Currys: Explaining product terminology

Jargon Buster acts as discreet assistant, putting the retailer on its customers’ side as they make a decision.

The Site

Currys, the UK’s largest high-street retailer of electrical goods and accessories, has an online store that includes web-exclusive offers in a 2,500-item catalogue.

Shoppers can browse the store from a sidebar menu by type of goods (Major Kitchen Appliances, Audio, Computing etc). Individual product pages include ‘key features’, specifications and detailed descriptions. To help cut through some of the inevitable specialist terminology a Jargon Buster feature is always accessible from the top navigation bar. This has an interactive alphabetical index that contains plain-English definitions of terms such as ‘anti-shock technology’ and ‘wireless application protocol’.

The Takeaway

One of the appeals of the web to many shoppers is that unlike in a store or on the phone they can research a purchase without risk of showing their technical ignorance or being caught asking ‘dumb’ questions. Currys recognises, though, that lots of its customers will be unsure about or unfamiliar with specialised terminology or its significance. Jargon Buster acts as discreet assistant, putting the retailer on its customers’ side as they make a decision or brief themselves before a trip to the high street.

But while explanations are commendably concise and clear, the feature’s usefulness is diluted because it cannot be used alongside a product page – instead, it displaces the product information in the browser window. As well as being less helpful, this also makes the research process more cumbersome and slower when the object should be to help customers towards a decision as quickly as possible.

Currys could easily get round this by using a ‘baby’ window to present the Jargon Buster index alongside product information. Its own FAQ feature, buried at the foot of each site page, shows how it can be done.

First published on 30 March, 2004