www.PacSun.com
PacSun’s online store seems pretty overwhelming to me when I first began browsing, but everything is labeled in a way that I can easily find what I’m looking for by whatever terms I want. At the very top of the page, the site lists their promotions and how to take advantage of them. Right underneath the promotional banner is a drop box which allows the customer to shop by men’s or women’s brands, and then to right of the drop box is a search bar in case you know what brand of clothing you’re looking for. As you begin to type in the brand you’re looking for a list of suggestions appear to ease the process. Underneath that is a variety of labels to search for clothing by categories such as gender, shoes, jeans, brand, or what’s on sale.
The ease of access that this site offers makes the entire shopping experience very easy and retains the vibe of the actual store by varying every background based on brand while overall keeping in style with the store. The online store manages to achieve consistency regardless of where you navigate in the site without being boring or repetitive. The design is easy to navigate with and the effects don’t take long to load. Everything runs smoothly and is very visually appealing.
When you go to purchase an item, the process is very straight forward an requires no explaining. You can customize the article of clothing based on the availability of the item as well as select the size without searching for it. Everything throughout the site can be found very easily. If you want to end your search for one thing and go one to look for something else there are many multiple ways to do it, making this site, in my opinion, very good for online shopping and browsing. Based on the product you are looking at, you will be given suggestions of other products that are of similar brand/styles to continue the ease of browsing.
Although I was a big fan on the design and color scheme of the site, I feel that some computer screens wont be able to pick up some of the light grey words that are listed under the tabs that are more than likely the most used part of online browsing. The fonts are all incredibly small, but taking into mind that young people are a high majority of customers, I think its a safe decision if it is to retain the style of the store. I would expect the designer to be able to come up with an easier to read font choice that still went with the vibe of the store, but overall I think in this case it might be acceptable. The main problem I think they’d run into is if an older person is trying to purchase a gift for someone, they could potentially have difficulty reading the small font which would in turn wouldn’t make the site very navigable.