CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2030

10-Minute Teardown for Aerosoles.com

August 11, 2020

Hello -

A lot of folks seemed to like the new eCommerce website 10-minute teardown format we launched last week. I always want to deliver value, and the idea is to inspire and inform at the same time.

So … tell me what you think. Just reply to this email and let me know real quick.

Let’s meet this week’s teardown target.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: Aerosoles.com

Company Profile

Aerosoles is an off-the-rack, casual women’s shoe eCommerce store. It is one of the top 1000 Shopify stores by shopping volume. Founded in 1987, they are based in Edison, New Jersey. The company appears to have had many physical (bricks and mortar) locations in the past but has transitioned to an online-only presence. Select shoe lines are available in Macy’s stores and other retailers, as well as in an extensive Amazon storefront.

The Good

They do a good job staying on brand. Obviously, they have professional photography with not a lot of us can afford on a regular basis. But someone — either the photographer or website person — is color balancing and optimizing the photos fairly well so let’s give credit where credit is due.

The top menu is ALL about the products and the drop-down mega-menu seems well organized and easy to navigate.

Product pages are clean and well-organized as well with easy to select color and sizing options … very intuitive. This has to be helping them. I would suggest the use of trust badges and a bit of properly formatted description text, which is not done “good” but is not done “bad” either. They do make good use of “social proof” testimonials and alternative shopping suggestions which are deployed smartly.

The Bad

What is it with eCommerce sites and their lazy … almost negligent use of image ALT tags? It’s like free SEO money AND it keeps you out of hot water. Even if you just want to be a good internet citizen and help the visually challenged. And it only takes a few moments and a little thought for your products.

Any … ALT tags suck again and it’s got me annoyed with Aerosoles.com. They even have some kind of accessibility certification seal that just does NOT meet real-world standards. They may have run their certs before making changes because it is not compliant now. Even some of the text does not meet contrast standards.

The Ugly

Last week “The Ugly” was page speed … and boy-howdy page speed is pretty darn ugly here as well. The page load is 6.1 seconds — three times target. And when we tried to load from our mobile testing browser it took (drumroll please) more than 22 seconds. This is so NOT a good user experience and — just like last week — it is costing them more in SEO and conversions that they can even measure.

In addition, there are 137 external service calls (30% overweight). Finally, the page size is just a bit bloated at 2.8MB, which can be improved but is better than a lot of other photo-intensive eCommerce sites we’ve worked on. We think they can get it below 2MB without any heartburn.

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