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June 16, 2007 12:03 AM

Broken: Pep Boys online shopping page

PepboysSteve Jackson writes:

I ran across one of the poorest implementations of a search form I've ever seen when I was recently shopping for some parts for my car.

Like most auto parts sites, Pep Boys online shopping page - has you shop for parts by year/make/model of your car. So far, so good.

However, when I attempted to select the first form dropdown, I couldn't get the form to work. Figuring that it was a case of programmers not being sharp enough to program their sites to be compatible with Firefox, I switched over to IE, where I had the same exact problem: none of the dropdowns worked.

Finally, I realize that Pep Boys has included a *picture* of a form above the actual form which, sandwiched between two other visual elements (and underneath the picture of a search form), which is really hard to see.

Comments:

This is really odd - it doesn't seem intentional because if the picture is removed, the page makes sense and works as one would expect. Judging by the other cosmetic glitches on this site, my guess is that this picture is a leftover when the site was partially a mockup.

Posted by: Sashazur at June 16, 2007 12:12 AM

That may be one of the most broken things I've seen on this site.

What's even more broken is the text in the image that reads "Click Here" that does absolutely nothing!

To top it all off, the search order in the image appears to be Make->Model->Year, but in reality you have to search Year->Make->Model!

Posted by: Yale at June 16, 2007 02:40 AM

As Sashazur said, this picture must not have been put their intentionally. What possible purpose could it serve? It does not show you how to fill out the form, it says "click here" but does nothing when you click on it, and it does not resemble the actual search form.

Posted by: TIBE4ME at June 16, 2007 10:21 PM

Looks like the picture above is intended to be used as an ad on other sites. People would try to click on the fake form and then be moved to the real form. That also explains the "click here" text - I see these kinds of ads on many sites.

How the ad for the page ended up on the page itself is anyone's guess.

Posted by: LKM at June 18, 2007 04:26 AM

Yeah, that's broken, but as others have said, it's probably just an oversight. I don't see that it's THAT huge of a deal though, seeing as how there's FOUR other ways on this one page to search for what you want.

Posted by: ambrocked at June 18, 2007 03:44 PM

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