Gap: Mislocating local information

A concealed information link exposes the weakness in an international web estate.

The Site

Gap, the fashionable US-based clothing retailer, has a large e-commerce site that complements its chain of high-street stores. Its bricks-and-mortar presence outside the US extends to Canada, France, Japan and the UK.

As a shop the website is geared to the US market and the home page has no country locator to direct overseas shoppers to local information. Instead, a ‘store locator’ heading in the secondary navigation bar positioned at the foot of the page connects to an interactive store finder. This can be customised for any of the five countries where Gap has outlets. It then allows searches by town or postal district as well as type of Gap store.

The Takeaway

It is rare for an international retailer to downgrade links to country information to the obscure levels adopted by Gap. And the consequences of the inconvenience are potentially more serious for the company than for most because of gaps in its web estate.

Conventionally, a locator of this kind would be positioned somewhere at the top of the page where it is quick to spot and easy to access. In addition to its relegated position, Gap’s ‘store locator’ heading is not obviously the link for overseas shoppers to explore – the homepage is so clearly the US shop front that many will assume the locator is similarly for stores in the US.

The issue of overseas shoppers coming to the .com site for local store information is particularly critical for Gap on two counts. First, it operates a policy, highlighted on the home page, of allowing online shoppers free returns “to any Gap store”. Second, there are no local websites for three of the four countries outside the US where Gap has stores. In Canada, France and the UK the country domain is owned by another company (for example, www.gap.fr is the site of a large BMW car dealership), so the only way locals can find Gap online is through the .com web address.

Gap’s store locator is actually a commendably useful device of its type for international shoppers – if only they were given more help to find it.

First published on 03 December, 2005