SALON

Friday, Nov 12, 1999 5:00 PM UTC

When help in the shop is a flop

Why don't e-commerce sites offer real customer assistance, instead of clogging up bandwidth with cartoon helpers?

By

Topics: Fashion,

When e-commerce sites first launched, they were lauded for the streamlined shopping experience that they offered. Just click a few buttons and bingo! You were the proud owner of a new book/CD/pair of tennis shoes, with none of the hassle of digging through racks of clothes, dealing with pushy salespeople or standing in time-sucking lines.

But someone over at fashion central has since got it into their head that people want online shopping to be more like going to an actual store. Shoppers, they seem to think, miss those nosy salespeople hawking products. Say hello to the new generation of Digital Shopping Agents, appearing now at an e-commerce site near you.

Take, for example, Women.com’s new fashion boutique, rather unimaginatively titled shegetsdressed.com. Besides buying clothing and accessories — flannel bags, leopard print totes, “glam cardigans” and merino t-shirts — visitors can spend some quality time with “The Style Shrink,” the site’s fashionista guide.

“The Style Shrink,” a cartoon character who accompanies you in a second window while you shop, offers such daily tidbits of wisdom as “Honey, brace yourself … you’ll be going gray this fall. But don’t you dare cover it up. Celebrate it, embrace it, flaunt it! Why? Because I say so. I read it in a magazine — Okay. I’ve read it in every magazine.” Such jabber is enough to make you dizzy — but doesn’t really succeed in making you want to purchase a pair of gray Audrey mules.

There’s also “Phoebe” over at BlueAsphalt.com, an animated teen who lets you give her a “makeover” with digital wigs, while she giggles and coos. And Boo.com launched with Miss Boo, a “futurist fashion guru” who, when you go to look at wallets, offers this kind of commentary: “Like royalty, virtual people never carry cash, we just download our dollars and try to avoid our overdrafts going into overload.” Oh.

Most of these new “animated characters” are women — sassy, of course, and cute as a button — although there are exceptions. MakeUsAnOffer, for example, boasts the corpulent character “Chester.” Wise guy Chester allows you to “haggle” with him over the price of the clothes and gifts in this online store: You tell him that you want to pay, say, $20 for a sweater, and if that doesn’t thrill him, he asks what’s the most you would pay. Try $40. His reply: “$40? Fine … but only because I really need this sale.”

The premise behind digital shopping agents is apparently that consumers want a more interactive and personalized shopping experience; personally, I can’t believe that consumers really want to “haggle” with an animated character that is only going to offer canned responses. After all, the advice these characters proffer is rarely useful: Instead of answering questions about whether that wool sweater is cut small, you’ll get preprogrammed commentary like “this dress has a triple-X rating because it looks so hot on.” Gosh, thanks.

Sure, these characters are cute as a gimmick or a game, and can jazz up an otherwise boring e-commerce site. But one obnoxious comment too many might drive you bats. Not to mention the fact that the animations take up bandwidth and are slow to load. I’ll take speed over sass any day, thank you.

Janelle Brown is a contributing writer for Salon. More Janelle Brown.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
340 points341 points | 103 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
61 points62 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
33 points34 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
36 points37 points | 2 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
32 points33 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations