Case Study: Gap.com

This project was conducted to improve the ease of use for the Gap.com website. Focusing on features such as checkout, promotional materials, and navigation, this project analyzed existing features then suggested improvements to improve overall functionality and performance.

Brand Overview

A staple in American fashion, The Gap has been a retail presence for five decades. Focusing on casual and business casual apparel, the brand has various clothing lines for all ages. Having such an established presence means The Gap has many competitors: both in physical retail and in an e-commerce space. Many of these competitors have implemented better practices on their websites, providing customers with a better shopping experience.

Problem #1: Advertisements Everywhere

When a user clicks onto the Gap website, they are greeted by menus filled with advertisements containing discounts. Of course, ecommerce sites containing promotions are expected to place promotional materials on their home page. With Gap, this becomes a bit excessive. Before a user can access the homepage or browse for merchandise they must remove promotional materials.

Before a customer is able to browse merchandise, they are greeted with pop-ups, banners line the top of the page, and prompts to join rewards programs. The advertisements serve as a barrier to browsing merchandise, not an incentive to purchase.

Resolution: Advertisement Integration

Other ecommerce sites place their promotions within their existing layout, but do not prevent the customers from viewing merchandise. An example would be the store for Express, where their homepage is divided into a three column grid. This allows one column to advertise the woman’s collection, one column to advertise the men’s collection, and one column to display a promotion. Customers are exposed to current collections of clothes while seeing promotions blended into the layout. Gap should keep a slider menu of promotions at the top of the screen, as it is intrudes minimally, and integrate promotions into their collections.

Implementation

Problem #2: Shopping Bag Lacks Interactivity

The ecommerce shopping experience presents opportunities to mimic the retail experience. There are also opportunities to enhance the shopping experience.

As customers show on Gap’s website, their shopping bag will update to reflect the quantity of items purchased. Hovering over the bag does nothing more than inviting customers to proceed to the check out screen.

Resolution: Advertisement Integration

Other ecommerce sites present customers with options when they hover over their shopping bag. An example of this is J. Crew, who will summarize the items in the shopping bag when a user hovers.

The bag itself shows the number of items in the bag, and allows users to see a subtotal.Users can also remove the item from their bag without leaving their current page or click “edit” to change color or size (though this will take the user to the product page). This option allows customers to continue shopping while having easy access to their subtotal.

Implementation

Problem #3: Menu Disorganization

While browsing on Gap, users will rely on menus to navigate to different product categories. While the current structure is adequate, competitors use this space more effectively. Items are grouped into three columns, and promotional deals are all the way at the end of the third column. Further, there is a lot of white space. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but competitors use this space to display products more efficiently.

Resolution: Advertisement Integration

Competitors use their dropdown menus to display current deals and popular items. Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch will place an image for a new arrival or promotion.

Organization for Banana Republic, a brand owned by Gap Inc., organizes their menus more clearly. Clothing had its own column, sale items are highlight, and new arrivals are organized to a section for new highlight selections.

Gap should use their menus to direct customers to seasonal lines and new arrivals. Customers who want to find clothing items should be able to rely on clear headers to direct them to specific trends or new arrivals.

Implementation

Conclusion

Comparing Gap to their competitors, there are areas for improvement. They do a lot well, but there are also areas where competitors implement features better. An interactive wireframe was designed, demonstrating how Gap could integrate changes onto their ecommerce site.