Anthropologie sure has a weird online strategy. On Monday, the day a huge new sale launched, Anthro picked the same day to launch its updated shopping cart and checkout process. Community members have been scattering their feedback among this week’s posts, so I thought it would help to start an open discussion thread so people can voice their opinions in one place.
Speaking of opinions: I’ve got ’em! First, I’m thrilled to see that Anthropologie has switched the cart to persistent https, even when you’re not signed in to your account. That’s long overdue and a very welcome change. For those of us here who are not technical, basically what this means is that when you look at your cart you’re seeing it via a protected view as opposed to an open view. Encryption and secure server sockets are good things! It’s not like any random fool could see your credit card information or anything like that before — the checkout has always been https. It’s just that now your cart is also https whether you are signed in or not, and before the cart was http if you weren’t signed into your anthropologie.com account.
One thing I’m getting absolutely bombarded with emails about is that the Save For Later/Add to Wishlist options seem to have disappeared in the shopping cart. Fear not, Anthro lovers! All you need to do to see those options is sign into your anthropologie.com and then view your cart. In the photo at the top of this post I wasn’t signed in while viewing my cart — no Save For Later/Add to Wishlist. But in the photo right above this paragraph I am signed in and you can see the red box and arrow I’ve used to show where those options now live. Is it questionable user experience that you have to sign in to see these options? Yup. I’m also not a fan out the Out of Stock box. It’s more confusing to me than the prior out of stock message was.
I haven’t had a lot of time to play around with the new cart, but there are so many questionable functionality and design decisions here! This is a huge step backwards to me. Most frustrating of all is that I’m getting constant 404 (error) pages when I try to click on products to view the product pages or start a checkout. Those kind of errors have me really concerned about the QA process. If I launched a cart giving 404s for one of my clients I’d be fired! I’m not in any way suggesting that anyone on Anthro’s tech team should be fired, but I am suggesting that I’m left feeling very uneasy by how buggy this cart is. Come on guys. QA. It’s a worthwhile investment!!
I don’t understand why Anthropologie keeps making it harder to use their website. It’s almost like they don’t want people to buy their stuff online; it’s a really weird emerging habit of shooting themselves in the foot. And I feel really bad about having so many negative things to say. I’m sure it doesn’t help my relationship with Anthro at all, but I feel it’s more important to be honest. As a customer I’m unhappy with this site update.
I’m sure the community has a lot to say so I’ll turn it over to you. What do you think of this new cart? What bugs have you run into? And for the love of everything shopping holy why doesn’t Anthropologie just use us as their beta testers???!?
