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 clothing does it sell? What is the quality of its garments like? What's the story behind it? We're going to tell you all about that so you can see examples of eCommerce businesses that have successfully used social media and the internet to their advantage.
What is Zeeman?
Let's start with the basics: understanding what Zeeman is. To do this, you should know that its history dates back to 1967. That year, Jan Zeeman opened the first store, specifically in Alphen aan den Rijn, in the Netherlands. It was a complete departure from the norm. First, because it was considered a supermarket of low-priced clothing and textiles. And second, because it had a self-service system.
For him, as reflected on the store's website, "quality textiles don't have to be expensive." And this is something they still strictly adhere to.
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 expanding across Europe. Germany was the first country to open a Zeeman store. And it wasn't until 2015 that the first store opened in Spain. Although some publications external to the brand mention that it arrived 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 visit their website, you'll see that they prioritize their products. The first thing you see is their menu with the main categories, and right below them are large icons encouraging you to explore each category. The main categories are: baby collection, swimwear, travel wear, 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.
The items are sorted by relevance, but you can change that to price or recency . There's also a small filter where you can specify color, size, or model to speed up your 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 mentioned before, the filters are very limited, and that means that even when there are few items on it, it's tedious to have to go page by page, or even product by product, to see if it's what you're looking for.
Another negative point is that, in many items, the descriptions of the items are not available, forcing customers to rely solely on the photos and not the text to know the measurements, or to get an idea of ​​what the garment would actually look like.
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.
So what happens to the "At Home" category? Well, it's completely different, which means it no longer follows the eCommerce style and feels more like an afterthought. They should have kept it consistent (especially since it has subcategories) instead of making it so distinct. Furthermore, the other subcategories—Sale, Our Essentials, and Themes—all follow the same design. This lack of distinction is particularly noticeable.
The thing is, if you follow a consistent pattern across all your pages so people can easily learn to navigate, and then suddenly change it on one page, you're already breaking the user experience . It wouldn't be a problem if it were a different type of page, but not a category page.
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.