[thelist] win yourself some Amazon vouchers (fwd)

Daniel J. Cody djc at members.evolt.org
Tue Sep 25 15:50:03 CDT 2001


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 02:09:41 +0530
From: Madhu Menon <webguru at vsnl.net>
To: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
Cc: ALBIE at eurosimm.com
Subject: Re: [thelist] win yourself some Amazon vouchers

At 11:30 PM 9/25/2001, you wrote:
>ok, now i'm really done...

I was going to sit down and write a detailed critique (since that's what I 
do for a living these days) but aardvark beat me to it by writing a long, 
useful review. I think he deserves the Amazon gift vouchers. :)

I'd like to add a few things:

1) A lot of your functionality (e.g., the "add to cart") seems to be driven 
by JavaScript. This *could* present problems in the future as script errors 
could totally screw the site and with a server-side scripting language, you 
could at least log the error somewhere or see it in your site logs. And 
some people *do* surf with JS turned off.

2) Home page: Is the BIG picture of hard drives and SIMMs necessary? You 
could use the space to showcase specials, latest products, the "tools" you 
have and a whole lot of other interesting things. Heck, you should have the 
Search right there on the home page.

3) Maybe it's just me, but I feel too much text is displayed as graphics. 
Take the "tools" section for example. And the Franklin Gothic Condensed 
with gratuitious drop shadows got on my nerves after a while. Why not just 
convert them to plain text? Loads faster and gets indexed by search engines.

4) Product pictures: The grey used as a background takes the life out of 
the photos, IMHO. You could spruce them up a bit, increase the contrast, 
perhaps convert the rounded corners to straight edges, and make the drop 
shadow a little less soft. Personal opinion only. And maybe the "Product 
image not available" graphic should NOT be so bold and in-your-face. After 
all, the fact that you don't have an image for the product is your failing. 
It might be a good idea not to draw attention to it so boldly. Change the 
blue to silver, IMO.

5) Navigation problems have already been highlighted by other list members. 
I agree. And what does "links" mean? Links to what? Replace it with 
something more meaningful.

6) Transactions like "add to cart" should ALWAYS be followed by some kind 
of confirmation that the action was successful or people will keep clicking 
because nothing is apparently happening. They'll then end up with several 
units in their cart. Not good. Keep the shopping cart clearly visible and 
preferably show all items in it. If that's not possible, at least, show the 
number of items in the cart. Don't put your cart where nobody will notice 
it, like you have (it's in the bottom left corner of the site!). Want to 
see a great shopping cart? Visit http://www.eziba.com

7) Content: I hope you're using temporary copy. When I visited the 
"specials" page, I saw this line: "Seriously silly money for such a cool 
hard-drive! Buy it now while stocks last you fool!!".

Please DON'T refer to your potential customers as "you fools". It's not the 
way to get a sale.

Help page: Too much verbose copy. Try and group hyperlinks together and 
make it easily scannable. The person who clicked the help link is probably 
stuck somewhere and needs some info. He doesn't want to read "we are the 
greatest, biggest, company..." type of copy. Instead, try and give the list 
of possible questions, properly grouped ala Amazon.

8) Like aardvark said, you've got form buttons and hyperlinks the wrong way 
around on most pages. Use hyperlinks when you want to provide navigation 
links. Use buttons for actions such as "check out", "add to cart", 
"search", "checkout", etc. Think Amazon. :D

9) The most important part of my "evaluation" process, the search is a 
hyperlink away on another page. I need this on the products list page so I 
can filter my choices. Being hit with your entire product line is not what 
I'm looking for. You have 97 hard disks but I'm probably only interested in 
a specific capacity. (oh, and your search doesn't include a "size" field. 
Since this is an important criteria for searches, you might want to put it in.)

10) Check out process: Kludgy. Don't lose your site navigation on these 
screens. If you want to show a printable invoice, show that on a separate 
page with a hyperlink that people can click. It also helps to show the 
steps in the purchase on every page and instead of "Continue" links, label 
them like "Enter payment information", etc. so people know exactly where 
they are in the buying process. Also, your JS validation needs a lot of 
work. I entered crap for all the fields and also entered "23/23" for the 
credit card expiration date.  Of course, it took me to a page where I 
received apologies. :) In a real customer scenario, this could be due to 
many reasons. Maybe he spelt his name wrong, maybe he got one number wrong 
in the CC number. Apologise if you must, but provide alternatives. Give an 
email link where they can contact you, or provide alternative payment 
links. Also give them a chance to check their details and try again.

<Problems type="niggling" mood="nitpicking">

1) In your forms, required fields are marked with a red asterisk, but 
there's no not telling people what the red asterisk means. Even though it's 
slowly becoming convention, it's a good idea to explain symbols, special 
highlights, etc.

2) Ditch the "Reset" button on forms unless they revert to pre-filled 
fields. I hate accidently pressing Reset and undoing my hard work. I agree 
with Jakob Nielsen on this.

3) Clicking on a product's name in the "Specials" section took me to a 
details page. The link "back to shop" from there returns you to the main 
"products" and not the "specials" page like it should.

4) When I did a specific search, I got only 3 products. When all 3 products 
are displayed on the results page, having  "next" and "previous" links 
(which are not clickable!) is meaningless. This is a 5 minute programming 
job to fix.

5) The words "current stock" should be in bold and be either *above* the 
"add to cart" button or below the product description. You want people to 
see this info *before* they order, hence try and make sure people read it 
in the right order.

6) The disk icons used in the nav bar look like CD-ROM disks to me rather 
than hard disks. Minor point.

7) On your "Policies" page, there are links to "Privacy", "Returns", etc. 
but they're shown as pointers to different areas of a hard disk. I fail to 
see the symbolism. What do the disk platters have to do with "Shipping"?

8) You should combine the "Sell to us" and "Our needs" section. Makes more 
logical sense.

9) Fun stuff: Damned if I'm going to download a 1.5 MB game while I'm 
shopping for a hard disk.  :)

</Problems>

A few things, eh? That was a lot more :)

Hope this helps. Mail me if you agree/disagree.

Regards,

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net





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