If you are one of those who buy cheap clothes in the style of Shein, Kiabi, Ale Hop and other similar competitors of Primark, then you will surely know Zeeman. A few years ago it started opening stores in Spain and now it is also available through the website.
But What is Zeeman? What kind of clothes does he sell? How is the quality of your garments? What story is behind it? All of this is what we are going to talk to you about so that you have examples of eCommerce that have known how to use networks and the Internet to their advantage.
What is Zeeman?
Let's start with the first thing, knowing what Zeeman is. To do this, you must know that Its story takes us to the year 1967. That year, Jan Zeeman opened the first store, specifically in Alphen aan den Rijn, in the Netherlands. He totally broke with what he had been doing. First, because it was considered a supermarket of low-priced clothing and textile products. And second, because it had a self-service system.
For him, as reflected on the store page, "Quality textile products do not have to be expensive." And this is something that they still strictly follow.
Over time, Zeeman built his chain of affordable clothing stores into the largest in the Netherlands. But they didn't stay there alone, but little by little they left their comfort zone.
In 1981 the company began to expand throughout Europe. The first country to get a Zeeman store was Germany. And it was not until 2015 that the first store was established in Spain. Although in some other publications external to the brand they talk about it landing in 2016 or 2021.
Currently, Zeeman is made up of 1300 stores, distributed in 8 different countries. In addition, it has an online store, which means that, even if there is no store in the country where you live, you can order online what catches your attention or that you like.
Zeeman's online store
As we have told you before, Zeeman now offers online shopping. In fact, its eCommerce was launched in 2023 and is being quite successful, for now.
If you go to their website you will see that they prioritize their articles. The first thing you see is its menu with the main categories, and just below you have large icons encouraging you to enter that category. The main ones are: baby collection, swimwear, travel clothes and women's dresses.
Afterwards, more categories appear again for you to browse the web. And finally, before the footer they give you some examples of items so you can see products and prices, in this case home.
If you enter the different categories, the design of the website is similar to the home page. It differs in that a column appears on the left with all the subcategories and somewhat smaller icons. But the ones that appear are because they are the most sold or sought after.
Clicking on one of the subcategories will take you to see the products it offers online, some of them exclusively, like Kiabi does, for example.
Articles are ordered by relevance, but that can be changed by price or novelty. You also have a small filter where you could determine the color, size or model to go faster in the search.
Of course, they do not have a large number of articles. In fact, in some categories, like plus sizes, they only have one page and it's all about underwear. As for the t-shirts, there are three pages, but we miss a more complete filter (only the color and size (understood as size) appear).
Is the Zeeman online store okay?
If we did an objective analysis of the page we could say that it is in process. The website is well built. It is simple, eye-catching, has the brand's colors, has texts with SEO, etc. But it lacks content and, above all, tools that can help customers buy better.
For example, as we have told you before, the filters are very scarce, and that means that, even when there are few articles in it, it is tiresome to have to go page by page, or even by product, seeing if it is what you are looking for.
Another negative point is that, In many items, item descriptions are not available, making customers only have to be guided by the photos and not the text to know measurements, or to get an idea of what the garment would be like in real life.
In fact, priority is given to the price and photos in the listings. But not so much to the description. And although these first two are factors that influence the purchase, if they do not know well what they are buying they may not take the step.
It has a big flaw. If you go through the menu and click on Women, Men, Baby, Children... they all take you to their respective pages. But they all have the same design.
What happens then with the “At Home” category? Well, it varies completely, which means that it no longer follows the line of eCommerce and feels more like a glob. In this sense, they should have made it the same (especially because it has subcategories) and not make it so different. What's more, the other subcategories of Sales, Our basics and Themes follow the same previous line. Which draws too much attention due to such an erroneous distinction.
And the thing is, if on all the pages you follow a pattern so that people can learn to navigate without difficulty, and suddenly you change it on one, you are already breaking with the user experience. Nothing would happen if it were another type of page, but not a category.
As you can see, even important brands like Zeeman still have a long way to go online to be a great page and a great eCommerce. It has the foundation, but it needs to be polished a little to establish itself as a good online clothing store. What do you think of her? We read you in comments.