There’s nothing I love more than walking into a store and being greeted by a smiling face with a bit of helpful advice, likewise, I’m all for helpful online shopping experiences. So when your brand’s slogan tells me that you’re “The Helpful Place” I expect a minimum amount of helpfulness from your web experience.

After Googling for a specific brand of lighting products, I came across this ad:

Does that say what I think it says? So you’re going to ship it to your own store and let me pick it up for free? I shop online so I don’t have to go to the store; isn’t that the point?

So after being intrigued by this ad, I click it expecting two simple things:

• An explanation of the Free Shipping offer
• The product itself (or at least a suitable substitution or explanation)

Instead, here’s what I got:

Actually Ace, I never did a search for “1289058″, and no I didn’t mean “1289053″ either.

If you don’t have what I’m looking for then please don’t show me an advertisement. If you must show me an ad, please give me a helpful landing page with an accommodating cross-sell explaining why you don’t have what I expected. The last thing we want to see is a product-less page that assumes we understand your product SKUs.

Show me an honest ad and I’ll respect your brand like I do Lowes and Home Depot. Show me a usable landing page, and I’ll buy your products. That’d be helpful to both you and I, Ace.