J.Jill. Worst. Shopping. Ever.

Wow, I just tried to order some clothing for my wife, from J.Jill, and I'm unpleasently surprised by the online shopping experience. You'd think a major retailer would have more sense than implementing an ordering system that:

  • Only works in Internet Explorer. The "javascripts" they utilize are riddled with errors under the latest versions of Safari and Firefox. They do work with the aging IE 5, however. And the failure isn't pretty; you can't add a single item to your shopping cart using the other browsers!

  • Requires you to select a "size" of non-sized items (such as a scarf) before the item can be added to your cart. And, when you fail to tickle the useless Size pop-up menu, the error message is passively written and generally unhelpful.

  • When you do manage to check out, they're still displaying a red-type note about Christmas shipping. Hello? How many days ago was "Order by Dec 28" still valid?

    Good heavens, requiring people to use the problem-prone IE just to buy from you? A shopping user interface that requires unnecessary steps? If you own J.Jill stock, sell it, they're obviously clueless when it comes to basic Internet retailing in 2006.

    Update Feb 8, 2006: One month later, to the day, I've learned J.Jill has since corrected the problems I encountered. I received a nice note from their E-Commerce VP thanking for me for the feedback and addressing my points. I take back my accusation of being clueless, while I still think that the site shouldn't have been foisted upon the public in its previous condition, they do clearly monitor the web for feedback and respond. Bravo.

    My wife loved the clothing I ordered, by the way.