At a recent family function, my sister asked why we couldn’t categorize the handbags by size, meaning small, medium or large. My first response was that my vendors did not provide that information. But her point was if she was looking for a small handbag, she really didn’t want to go through the entire product catalogue to find what she really wanted. I promised her that I would give the idea serious consideration (plus I get extra points for treating her like a customer and not just my sister!)
Before the onset of internet commerce, a Handbag Fashionista went to the store, looked at the handbags and based on her needs purchased the bag of choice. However, a physical store has its limitations in pure space, because it cannot stock every possible size of handbag or every style. The selection of purses is also at the mercy of the Business Owners tastes. So unless you lived in a major cosmopolitan city where stores were in the thousands, your choice of selection was extremely limited. Even then, time to visit numerous stores limited your ability to find that “perfect purse”.
The internet now has changed all of that. There are numerous sites selling purses, all kinds of colours, styles, designer and designer inspired, replica handbags all with prices from expensive to cheap and from large to small. The problem is that sometimes the image shown may not provide enough “information” to the Fashionista for her to determine if this is the right size purse she wants.
I did a very quick and dirty search on various Handbag Sites and found only 1 site that indicated whether their purses were small, medium or large! I am sure there were more, but I didn’t purse the search. At first I dismissed adding that feature to my site because I could not locate anywhere on the internet that had a “standard” purse size scale. I understand why there such a scale is not available, or at least in my opinion, it was simply never needed. I also suspect it still isn’t a burning issue within the “Handbag” Industry.
So where do I go from here? If I look at it from the perspective of a customer, when I shop online, I want to reach products that are within my criteria selection immediately. I do hate trawling through pages of products with no filters to limit my search. So as an E-tailer, why would I not provide this same service to my customers? Well, the answer is simple, I should and I will. Now the challenge will be how to easily make it work on my site, as I am the Web Designer of my site and alas, I do not have a computer geek doing the work for me. I ask for patience to the Fashionistas out there, please continue to check my site or follow me on Facebook and Twitter for updates on this feature.
