LandmarkShops.com online shopping experience

Competition: WIN 500 AED voucher to use at landmarkshops.com at the end of this post.

If there’s one shopping destination husbands would wholeheartedly approve for the wives to go, it’s gotta be at home. ONLINE. No complains. No tired legs. No disputes. Wives can spend as much time as they wish to browse through the items while husbands do their own things at home, and avoid carrying those finger-stiffing shopping bags.

That’s the husband talking. Now listen to the dad.

My wife needs to buy some stuffs for the baby but it’s been a busy week that limits my time to go out and shop. Also, the thought of long queues and the crowd turns me off – it’s ‘Sale Season’ remember.  Not to mention, the parking woes. And when we shop for kids items, you can never avoid the little one from running around and playing with the toys and whatever on display at the stores.

But I still took her to shopping and I’m cool with it.

We shopped at landmarkshops.com and we like the experience. Landmark Group is the company that operates Centrepoint. Most of their top brands are available online such as the apparel and footwear stores Max, Shoemart and Splash; home and living department Lifestyle; children’s store,  Babyshop; and even their electronics chain, Emax.

If going to the mall is too stressful these days because of the Dubai Summer Surprises crowd, the online store also does promotions.  That’s what caught my eyes upfront in fact. There is an ongoing sale that offers 25-70% off on many items at the time we shopped.

Customer Experience

We checked the site both on the desktop and the mobile.

The landing page is not too crowded and the brands are just a scroll away from the top. Special offers and best sellers are spread neatly on the the home page.

The black-white look and feel of the frame plus the use of subtle colors allows users to focus on the items. There’s not much of noise around the gallery.

Parent categories make up the main navigation – very user centric indeed. The menu items are well-organized and nested clearly. The footer has quick links to the most common sub-categories. You can easily jump from one section to another in a click.

Online shopping newbies wouldn’t get lost on their first use. Sign-up is not mandatory. A Facebook login is available for quicker registration.

I love the idea of uncut browsing of items. Instead of using pagination, the next set of items loads automatically upon reaching the bottom of the page.  It also shows the number of products on the category so you know how far you need to scroll down further. Surprisingly, the galleries load quickly (I’m using 10MBPS) despite being a huge graphical showcase.

You can sort the items by relevance to your needs, by brands or by price. Sorting by price I believe would be the most useful to many shoppers, myself included.

The good thumbnail size allows me to have ample preview that I don’t need to click the item to see it better. I only click if I like the item to see more pictures from different angles, and its available sizes and color details. Definitely a time-saver.

The suggested items which has relevance to the current item on the screen is a big help.

Yeah, you can’t fit the shirts but for loyal shoppers, they would know their sizes and what best fit them.

I wish…

However, I wish the shopping session timeout is longer. Several times I lost the items I already have in the basket because I was logged out. At some point, I needed to refresh the page to see the items back in the basket. I understand that the limited session time could be for security reasons but giving more time would help – especially most online shopping are done at home, where interruptions are unavoidable.

Another one I’d like to see added to the site is a real-time chat. If in actual shopping we don’t like an attendant following our every move, in online we need someone to talk to. Shoppers always have questions about the items, because not everyone may quickly find the information in the website – especially newbies. Like for example, I found a good item but out of stock. I wanted to ask if that is available in any of their mall stores, or how long will it take to be in stock again, but wasn’t able to do so.

They have the phone support hotline number anyway for queries such as mine. Or you can talk to them on social media. Their Twitter and Facebook is provided.

The site is relatively new that I have not seen any review on the items I viewed. It’s a good feature that would guide the customers particularly about the quality of the items.

Back to our shopping, we bought 15 items in total mostly from Babyshop (That’s how it is when you’re a parent). We only got an item each for me and the wife from Splash and Max.

Checkout is easy (if you won’t get logged out). As typical as how you review your shopping cart before heading to the cashier, you can also review the items in your ‘basket.’ You may change the quantity, modify or remove items.  You can pay with visa or mastercard, or cash on delivery.  The online merchant uses an industry-grade, secure SSL channel, with the latest data encryption techniques and digital signatures, so your info is safe.

You also earn Shukran points.

Delivery is champ. Morning next day I got the box with all the items in very good condition and proper packaging.  We’ve known Babyshop and Splash for good customer service and true enough, our orders are sealed in the best quality.

So husbands, next time the wives ask for shopping, you know what to do. Kidding aside, landmarkshops.com provides a good alternative to traditional shopping. Unless you’re buying really delicate items, the online store offers convenience if in case you can’t go to the malls for your own reasons. AND.. you’re not only shopping for the trendiest styles, your shopping style is trendy.

Competition
Win 500 AED shopping voucher to use at landmarkshops.com! Simply enter by any or all of the ways below to qualify:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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* I was invited to review the online store using a promo code, but the opinion on this blog remains impartial, as always, and speaks about the actual experience and feelings of yours truly.