundry last night and forgot to remove the collar stays from a few of my shirts. These are the little plastic things that keep the ends of your collar pointy. All of my collars came out of the laundry limp and rolled up. I was very disappointed.
To correct the problem, I decided to buy some replacements today. After some online browsing, I found that Sears carries packages of 28 collar stays for $5.25. This is a fantastic deal! The website said they were not available for delivery, which is not a problem since I live near a store. I drove in this morning and asked a clerk in the Men’s department where I could find them.
“We don’t carry those in the store. They’re a web only item. You should have seen that on the website.”
Then she rolled her eyes at me and went back to folding shirts. I wasn’t so much upset at her as I was disappointed that I made the trip to Sears for a “web only” item. After I got home, I pulled the website back up and scoured the entire page for any mention of “web only.” The only possible reference is a disclaimer at the bottom of the page, “Not all products are available at every Sears store.”
It’s a wonderful catch-all disclaimer that does nothing more than give me, the customer, a glimmer of hope that we can find what we are looking for in person. I wonder, considering most large stores now feature online storefronts, how many companies feature “web only” items.
The online store front is a company advertisement. It is a convenient listing of store prices and product features that allows the customer to either shop from home or decide ahead of time what they are looking for when they come into the store. Offering “web only” items without properly identifying them on the site, however, is a fatal miscommunication by the company. This particular incident is just a small example (five dollars is trivial), but imagine if this was a high-end jewelry advertisement. Or an online designer catalogue.
Online storefronts are just as much an avenue for corporate communications and product advertisements as television and the newspaper. Marketers would be wise to distinguish between the part of the site that advertises in-store offerings and the part that serves as a digital mail-order catalogue. Failing to identify a product order-only on a site representing your store’s inventory is too near false advertising for me to be comfortable with the practice.
How would you recommend dividing an online storefront to avoid miscommunications like this?
It is disappointing that the level of customer service was so low! Next time go to Nordstrom. They have collar stays IN the store and will give you a small pack of them for free. In fact, this sort of thing is why I don’t shop at the “Big Box” stores unless I have to.
In my opinion this is not simply a matter of clearly marking your “web only” stuff. The bigger picture is that some companies don’t understand that sometimes people would rather physically walk into a location and buy something rather than to purchase it online. If I were a retailer I would LOVE to have you come into my store — online or in person. Once you are there you are much more likely to buy something else. Come on, you looked at a couple of new shirts, stopped by the tools, and scoped out that new HDTV didn’t you? Retailers like Nordstrom understand that you were primed to buy, and that if your $5.00 experience had been better you may have increased your purchase to one of the higher ticket items.
In short, marketing/advertising are only part of the story here. An additional issue is the customer service aspect which colors your entire shopping experience. Poor customer service will waste marketing dollars fast!
Sean Harry, http://www.orcms.com/blog