This article is as much for customers as it’s for retailers and brands, who in too many cases overcomplicate the process of measuring feet. Given the few data points one have to work with when selling shoes online, it’s important that you get the ones you have exactly right. The use of pencils, papers, outlines and so on are only adding steps that can go wrong. Here’s how one should do it.
Just a few decades ago, buying shoes was pretty simple. You went into a shoe store, a person that hopefully had at least a decent amount of knowledge helped you find the right size and fit of what you wanted, perhaps with the use of a feet measurement tool or a Brannock device, you tried them on, perhaps tried a second size, and went home with something that felt right. The risk for errors was still there of course, mainly caused by lack of knowledge from the sales person and/or the customer, but it was relatively low. Especially back in the days when width and fit options were much larger (read more about that in this article).
Back in the days, when basically every customer buying shoes got a personalised service. Picture: Lyell Owen / Facebook
When many stores that sold shoes became bigger, and the urge for increased sales took over the desire to service customers, more and more stores had the shoe boxes available for customers to browse around themselves. Sales persons could still be around to help out if needed, but the more shoes that were sold where the customer handled the whole fitting process themselves, the better. No need to say that the amount of errors in terms of fit increased a lot with this set-up. To make things less complicated for the lone customer, less and less shoes were offered in different widths etc.
Now, we are halfway through the 2020’s, and online sales are slowly but surely taking over, and this year almost 40% off the global footwear sales are expected to be made online. Needless to say, the amount of shoes that fit bad has not gone down. People in general both wear bad shoes to a relatively large degree, and shoes that fit wrong to a relatively large degree.
Readers of this website are less prone to the latter than most people, but likely many still wear shoes that don’t fit properly. I know, since I’m in contact with and meet many of you through my everyday work at the online shoe and shoe care retailer Skolyx and through my work with Shoegazing. Even if I’ve written many articles on shoe fit and will write many more, fit is a complicated thing, and if you are used to something wrong it’s hard to change to something right, and within all this there’s also a matter of personal preferences to a relatively large degree as well.
Brannock devices can be great to measure feet, if done correctly. To utilise this measurement for online retailers is a relatively good solution, this article is about when measurements are to be taken by the customer themselves. Picture: Ask Cobbler / Reddit
Nonetheless, when it comes to assisting customers to find the right size when shopping online, various solutions are used, where many of them sadly aren’t ideal. My view is that many who sell shoes make it unnecessarily complicated for their customers, and for themselves, and in turn also receive less good results.
The wrong way to measure feet
When you are measured by a sales person one can basically measure whatever way one please, use a Brannock device, or whatever works for that person. Only thing that matters is that one do the same and learn to use this. But when one have online customers who are to measure their own feet, and you are to use this data, it’s another story.
The most common error brands or retailers do is using outlines in various ways. When people are to draw around their feet, or are asked to have help from someone else to do it, with a pencil onto a piece of paper. Then they are to measure the outlines and see how long the drawing are, and this length is then to be compared to a chart, or sometimes one are also to deduct one cm or so, for the pencil, to get “the actual feet length” based of the outlines drawing. In cases, customers are also to measure the width at the widest point.
Measuring outlines on paper comes with a lot of potential issues. Picture: Latin Dance Shoes
The main problem with the above is that people don’t draw their feet exactly the same. Even if retailers try to describe how to do it, people don’t keep the pencil completely straight (or exactly angled 45 degrees which sometimes is used), they use different types of pencils or pens, they slip, and so on. For sure, some will manage to take the measurements right and it can be used for sizing guidance, but in too many cases something come out wrong and you risk giving faulty advice.
Now, many of you might think that “hey, length of feet doesn’t always translate directly to a shoe size for everyone, there’s many other measurements that are at equally or even more important”. Yes. Problem is that very few know how to utilise other measurements properly, and risks of these getting wrong compared to how the retailer / brand have these done are often even higher. More on this below.
The right way to measure feet
So, as may have come across by now, the most important thing when having customers do measurements by themselves remotely, is to have them done exactly the same by everyone. This way the retailer not only know that it can be compared to the measurements the have and use, it also means that they can learn from all their customers on how their shoes fit and what works for people. If you’re not sure of this, you’re not sure if feedback from some that fit is off compared to what they “should” be is due to measurements or something else. If you know input data is the same, always, at least you know this.
That is why one should always have customers measure as simply and straight forward as possible. From experience (we have thousands of customers that we help size every year at Skolyx, mainly online but also in person) and from what I learned from others who have tried many different ways to have customers do measurement, the best way to measure feet length is like this:
– Put a stick ruler or tape measure against a wall, laid straight out forward from this. Ideally on a floor with floorboards or something else that has straight lines that you can use as guidance.
– Stand with your feet against the wall with each foot on each side of the stick ruler. Do this in the way you intend to wear the shoes you are about to order, with thin socks, thick socks, without socks, etc.
– For most it’s easy to see the exact length, given that big toe is usually the longest. If some other toe is longer it can be tricker, then just put a book and place it with 90 degrees angle from the longest toe over the ruler. Write down the exact measurement, down to the millimeter, on both feet.
My feet length is 280 mm on both feet, even if only left is shown here. Measured like this, it will be the same all the time, even if someone else would measure it.
This way you get the exact, actual longest measurement of the foot, from the part furthest back on the heel to the tip of the toe. Easy to do, so all who measure will do it the same way. And if you use a shoe measurement tool (that angled stick you put inside a shoe) or get length measurements from a lastmaker, this is the measurement one will get.
And even if a lot of measurements may differ, length in most cases says a lot of size, and you will also know if it’s too short with is one of the size issues that never can be solved, while many others can. Then together with this one can ask for other info, especially what the customer wear in other brands that the seller know how they are compared to, and if their feet have any special characteristics, like being narrow, wide, high or low instep, narrow heel etc.
On the latter, most people know if they have something of this. In general, again both from experience and from many other retailers’ and brands’ experiences, to get this through in measurements can be tricky though, if it’s not to more of the extreme. For example, someone can have very flat feet which with two dimensional measurements over the widest point, the vamp, can seem very wide but if one measure the circumference, which is how a shoes width acutally is measured, it’s not that wide at all. And another example, circumference can seem super high so one think a wide fit is needed but the person haven’t pulled the measuring tape tight and have fleshy feet which can handle a lot of “under measurement”. And so on, and so on. If you are to gather more info, that should be done with very clear instructions, photos of feet, info about feet, info about how customers like shoes to fit, etc.
A bespoke shoemaker can take loads of measurement, since he or she do it the same way all the time, and will get all the necessary data of how it works out from fitting the customer. A different thing to online retailing.
So again, when one can measure feet oneself, and do it the same way over and over, all types of measurements can be worth a lot. But if one can’t, it’s better to use the most important measurement and that one can get right, and then communicate on other things. Chance is still fit input will come out wrong, but the retailer who sell the shoes will at least know that it’s not due to how measurements were taken, so they can use that input for the future to improve fit guidance, instad of continuing to more or less guess wildly.
