website investigation
website design
the overall experience – evaluation
This evaluation aims to provide the reader with a clear and balanced picture of the overall effectiveness of the site’s design. Therefore, I have divided its contents into the following partitions:
- My general impression of the site as a whole
- Weaknesses of design
- Strengths of design
- Success of methods used to capture data
- My own opinion of the buying experience
- How engaging have others found the process of making a purchase?
- Suggestions for improvements/enhancements
My general impression of the site as a whole
EBuyer’s website does offer customers with a vast amount of product choice and information. This is inline with the company’s business philosophy which is: “Give customers and businesses what they want, when they want it”. The consistency of the quality of their products throughout their site and the sheer competitiveness of their prices are virtues that all sales companies of their type desire.
Weaknesses of design
However, I was very dissatisfied with the website’s W3C Validation results. Unfortunately, like many of today’s dominant ‘consumer’ transactional websites, eBuyer has failed to adhere to the Consortium’s guidelines for accessibility and usability. Another design flaw, which I accept is more subjective in nature, is the high density of adverts along the right-side of each page. Obviously advertising other products is required, but not if the goods being advertised are not related to the range of products being viewed. These adverts could distract customers from buying the product they set out to procure and therefore prolong the time spent purchasing a product. For instance, on the “Software” store’s main page, there is an advert for ‘Panasonic TVs’ – what do televisions have in common with software?
Strengths of design
Nevertheless the strengths, I suggest, certainly outweigh the weaknesses. The first struck me immediately when I logged onto the site. It is exceptionally secure. Ebuyer out-sources all their security to a company called thwate, which is a distinct brand within VeriSign, Inc. They use secure socket layer protocol to offer secure communications by encrypting all data to and from the site. Another strong point of the site is its consistent visual layout. The colour schemes within each store are aesthetically satisfying and the internal advertisements are very well produced. For the average web user, navigation is straight forward and logical. The navigation bar along the top of each page provides the user with direct access to any part of the site. As mentioned earlier, eBuyer offers their customers a very impressive range of products. Also, the way the website’s designers have structured the site boosts the customer’s conception of the huge variety of available products. The title of each ‘store’ is very succinct; making it very plain to the customer what is contained therein. Another good thing which caught my attention and increased my appreciation of the site was the vast amount of meaningful and honest customer reviews. Ebuyer’s customers aren’t afraid to admonish a product. If a particular item is useless the customer base makes sure it’s known via the comprehensive rating system, and it is generally accepted that eBuyer does take all their customer’s views into consideration when reviewing their product range. Another great tool available to all users is the Jargon Buster. This innovative idea saves the prospective customer from searching around the rest of the internet to get a definition for a particular computer related word or phase. This tool definitely helps in the user’s quest to find and understand all the products on the site. The customizability of most of the important features is also very notable.
Success of method’s used to capture data
From my dealings with the eBuyer website I would suggest that the method’s used to capture data are reasonably successful. At the end of each transaction users are invited to fill out a survey that evaluates the site’s features and design. Judging by the site’s current design it would appear that they have made full use of this data capture method because the site is very well made.
My own opinion of the buying experience
The customer experience provided is both informative and engaging. The transparency of the whole process is the characteristic which I found most pleasing. From first to last you are aware of the current status of the order and therefore feel completely in control of the transaction.
How engaging have others found the process of making a purchase?
My mother, who does a lot of internet shopping, has given me some detailed feedback from her experience of the eBuyer website. She recently purchased a printer from the company and was very impressed with the speed and layout of the site. She also appreciated the way that she could track the progress of her order - from the initial placement to the final delivery of the item. However, when the printer was proven to be faulty she found the return instructions on the site to be less than clear and actually had to telephone the company for advice. Once the return procedure had commenced she was able to track the progress of the faulty printer from the time it was collected through to delivery, checking and the authorisation of a replacement machine. Some delay occurred during the checking procedure and she was able to send “eNote’s” from the website to enquire about the progress. This produced a prompt response and she found this feature to be extremely effective. Nonetheless, she still had to phone the company again since no replacement printer was available and because the site’s instructions were once more unambiguous. This was information on how to cancel the order and obtain a refund, how interesting! Overall, she found the process of the making a purchase engaging and has, in fact, purchased several other products from the site.
Suggestions for improvements/enhancements
My first and most poignant suggestion is to make the website conform to W3C web standards. Disabled persons will find it very difficult to navigate the current website. This is unfair; websites should be easily accessible for all! Because the site has a huge amount of scripting errors on it, it may need to be redesigned. This, in my opinion, is more than worth while. Firstly, it shouldn’t be very hard to accomplish. Most consumer websites have a facelift every couple of years, and in this process the web developers could make sure that it conforms to the standards. Secondly, if a website meets web standards it far easier to update in the future. Thirdly, in addition to those using devices other than a standard web browser because of disabilities, there are now a growing number of people who are accessing the web via PDAs or mobile phones. These devices are often far more limited in their display capabilities than a regular web browser. If eBuyer’s website met the web standards it is much more likely that these users will find what they are looking for and do business on the move with them. My second suggestion to eBuyer is to provide better more thorough instructions regarding the returns and refunds part of their operation on the site. This will save customers the inconvenience of ringing up the call centre asking for advice.
This concludes the first section of my investigation into eBuyer’s operation. Click next to view the second part…