Lowes.com Default Store Local Ad

The other top competitor in the Home Improvement space is Lowes. I thought I'd take a peek at their site nav as well between what the site thinks is my local store (based on browser history) and what happens when I try to look at the local ads.

Lowes.com - Default Store Location Based on Browser

As it turns out, there are no local ads for the default local store-based-on-browser history and an interstitial message briefly shows up saying there are no ads for the default local store before redirecting to the default local store ad, in Lowes' case, is a store in North Carolina.

Lowes.com - Weekly Ads of the Browser-Based Location

As you can see in this example, Lowes doesn't have their act together either. If you really wanted to rollout a national ad campaign, you should have a national ad and then add-on with whatever the region dictates, in terms of plants appropriate to the region's season and climate zones.

Home Depot: A bad UX update

Well, that could have gone better. It seems as though HomeDepot.com has rolled out of a site navigation redesign and somewhere along the way, zip codes and local stores has gotten all f'd up. Maybe their license for the 3rd party vendor that handles it expired or something. Not only do my bookmarked local store pages go somewhere other than the local store page, but when I try to find my local store in southwest Washington.

If I am searching for a store in Vancouver, WA, don't you suppose that the first listing should be a store in Vancouver, WA; instead, Home Depot's store listing service shows you the closest store to the map location of "Vancouver, WA", in this example, is Jantzen Beach, OREGON.

WTF. I can't even set a local store. It keeps defaulting back to Beaverton, OR. 

Here's what I'm doing:

Go to: HomeDepot.com
Click onto: Store Finder or Change Store
Input: local zip code or city/state

You'd think that UX would be this simple.

What the nav system spits out for results, isn't even correct! Ok. I think I picked my store. It even shows up in green. The link for In-Store Layout is just a PDF of the store's layout. This link mapping is fine and it brings up the right store and store label.

Home Depot store finder - My Store will appear in Green when selected.
You think that session cookies would be in place, but sadly, they are not.

However, after selecting a location as "My Store", click onto the link for "Local Ad". 

Here's what I get:

Local Ad Link Error: The page that loads AFTER choosing a store
from the Store Finder, and selecting LOCAL AD

How do you f--- up with Atlanta's Cumberland store showing up? A bad UX update. That's how.

And then, when I use the top page nav, guess what? The page forgets about my store, and navigates me to.. wait for it.. Beaverton, OR. This is probably because my browser thinks I am in Portland. But, I just told the website that my local store is E Vancouver.

HomeDepot.com Home page AFTER selecting my local store

But wait, there's more! It looks to me like these are two entirely different applications and they are not talking to each other all that well: Store Finder and Local Ads. I can tell these are separate apps when I look at their mapping directions. My store is still green lit, but the map still wants to navigate to Beaverton.