Digital Real Estate - Gap

Here's a recent screen shot of the home page of Gap, on my PC.

Yes, you'll see discounts splattered all over the home page - everybody is doing it, as if discounting was more important than the product being sold.

But you have merchandising choices - hidden across the top of the page - the customer can navigate from one merchandise category to another. And the creative team made sure that all sister brands can be shipped (upper left).

Ok, now let's take a look at the mobile version of the website, via my Samsung Galaxy Note II.

Notice that compromises have to be made, and Gap chose to compromise on merchandise. The 35% offer is still there, the 50% off select styles fall sale offer is still there. Find a store gets more real estate. Winter warmers? Gone. Fall for dresses? Gone (and yes, I get it, you can scroll through and get to merchandise and get to fall for dresses - but that's different than the home page experience).

My Merchandise Forensics work increasingly shows that if you don't feature merchandise, you don't sell merchandise.

And honestly, folks, the only reason we're in business is to sell merchandise.

But mobile is requiring us to make major compromises. Across the board, we're compromising the merchandising assortment for other aspects of business.