Web Redesign - Banana Republic, The Gap, Old Navy

Gap Inc. recently redesigned the websites for their three chains of clothing - Banana Republic, The Gap and Old Navy, the new features are a great addition to online shopping, but where's the marketing? The Good As before, the site will suggest additional pieces to complement an article of clothing chosen for purchasing by a shopper, but now that shopper can select various pieces in available colors and see the outfit combined before deciding to purchase anything. The draw back to online shopping has always been that you just don't know what something will look like when you get it home. I think with the new "outfitting" feature shoppers will have a better idea of how pieces work together, thus allowing them to make a purchase online without fearing the hassle of returning an item that just wasn't what they thought it would be. The "outfitting" feature is the online equivalent to the store sales associate and is a great way to add the personalization you receive from visiting a retail store. The sites also now have a new feature called "quick look." Quick look allows a shopper to take a closer look at an item on a page of several. Instead of clicking on an item for more information the shopper can simply click the "quick look" button that appears when the mouse is placed over the product and a new box pops up with information such as colors available, product material and sizing info. The shopper can then click on the "more details" link to visit the item's actual page that will offer more views and the "outfitting feature." I think "quick look" was a great idea because the site's pages are rather slow to load. Finally, instead of taking the shopper to their "shopping cart" page everytime a new item is selected to be bought (as before), a drop down box appears in the upper right corner showing the item's addition to the shopper's cart and the cart total thus far. This allows the shopper to continue on with shopping instead of waiting for a loading page that the customer will then have to back out of and wait for another page to load to continue shopping. (Gap, Inc. designers obviously understand the impatience of online customers and have adjusted the site to counteract this.) I think the small changes to the three sites are great and will be a nice assistance to customers. The Bad The only problem I see with the new site's are that Gap, Inc. does not seem to be marketing this at all. I think the clean look of the sites, the easy navigation and what seems to be very frequent updates would be worth marketing online. I did a search in Google for various keywords to find articles on the redesigns, but couldn't find much of anythinng. I don't even see any press releases on the company's site announcing the changes. Perhaps this is because the changes are still so new and they are working out bugs? I guess we'll just have to see. I hope Gap, Inc. doesn't fall into the category of major companies that refuse to understand the goldmine that is internet marketing.