As someone with no car, one bike and two feet, I often feel the need to buy shoes. Since I am adept at cycling in high heels, the world is my oyster. Well at the very least, the internet is my shoe store. I had only bought shoes online once before my adventures at Fluevog. It was a success and my feet have reveled in boot-y goodness since then. Emboldened by my history, I thought, “Surely the gods of the interweb will beam their praises at me!” Alas, no - my shoes did not fit. But read on Dear Voyeur… for this is a tale of a Very Good User Experience.

I already owned a pair of high heels from Fluevog that fit, were comfortable looked hot and therefore were awesome. In need of a break during the work day and originally seeking wedding shoe inspiration, I browsed the Fluevog website. From the easily found ’shop’ drop down menu I navigated to the women’s only section. Instantly I was stricken with the need to buy a pair on the front page. I was also impressed with the mix of both sale and regular priced items on the page. Clear indications on each of the items as to whether or not they were available in other colours was intriguing. The currency used was visible via a flag icon as was the sale and original prices. Everything I needed to make the decision to click in for a higher resolution photo as well as the option to simply add to cart and move on with my purchase. Once I was on the detail page the image was actually large enough for me to see the shoe and I didn’t have to click again to see yet another high resolution version as you usually suffer through on other clothing or shoe retail sites.

Being a cautious shopper, I needed to see *all* the shoes before I was going to buy. Once I clicked the ‘back’ button on my browser, I saw that my shoe description colour had changed indicating I had already viewed that item once. Again, a feature that is often lacking in clothing retail sites. After a full examination of my options, I returned to ‘page 1′ and added the item to my cart. The check out experience was lovely as well with a full complement of easily tabbed through form fields and options to cancel or return to shopping. There was a notable addition to the checkout that I had not yet experienced though; a checkbox that asked if you’d like a customer service representative to call you to verify your size. I thought I was safe in my size nine selection, but figured “What the hell!” and checked with reckless abandon.

The next day a Very Nice Young Man phoned me from the Los Angeles store, where they were processing my order. He explained that the sizes were running small on my particular shoe. We had a discussion regarding my current Fluevog shoes, how they fit and we decided to upsize my order to a nine and a half. A verification email and few days later, my shoes arrived at the office.

Sadness is a pair of new shoes that you could not possibly cram your foot into.

I called the store and verified that I could return the shoes to the local Fluevog’s without issue and the Very Sweet Girl on the phone apologized and wished me good shopping. Upon arrival at the Haight Street location, I was greeted by the Friendly Man at the counter who was aware of the sizing issues with the shoe and rushed off to get me larger sizes to try.

Oh shoe gods, why do you mock me?

They only had a size eleven which floated around my foot, taunting me. My option was to guess at a new size and have it delivered to me by mail. I was in need of immediate shoe satisfaction, so I took a gamble and showed the Friendly Man a photo of my recently purchased wedding dress on my phone and asked if he had anything that he thought would look “Sweet Ass” with it. He sprang into action and brought me a pair of cream coloured shoes that very much suited the dress, fit my feet as well as my Sweet Ass look requirements. I was told that I could apply the cost of my mis-sized shoes to the purchase with no issue.

Decisively, I exclaimed, “Yay!” got girl approval from my friend and now have one less task on the wedding planning list as well as shoes I will wear again. I also had a Very Good User Experience and highly endorse the entire flow of online, phone and in person shopping with Fluevog.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Real world. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.