The shopping experience evolves

Zappos, who's been a leader in user experience design in my book, just released a new way to shop. Actually, it's not new exactly, it's just a digital version of the way many of us already shop, which is by looking for items similar to ones we like.

In the real world that can be challenging. It requires actual work, even for those of use who love shopping. But online, data makes it much easy to shop like this.



Here's what works:

1. It's visual
You start by choosing a shoe you like and are presented with a page of similar shoes. All you see is the picture of the shoe and its price. if you roll over the shoe you get additional information, such as the designer, with an option to get even more details.

2. It's game like
Search is a game, and sites that embrace that make the experience much more fun. The Zappos site is not a game (although it could be), but it feels as though there's a win at the end. It's fun to go down one path and then start again, or see where you can get to with your choices. In fact it's like "Choose Your Own Adventure" but for shoes!

3. It works with the berry picking lot of us
There are many ways we seek information, in fact, library sciences has a name for it, "Information Seeking Behaviors." In the online realm, many of us are what is termed "berry pickers," which means that we find information as if we are picking berries, with one piece of information leading to the next.

So kudos to Zappos for making their user experience better, and for making shoe shopping even more fun!