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CEO at Econsultancy
07 February 2007 09:31am
BTW, that's 'Steph' as in Stephanie as opposed to Stephen, so female...!
I'm intrigued by the "no free advice" approach by some of the agencies / specialists...
And yet agencies will:
- Pay PR agencies (usually too much) to get their 'thought leadership' out there (also known as free advice)
- Pay to come and give free advice at events (including ours)
- Invest a lot of free time and advice in pitches
So I would see this as a rare chance to show off some of your expertise in a public forum - free marketing and thought leadership! Not to mention the pull-through search benefits you get (the Long Tail of thought leadership referrals).
I can think of 4 examples off the top of my head where agencies/consultants who have posted good free advice in this forum have one sizeable business off the back of it. And not from the original poster but from subsequent readers.
Furniture for advice on the other hand is quite a nice idea... ;)
Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
On 21:47:39 6 February 2007 ChrisAverill wrote:
Head of eCommerce & Retail at VisitBritain
07 February 2007 09:39am
I'm in complete agreement with this statement. I was somewhat dismayed at the odd negative comments Stephanie has been getting. I think she has been quite innovative to take this approach and use the forum. If people don't want to help or offer advice, the answer is simple, don't but don't knock her for something I would commend my staff for.
Vickie Birnage
On 09:31:11 7 February 2007 Ashley wrote:
Head of Home Shopping at Fortnum and Mason
07 February 2007 11:36am
Well a big thank you to all those who gave some honest and useful feedback, much appreciated. To those pushing your services, I will certainly bear in mind. And in answer to your questions of will your comments be considered when I come to improving the site, they mosty certainly will. Along with findings from research projects I am planning. Thanks again.
For those of you wishing to contact me direct, my details: Steph Ridley, Head of ecommerce, The Cotswold Company. Email:
Head of Usability & Conversion at PRWD
07 February 2007 15:08pm
Hi Steph,
I’ve taken a look at your site and below are some more comments/user experience recommendations for you to consider regarding the site header, the product category navigation and shopping experience and some general site coding comments:
For the links along the top of the page (home, shop with catalogue, request a catalogue etc) to improve findability I would look to group the tools/links into appropriate sections ie.
Sign in and track order grouped as customer tools (with some connection to the shopping basket/checkout links as they all relate specifically to the customer)
Shop with catalogue – this has a strong association with the fast track order functionality, so it will make sense for these areas to be associated visually, for instance a clear link under the fast track order input boxes such as ‘shop with your catalogue’
It will be useful to increase the visibility/clickable area for the find and buy buttons
Footer navigation links – with such a large number it will benefit site visitors by grouping the links into categories, such as ‘Customer Information’, ‘Product Ranges’, ‘Privacy and Security’ – this will improve both findability and visibility.
Regarding the perception of product range, its certainly clear there are a significant amount of products within each category due to the number of pages available. With this in mind, to greatly improve the user experience, introducing the ability for a customer to filter the products by relevant criteria (price range/colour/material/width/length (ie. for rugs)) will allow a customer to locate the the specific products that fit their requirements. I suspect this would require a significant change to the e-comm software to allow individual product facets to be used for such filtering options, but it would empower customers as they can shop in a way which suits them. Let me know if you would like me to expand on this..
In addition to filtering the ranges, providing customers with the ability to choose the order in which to view the products ie. price hi-low, latest added, saving etc – this again will give the customer more control in how they interact with your shop, and you could even go as far as allowing the customer to choose how many products to display on 1 page ie. if someone is on a high speed connection they may want to view 20/30/40 products per page instead of just 9.
Still on product range navigation, providing customers with clear links for next page/previous page, along with clearly showing that they are viewing products 20-29 out of 85, for instance, will ensure they are comfortable with how far through the range they currently are. Currently its almost impossible to see at a glance where in the range you currently are, increasing the likelihood of a customer feeling lost within a range.
An additional usability/user experience recommendation would be to offer the ability for a customer to compare similar products, for key product facets such as material, size, cost, colour etc.
As you will gather from these recommendations they are focused around providing a customer with numerous ways to shop, in the way that suits them. Especially for such large product ranges the filtering and sorting options will be particularly useful for customers.
Finally, although requiring a complete re-code, for a wide variety of reasons such as search engine optimisation, ease of maintenance, resource required to make layout changes, improved download speeds, easily allowing for printer friendly pages etc, I would definitely recommend the site to be coded with a table-less, CSS based layout.
I hope these comments have given some food for thought – this message was growing and growing so I haven’t provided comments on other key shopping pages, such as product page, basket, checkout, registration etc. Let me know if you would like me to provide more recommendations.
Paul
Director at Intelligent Online Marketing Ltd
07 February 2007 18:23pm
Hi Steph
Must first congratulate you on a great ploy, getting your website noticed by so many simply by saying "please can you help me", a first class bit of online marketing (even if you didn't mean it to be).
As for the site, I've had a quick glance around it from an SEO perspective and certainly all the basics are there, so it should prove a hit that way for your targeted keywords, however as you know what you must also do is to get plenty of incoming links and to check on how you are doing in that department Google Webmaster tool will help (you can submit a Google XML site map if its not been done yet at the same time too).
On the Navigation front, I'm not sure I agree with the top navigation seemingly disappearing when you enter a sub section, I'd have left it at the top and highlighted where the user was, and supplemented it with your nice left hand menu.
Font size wise, its a wee bit too small for my liking, something that could be very imortant if your target audience is going to be 40+ (like me) as the eyes do start to go then....
Other good points, the Search Box is in the right place and the basket details are easily seen, but I'd rather have seen a Quick Checkout system offered alongside the normal route for people in a hurry and those not wanting to get too intimate with your company at that time..
I'd also liked to have seen some info on caring for the furniture, a little bit oh help here may sweeten the pot and would help capture some of the SEO terms that I bet you've not thought of too..
Finally, I'm not a designer but love the quote in "the big red fez" that talks about having what ever you want the user to do as the biggest juicyest banana on the page, have you done that already?, if not it might be an idea, that way you will get what you want more often.
Good luck
Graham Baylis
Intelligent Online Marketing
www.i-o-m.com
On 10:10:00 6 February 2007 StephRidley wrote:
Head of Sales at Reevoo
09 February 2007 17:38pm
You may want to use independent product reviews, to help further drive trust and confidence from your consumers. Reviews will also give potential customers further knowledge on the product and help in their decision making process. Reading what fellow purchasers have said, will always be positive for your site. Product reviews can increase conversion rates, so these would be a welcomed addition to your site......take a look a www.reevoomark.com/www.reevoo.com
On 10:10:00 6 February 2007 StephRidley wrote:
Managing Director at Forward Slash Media
12 February 2007 07:45am
I stand firmly in the why not help? camp.
as I see it:
1. profile is key to success. If there is an opportunity to increase your profile why not take it?
2. competitors MUST compete, (its the name of the game after all) but surely there is space within that to aid the industry as a whole?
3. what goes around comes around. When I want help on something I'm not 100% on I'm hoping a community (such as e-consultancy) will be around to help.
Peter Swain
Solutions Director
www.forwardslashmedia.co.uk
On 09:31:11 7 February 2007 Ashley wrote:
Managing Director at Forward Slash Media
12 February 2007 07:53am
Hi Steph,
The design side of things seems to have been covered in previous comments so I won't go into all that. Just wanted to point out the legal requirements that have recently come into force re web sites re the new companies act.
business link produced a guide last month which you can find here:
business link disclosure guide
Peter Swain
Solutions Director
www.forwardslashmedia.co.uk
heres some more information
On 10:10:00 6 February 2007 StephRidley wrote: