E-Commerce Terminology Survey

Last week I asked list members to take part in a short survey regarding
terms I found while benchmarking e-commerce clothing sites.

The two terms (both used without explanation on www.nordstrom.com) were
'French front shirt' and 'placket shirt'.

The survey had 287 respondents, 40% male and 60% female. Exactly 5 women
(1.7% of respondents), all over 40 years of age, knew for sure what a
French front shirt was, 31 respondents (10.8%, predominantly women) had
a vague idea, while the balance of respondents (87.5%) had no idea.

Plackets faired a little better. 60 respondents (20.9%), again mostly
women over 40, knew what a placket was. 36 respondents (12.5%) had a
vague idea and the rest (66.6%) said 'no'.

So, there you have it, if you want to buy a man's shirt on the Nordstrom
site, you need to be a woman over 40<g>.

(I bet you're dying to know now, so here is what these words mean - a
placket is the strip of cloth behind the buttons on a shirt or blouse. A
French front shirt has no placket. Both are discussed in this Wikipedia
article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placket. But the take-away for
e-commerce sites is avoid words that customers do not understand!)

Regards,

William Hudson
Syntagm Ltd
Design for Usability
UK 01235-522859
World +44-1235-522859
US Toll Free 1-866-SYNTAGM
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.syntagm.co.uk
skype:williamhudsonskype 

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).
Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon
OX14 2DS.

Ajax design and usability course in November - Berlin:
http://www.nngroup.com/events/  

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