UK ecommerce retailers review (feedback on activity 2)
Written by: Jonathan Briggs
October 16, 2008 [3442 views]
107 students completed this activity, well done! It was not difficult but I hope that it got you thinking about what makes a good ecommerce site and perhaps some of the problems. Many of you pointed out that you were being very subjective and would have preferred to follow a checklist. I deliberately wanted you to look at the sites as a “customer” rather than as a professional.
How well did the site fit the brand?
I asked you to think about how the brand in the high street was reflected in the site. Most of you understood this well and looked not only at the graphical design but also about how the design portrayed messages about the company’s business, it’s values and it’s position in the market.
From the replies you gave it is clear that you believe that most stores are doing a good job. Those sites picked out as “could try harder” included Dolland & Aitchinson, Evans, Heals and Matalan,
What to look for when reviewing sites?
I asked you to name 3 things that the site was doing well. Here are some of the things you picked out. Review this list and think about how important each of them would be to a customer.
- Simple design
- Well organised
- Store locator
- Check the stock in your local store
- Compare products side by side
- Special offers
- Student discounts
- Contact us
- Easy to find what you wanted
- Customer accounts
- Order on line and collect in store
- Upcoming seasonal events
- Search
- Filter search results (to help the customer narrow down their options)
- Prepaid cards that can be topped up online
- Accessibility
- Size guides
- Slideshows
- Product exploration through magnifying glass
- Wish lists
- Products modelled using video
- Advice centre (for each category of products)
- Jargon buster
- Toy finder
- Clearly shows they take security and privacy seriously
- Email newsletters
- Recipes
- A “look book” allowing exploration of new seasons collections
- Breadcrumb trail makes it easy to retrace your steps
- Background information on ethical principles of the company
- Virtual “try this on”
- Top products
- Grocer’s blog
- Ask our nutritionist
- Flash buttons
- AJAX shopping basket
- Animated video
What could be improved?
This is perhaps an even more important list and shows that many of you spotted things that the customers would spot too.
- Too much information poorly organised
- Too many tick boxes and a complex checkout
- Unclear where I was as the main page showed sale items
- Use of unclear abbreviations
- Some links did not work
- Drop down navigation was confusing making finding things difficult
- Pages were very cluttered
- Did not provide anything for regular customers
- Inaccessible to some audiences such as the partially sighted
- No home button
- Font was too small
- Hard to find contact us button
- Too many clicks
- Hard to see what is a link
- Show store locations on a map
- Poor display of products; they could use a catwalk video to show how the clothes would look
- No way of giving feedback
- Does not work in all browsers
- Could add recommended products
- Site opens in an additional window
- Slow to download especially the videos
- Music plays automatically and cannot be stopped
- The design looks cheap
- Modern interface technologies could be used
- I would have added a “jobs” section
- The site should cater for people with different needs
- No evidence of the site being secure
- Improve the product imagery
- The whole site looks a bit dated
How much did the company spend on making this site?
I really wanted to get a sense of how big a project you thought building a high street retail site would be. Many of you found this hard and that was to be expected. A few of the answers, £1000 or £2000, were just silly. This would not buy you a series of meetings with most of the companies who build these sites. Indeed most of the stores will be spending more than this a month just on hosting.
Typically sites like those you looked at will have cost between £75,000 and £250,000 with the supermarkets in particular spending much much more.
We will discuss time and cost in much more detail in a later session.
Some questions raised by the activity
How will the activities be marked?
You get 1% credit for each one you submit (on time). I check to make sure that you have not just written rubbish but if you have made sensible answers then you will get the 1%. No additional marking will be done although the activities also provide the basis for the exam.
Are there any formal methods for evaluating an ecommerce site?
When I evaluate a site I look at the following:
- Design consistency
- Navigation and information architecture
- Customer journey through the site
- Trust, privacy and security
- Customer service
- Decision support for the shopping process
- Depth of information and imagery
- Search engine visibility
- Copywriting, offers, personality, openness
- Innovation (business, technical, creative)
Why was the activity so open-ended?
A final year module is about getting you to think for yourselves. My role is to stimulate debate not to pass on dry facts. I prefer to get you to do some thinking before we cover the same material because it helps you learn.
Are we going to learn intense CSS templating in this module?
No
How can we know how much the site cost?
As I say, I will cover this in a future session.
What do you think?
