Home Depot’s Mobile Site Could Be Better

Something stood out in my mind Saturday as I stood alone in an aisle at my local Home Depot. Merchants with mobile sites are discovering that customers are actually surfing for product information while they are in the store. So with no one to help me find the right submersible pump to replace my old and burnt-out pal, I figured I’d surf for product specs on my smartphone.

The good news was Home Depot did a great job optimizing its Website for m-commerce. The bad news is the optimization was pure aesthetic. While the fonts were clear and simple to read (and there was an option to make the fonts larger or smaller), the product selection on my search for submersible pumps brought me a bunch of items that were not on the rack in front of me.

My first clue should have been when I searched by item number and landed on a “no items found” page. But I figured that maybe the search was product and price based and that, of course, I was doing it wrong.

I was able to search for a store and of course it brought me to where I was standing. I could have used that to see if there was a pump in my price range at another store, but that was not an option. And I wasn’t about to go on a wild goose chase for a new pump on a Saturday evening when it could have waited until after Easter.

But I have to put this into perspective. Last summer at eTail East, Home Depot VP Michael Cooper was talking about his company’s struggles with multichannel retailing. And to be honest, I initially went to Google’s mobile app to search the product number, figuring Home Depot’s site would not be phone-friendly.

So good job by Home Depot on at least giving its customers basic mobile functionality. Its m-commerce is bound to get better.