Fashionism Presents JCrew With First-Ever "Worst Website Redesign Award"

PR Log (Press Release) – Jan 28, 2009 – Fashionism.org, an active community of fashionistas and online shoppers, today presented JCrew (NYSE: JCG) with its first-ever Worst Website Redesign Award, for its recent changes to its website that have significantly decreased usability and in many cases completely impeded online ordering. JCrew's site was written up months ago in major financial publications for its issues, which have yet to be ironed out. For a public company, Fashionism believes this is an embarrassment.

"The site was first redesigned nine months ago and has had problems ever since," reports one Fashionism user. "Every item I click on is out of stock, the items are often in the wrong categories and I've ordered a few things multiple times, only to have them canceled every time." Reports of problems with the JCrew site have been frequent, and spawned literally hundreds of Fashionism threads, with canceled orders, website crashes and developing an intimate famliarity with the "failover" screen that appears when the site has database or server issues and is unreachable. As one member noted, "JCrew puts the 'fail' in 'failover,' for sure." Many members report reaching the site's checkout section, only to have server issues take down the site, making purchases impossible.

The site's most recent failure involves the creation of dynamic paths utilizing Java Server Pages (JSP). This allows site visitors to reach a product via multiple categories, which, as an excellent idea in theory, fails in JCrew's practice. As the links expire when a user session expires, it is no longer possible to bookmark a product page to return to later. Additionally, the design appears to have negatively impacted JCrew's presence in Google; many keyword searches for which JCrew used to place well, such as "argyle sweater", now yield no or few search-engine results that take you to the JCrew site.

JCrew's attitude toward discount codes and emphasis on utilizing final sale techniques also factored into the decision. "These discounts aren't nearly significant enough to merit final sale. When 'up to' 60% off is only 20% off in many cases, it's not worth ordering if you can't even return the item to the store," said one fashionista.

The award, designed by a key admin on the Fashionism team, has been printed on vellum and mailed to JCrew's CEO, Mickey Drexler.

To learn more, visit Fashionism at http://fashionism.org.