Late yesterday I saw an AP story pop up on one of my feeds. The topic was the Vermont Country Store. Since I’m always interested in how Americans recycle culture and reinvent sentiment for profit, it seemed like it’d be good reading. Also, from an interface/usability design perspective, I was curious as to whether they had a website and how it functioned. The article did not disappoint.

Specifically, this comment by the President and CEO, Bill Shouldice caught my eye:

Despite the company’s foray into the online world, Shouldice said 75 percent of the business comes through the catalog and he expects that to continue.

“We think there is great potential in the Internet, but we are not betting the farm on it,” he said. “We think that the catalog, being in people’s mailboxes, will be our primary business for many years to come.”

Since they are privately held, it’s impossible to say how much money VCS makes, so I can’t really put a context around this statement. However, it’s an interesting point of view given the economies that usually come with online sales. It’s also a fascinating comment given the way other catalogue retailers - at least back in the day - were very hot to trot when it came to trumpeting on- and offline catalogues integration. But still more intriguing - from a company that claims such an offline focus - is the work VCS has nevertheless put into their site.

I defer to some of my hard-core design colleagues on a true heuristic evaluation of vermontcountrystore.com. But for my two cents, it’s clear the company wasn’t screwing around when they put the interface together. First of all, an organic Google search for “vermont country store” brings them up in not only the number one spot, but also loads their sponsored ad. The navigation scheme is pretty simple. They use breadcrumbs to aid traffic flows/browsing. They have “email a friend” functionality that captures your email too. They have a persistent dropdown on every page labeled “other ways to shop” that lets you cut to the chase for, e.g., Father’s Day (which I like a great deal, seeing as how I pushed for adding a similar shortcut device to Catalyst’s main site) . They have a “you might also like” feature that’s activated once you click through to look at a specific item. Appropriately, I suppose, the site is optimized for an 800x600 resolution/viewport size - I’d imagine that they might have an audience that operates at low resolution and/or with small windows. And their shopping cart functionality is quite solid - you can get to purchase in two clicks, continue shopping, see what you’ve selected, etc. There’s even a live-chat function. In other words, these folks aren’t back-country when it comes to the web, no matter what their brand says.

Somewhat more whimsically, it was hilarious to cruise the actual content. The AP article gives you an idea, but I couldn’t resist some highlights of my exploration. For those that have actually been to the store or get the catalogue, of course, my examples will hardly be a surprise. But I did enjoy finding out that:

- One of the touted “customer favorites” (found via the dropdown) was something called Tired Old Ass Soak.

- The “you might also like” function for TOA Soak directs a shopper to something called Aging Hippie Bath Oil Fizz, which in turn gets you to Dirty Hippie Soap, etc. Almost as funny as the Amazon SIPs we wrote about.

- The fact you can buy a sleeveless muumuu online.

Indeed, the only hiccough I encountered the entire time was likely due to the site not being optimized for Firefox. Occasionally, with Mozilla’s browser, the shopping cart wouldn’t fill up. But everything worked just beautifully in Explorer. And the look-and-feel was brand appropriate; there’s nothing too “slick” about the site. Even the extra copy in the “email a friend” mail feels like you’re talking to someone at…a country store in Vermont.

JF

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 at 11:05 am and is filed under General, Usability.