eHABERDASHER.com - what website improvements and/or what would you change?

[eHaberdasher]



Search by size would be great--also for things like a jacket, have chest separate from length. I hate websites where you can filter by size but it lists sizes like "40, 40L, 40S, 40R" as separate categories.
the "40" category should have everything that is R/L/S/Unmarked but on a lot of smaller webstores, "40" is just going to show you suits that don't specify a length. If you are able to wear either an R or an L (or unmarked) depening on length/maker, this makes it a huge pain to scroll through product.

Wait - so what you're saying is you would want 40S, 40R and 40L all grouped together under "40"? Hmmm... not sure if we agree with that.

 

[eHaberdasher]



• Categories should be first, designers next. This encourages people to look into other brands than what they were looking for. It also makes it much easier to find anything.
• FYI, rollover menus are a terrible idea - they generally close when you don't have your mouse on top of them. Click to expand is the way to go (possibly an accordion type menu would work too) and is more mobile compatible too.
• You should not list the same product's different sizes as different products. Single product, let the user choose the size and show if it's out of stock.
• Pagination isn't obvious and in general everything on the site is on the small side.
• Registration form could be made simpler. The trouser size etc doesn't necessarily have to be there and to be honest you could ask everything but the email and password only when the user orders something the first time.
• The "brief description, detailed description, specifications" part is unnecessary. They could be all put under one page. SKUs aren't relevant information for users in this case.
• The "you save xx% from retail" is bullshit marketing.
• The about us page sound like corporate speak. It's rigid and not personal or even interesting. Write something with heart, not what sounds "professional".

I'm a web developer.
PS. Terrible brand name. e-anything reminds me of the crap sites of the 1990s.

Thank you very much for your input. I think rollovers can be very useful and is becoming more standard with websites - I do think that a rollover within a rollover is cumbersome.

The reason we list different sizes is because our current website program/interface (Prostores) has so many limitations. If we listed all the sizes available of an item within one listing and sold out of one of the sizes, we would manually have to remove that size attribute from the dropdown. It's a terrible. Also for some items where we provide measurements, we have to address the specific measurements for each size anyway.

Again - with Prostores there are so many limitations, and again we originally intended it to be a temporary site but it's dragged on much longer than we anticipated, so the pagination and the brief description/detailed description/SKU were just the way it came out of the box so we just did what we could with it for the time being.

We'll definitely review/re-evaluate the "About Us" page - haven't looked at that in years.

Regarding our brand name, well, it's well established now and therefore we have little reason to change. We never thought it sounded out-dated, but maybe we're just naive. After all, it's still called eCommerce, eTailing, and eBay... and when we took eHABERDASHER, "haberdasher", "haberdashery", and the like were all already taken...

Thanks again for the constructive criticism.

 

[eHaberdasher]



My chief complaint w/ any clothing website is the missing or erroneous sizing info. At your site I pecked around a bit. Take a look here: http://www.ehaberdasher.com/servlet/the-10025/Truzzi-Shirt-cln--16/Detail . Okay, the neck is 16". What's the sleeve length? What's the chest? And the length? I would like to see it unfolded. Perhaps even a diagram of its body shape.
Too often an e-commerce site will rely on a standardized sizing chart, but we all know sizes are far from standard, even from the same maker. I buy three trousers w/ the same waist size from Ralph Lauren and each measures differently. I don't think it's too difficult for the seller to pull out a measuring tape and put the info on the page. Yet it seems to me no one is able to this. In doing so it'll sure distinguish you from the others. And it ought to save you the hassle of having to answer as many tell-me-about-the-size emails.
Take a look at the questions asked at SF and "how's the fit?" is a very common one. Use your web page to answer it.
Back to the example shirt. These here are good details: "...hand made collar, hand stitched shoulders, hand stitched buttonholes, hand stitched sleeves, side gussets at hem for reinforcement, and mother of pearl buttons sewn on by hand." But, appears some info is missing. One or two buttons on the cuff? Gauntlet button? Two panel yoke?
When I click on Dress Shirts I'm presented 14 pages of results organized... alphabetically. Alphabetically? Really?! I think I ought to be able to sort or filter by price, pattern (none, striped, checked), cuff, collar, yada yada. Others have mentioned this, too.
For trousers you do a fine job providing the measurement of rise and bottom leg width at opening as well as amount of material to let out. How about size of thigh and/or knee? Button material? Number of belt loops?
Lastly, and much more important than size info or ecommerce solution, is delivery. If you announce that you're going to improve the website, don't wait a year and them remind everyone you've failed to do so. What purpose does this serve? If you promise to provide someone photos or info, then make it the very first thing you do. In fact, don't make a promise when you can make it happen instead. When ezlau asked for the pictures you could have responded with them instead of the promise. Or use your website more effectively to get the info out there in the first place so you don't need to make as many promises.
You have nice things and the prices are fair. But I don't recall ever looking at your site. I look at A Fine Pair of Shoes, Epaulete, Self Edge, amongst others very often. I don't see why I shouldn't give you my money. But what are you doing to get it?

Thank you, also, for your thoughts and taking the time to critique.

Regarding exact measurements for every item, unfortunately it is near impossible to provide and is quite demanding when there are thousands of items in inventory, especially when it comes to shirts that are factory folded/pinned. As it is we do not have the man power to provide this - I suppose if we increased prices we could afford to do this.

Regarding the sorting of categories/search results (currently alphabetized as you pointed out), again this lack of user friendliness is an acknowledged deficiency that is due to the limitations in the Prostores interface. We tried to help customers get around this with the "Product Finder" which, at best is a little clumsy, but helps a little bit at least. Customers can also type in the search box "46R suit" or "46R Kiton" or "16.5 Borrelli", but again this is all far less than ideal - we are well aware of this.

Regarding our lack of follow through with ezlau, you are absolutely correct - we mishandled this situation completely. No excuse. Hopefully this is found more to be the exception than the norm.

 

[otc]



Wait - so what you're saying is you would want 40S, 40R and 40L all grouped together under "40"? Hmmm... not sure if we agree with that.

I think of it more as a subcategory.
First you choose size 40 and that shows all suits in size 40.
Then you choose length L which only shows you things that are length L within the size 40 category. Of course, since you sell a lot of things with european sizes, you might have to apply some fuzzy logic to get size based filtering correct (and certainly nobody wants to have to click on size 52 and wade through suits for really fat men mixed with euro suits for normal dudes).

As to grouping things by item and then listing sizes as suggested by kasakka...I am not sure how well that work unless you have really good size filtering functionality.
You sell a pretty random mix of stuff--I don't know how you source it but its not like you are the Gap and can guarantee that everything you sell is available in s/m/l/xl. I don't want to scroll through a page of items, decide that a suit looks nice and click on it to see that you only have one of them in a 46S--separate products is messy but when your inventory is as random as it is at ehaberdasher, you can't really rely on the same paradigm that works at a retailer that stocks full size runs of everything they sell.

On the sizing/measurement issue, I see where you are coming from. For all of your non-house label stuff, better info is probably a google search away and I don't really expect a perfect set of measurements on every item. I imagine a lot of your inventory comes when you can score a great deal on a pallet of overstock clothes (or something like that). Obviously measurements on the benjamin stuff is important but on a pair of incotex trousers, I think we can figure it out.
I don't know how helpful you guys are about providing measurements when asked--but I would assume that if someone was about to buy a brioni suit, you would be able to pull it out and take a few extra measurements.

 

[eHaberdasher]



I think of it more as a subcategory.
First you choose size 40 and that shows all suits in size 40.
Then you choose length L which only shows you things that are length L within the size 40 category. Of course, since you sell a lot of things with european sizes, you might have to apply some fuzzy logic to get size based filtering correct (and certainly nobody wants to have to click on size 52 and wade through suits for really fat men mixed with euro suits for normal dudes).
As to grouping things by item and then listing sizes as suggested by kasakka...I am not sure how well that work unless you have really good size filtering functionality.
You sell a pretty random mix of stuff--I don't know how you source it but its not like you are the Gap and can guarantee that everything you sell is available in s/m/l/xl. I don't want to scroll through a page of items, decide that a suit looks nice and click on it to see that you only have one of them in a 46S--separate products is messy but when your inventory is as random as it is at ehaberdasher, you can't really rely on the same paradigm that works at a retailer that stocks full size runs of everything they sell.

Regarding the size category with length subcategory I can see what you're saying, but then if you're between a 40R and a 40L, wouldn't you run into the same issue as your second point (with which I completely agree and why we break out each size as an individual item)? You might click on a size 40 item, only to discover that its a 40S?

Yes our inventory is a lot of one per item - let alone one per size. That is the nature of very high end luxury clothing at a discount. There really isn't any other way to go about it other than having an advanced filtering system like asos or yoox.

 

[capua]

Hi, I am a fairly frequent customer and I already think that your site design is quite good. A couple small suggestions:

1. When using the 'Product Finder' the ranges are too narrow. I.e. I doubt that many people would be looking for a suit in the $400-$500 range. They would probably be looking for anything under $500. Ideally we would be able to type in our own ranges.

2. It would be absolutely sick if we could search by our actual chest size in inches as opposed to our jacket measurement. I'm a large 42R, a 43R, or a small 44R depending on the brand. I would love to just be able to search any jacket that would have a chest measurement of 45-46 inches. It shouldn't be too hard since you already have the measurements up. It would beat sorting through three sizes of jackets and having to look at the individual jacket to see if the measurement would work.

My $0.02

 

[facet]



Regarding the size category with length subcategory I can see what you're saying, but then if you're between a 40R and a 40L, wouldn't you run into the same issue as your second point (with which I completely agree and why we break out each size as an individual item)? You might click on a size 40 item, only to discover that its a 40S?
Yes our inventory is a lot of one per item - let alone one per size. That is the nature of very high end luxury clothing at a discount. There really isn't any other way to go about it other than having an advanced filtering system like asos or yoox.

I don't know if this helps; but are you able to do something like ebay? Where you can click on, say, size 40, but then you have the option of further filtering by clicking S/R/L. What I like about ebay is that you have the option of clicking multiples at once. So, if you're in between sizes, you can click both S and R so that both are included. Just more options for the buyer for browsing.

Otherwise, as others mentioned, just better search capabilities in general (eg categories first).

 

[ShayaEXQT]

Quote:

Regarding exact measurements for every item, unfortunately it is near impossible to provide and is quite demanding when there are thousands of items in inventory, especially when it comes to shirts that are factory folded/pinned.

I really agree with this. It is unfortunate that it is only possible to give measurements when unfolding the shirt, but people need measurements, I am leaning towards if people see the measurements they are more likely to buy than if there are no measurements but they receive a factory folded shirt... what to do??

 

[capua]

The Borrelli shirts at least have a sizing chart so I'm guessing Ehaberdasher is planning on implementing it.

 

[Gauss17]

Will there ever be a "xlong" option for the benjamin sartorial suits? I was literally just about to order one and then realized the jacket is going to be too short.

 

[Grenadier]

Moar 40L suits.

 

[ShayaEXQT]

Sorry to dig up this old thread.

Why don't you make the picture on your homepage a hyperlink?

 

[eHaberdasher]



Sorry to dig up this old thread. 

Why don't you make the picture on your homepage a hyperlink?

THanks and yes that is in the plans for the upgrade!