An important note to clothing stores

With websites like Polyvore and Pinterest steadily gaining popularity, it's time for clothing and fashion websites to rethink how they display items on each webpage. Both Polyvore and Pinterest offer an incredible opportunity for businesses: free advertising!

Here's my basic proposal for a product webpage:

Static Image

When using the browser buttons for both Polyvore and Pinterest, it's essential that a static image be on the page. For Polyvore, it's especially important that the image be clickable, so no fancy JavaScript should get in the way!

Here you can see Old Navy is doing it wrong. When I hover over the product image, I can't add it to Polyvore! Instead, it's still showing the detailed product view on the right. Frustrating.

NET-A-PORTER does it right. A nice green box shows around the image allowing me to save that image to Polyvore.

Transparent background


This is also very important for Polyvore - items look great with a transparent background. This allows Polyvore users to easily place items on top of each other.

Anthropologie is doing it wrong. Most of their product images are placed on a gray background, which looks horrible when placed over other items:

NET-A-PORTER is doing it right:

2-3 Views


Having 2-3 views of the product is also very helpful. The front view is best for Polyvore, the back view is optional and just a good idea in general for customers. Finally, the outfit view is perfect for Pinterest.

Here's a plain, flat clothing item pinned on Pinterest from Athleta. It's not super compelling.

Here's an example of a really great outfit view that really captures attention and has many more repins and likes (note, the image is originally from lookbook.nu, and is not a clothing website, but this is how clothing *should* be photographed for websites).

Interactive interface


Finally, to keep the interactive interface that most clothing websites already have, I suggest a link under the product image that allows the user to zoom in or out and view the details of the item.