Imagine creating a successful, easy-to-navigate website for 40,000 SKUs, many of them similar and all fairly mundane. Multichannel Merchant’s “Website of the Year” award winner, eBags.com, does just that. There are many impressive features of the site, not the least of which is the amount of reassurance it provides shoppers. Here are a few examples from the home page alone:
• A small banner at the very top reads Need help? Contact Us, and links to multiple ways to get assistance. Note how much more powerful the “Need help?” question makes this feature, compared to simply Contact Us alone.
• The perpetual shopping cart is headlined Free Returns, and the headline links to eBags’ “hassle-free returns policy.” (eBags pays return shipping.) I think the placement of that benefit on top of the perpetual shopping cart is a stroke of genius. There’s no reason to remove anything from your cart, because you can always send it back, free.
• Below the product offering, bold type proclaims eBags to be #1 Online Bag Retailer Since1999. Most companies would stop there, but they prove it with three powerful facts:
o 2,204,708 customer reviews
o 2,467 people shopping on eBags right now
o 12,623,869 bags shipped
• The bottom of the home page includes a section headlined Shop With Confidence, with links titled Free Returns, Price Guarantee and Security Pledge.
One of the Multichannel Merchant Award judges called eBags’ home page “near-perfect,” and I agree. The design is clean, the navigation simple, and you can find virtually anything you’re looking for without scrolling. It’s a home page well worth studying!
