Feedback on Site Recommendations activity

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

November 3, 2005 [2222 views]

Another very decent effort this week with 80 people reviewing 42 brands and 14 museums. Some of you still can’t follow instructions and some clearly have decided to ignore the marks associated with these activities. I have attached a list of Knumbers for people who have submitted this week’s work so that you can check it has been received.

The purpose of this exercise was to get you thinking about site improvements and between you, you produced a very long list of things that you would suggest. Here are some of the most common with some comments:

Start ecommerce

“I propose an integration of E commerce into the website.”, “Improve the online shop”, “The shopping cart system needs to be changed.”, “To have a full product catalogue”, “Expand the products that they sell online for example the ability to book tickets to shows or exhibitions etc that they advertise on the homepage instead of just informing users about the events”, “online ticket purchase”

It is clear than many of the sites you looked at are not taking ecommerce seriously or doing it at all. These then are sensible recommendations but you need to think about whether the company or organization is ready for it. Running an online business is complex and if you were acting as a consultant to the company you would need to prepare them for the processes that they would have to start running. It’s a bigger job for many companies than it looks and some companies have realized this which is why they are not doing it.

Business

“good help desk”, “Introduce more products”, “Reduce cost of items in the online shop”, “Wider range of garments”, “Increase number of products online and provide more information about each product”, “After sales service. a good customer support system will add value to the products and services the company is offering.”, “Change company name to reflect product it selling”, “Generate potential customers: Having special offers”, “Prices of the items”,

Take care not to tell the company how it should be doing its main business. I would suggest that changing the brand or company name might overstep the boundary between ecommerce advice and interfering. Telling the company to reduce its prices is also a problem as these may undermine its offline business and relationships.

Advertising and search

“search engine optimization”, “so the page can be find more easily”, “Improve the advertising. The site is impossible to see. It is totally in the wilderness. It needs to invest money in PR”, “Advertise the website on other sites and various other places such posters, flyers, admission tickets, etc.”, “invest some money into Internet Marketing”, “Improve search results”, “Keywords”, “Increase the traffic rank for the site”, “Provide confident product links with associated retailers, i.e. Boots, Waitrose”, “Promote website on specialist websites and magazines”.

You are clearly getting the idea that online marketing is vital and it is. You need to recommend HOW to do it (lecture coming up). Links to and from other sites is going to be important but take care. Most stores won’t want to have links to their competitors or even other High Street retailers.

Navigation

“Improve Navigation”, “the site should have an internal search”, “First of all I would remove all the drop down menus and make the products easier to find”, “Improve search engine”, “Improve browsing facility”, “Make the site less complicated”, “Remove hidden menus”, “Offer a quick shop service.”, “Re-categorise products”

Some interesting ideas here and worth looking at for all sites. Changing the way products are categorized to reflect better how customers search is worth considering.

Design

“Change first page - currently it serves no purpose”, “Animation is not needed”, “My first recommendation for the website is to be consistent.”, “Re-design the website into a more professional prestigious look to attract customers”, “get rid of the sounds effect in menu page”, “reduce Flash”, “Its too bold.”, “No scrolling side bars and bigger fonts.”, “the colours, images, layout, font all need to be changed”, “Make the website more user friendly”, “SORT OUT THE LOADING TIME OF THE WEBSITE!”, “improving the credibility of the website(privacy policies, data protection etc.)”, “get rid of the mystery menus”, “I would improve the branding of the site by making the online store reflect the branding of the offline store.”

Design is a very subjective part of the process but we all know that a professional quality design with appropriate use of animation etc that strongly reflects the personality and brand of the company is better than a cheap, nasty, amateur pile of rubbish.

Decision support

“Customer reviews.”, “adding more information for each product to customer to look at”, “produce some buying guides and know how guides to help customers choose”, “better product information & descriptions”, “enable customers to compare two or more products”, “suggest product alternatives”,

Think about this area hard because most sites are generally weak. Note that producing tools to let customers compare products or writing good product guides is an expensive and time consuming process.

Customer service

“instant chat facility with members of staff”, “recognising repeat customers “, “encourage suggestions for future product improvement and development”, “offer alternative methods to calling by phone. e.g. html forms, chat”, “Show delivery charges”, “use online surveys”, “reassure customers through the whole process of research, to eventually buying an item”, “internal customer forum”, “allow customers to buy something without needing to go through registration”, “offer the site in a variety of languages”, “E-Cards and Message Boards/Blogs”, “improve store locator”, “Pricing Converter”, “alerts showing consumers where there are sales and discounts”, “have a shopping cart that displays your sub total as you are adding products into your basket while you are shopping”, “reviews and comments”, “make shipping charges clearer”, “after sales service to customers through email, search engines and bulletin boards and general FAQ;s”.

A wide range of sensible suggestions that you should consider for your case studies. Some of you claimed that doing some of these things would “increase the number of visitors to the site”. Be careful, a better site does not guarantee more visitors. It might improve conversion from visitors to customers but without marketing no one will know that the site is better!

Integration & B2B

“Create a website with improved partner relationships, requiring authentication (proof of partnership) that will contain the following information upon login.: - Rich specification of products in the current collection. - Lists of prices - Possibility of integration with stock control system of retailers e.g. SOAP, XML-RPC etc. –give users to the ablity to view stock levels in warehouses and shops”, “Create a B2B ecommerce site for trade customers”, “Improve the security settings”, “Take away the option of paying by email.”, “secure payment solution for example Paypal from eBay”, “Content management system facilities”, “Stock control integration”, |I would have an accurate stock checker”.

These are some of the most important ideas and some of the hardest to specify and deliver as detailed knowledge of the back-end systems is required. Well worth considering the trade relationships.

Promotions

“include promotions in the pages, offer a special offer of the day or best product of the day on the home page, or a best seller”, “advertise more on front page”,
“a news scroll on the home page highlighting all the extra charity”, When the customer is looking at a particular item I will advertise similar items in a smart way”, “search always shows the same recommendations!”, “Seasons promotions”, “change web site to reflect occasions”.

There are lots of opportunities for designing on-site promotions to upsell and cross sell products.

Accessibility

“Make the site accessible”, “Change the colour scheme of the website, does not seem to be "user friendly", to colour blind people.”, “Cater for the needs of Disabled Customers”, “Make it accessible to everyone”

Remember that this is a legal requirement.

Bad ideas?

There were a few ideas which I suspected might have been included to wind me up.
“Add a musical intro”, “Add flash to the website”, “maximise the content in the Flash website”, “I recommend linking the website to all defense departments to attract the flow of more traffic”, “increasing the page rank on every search engine”.

Ask yourself why for the first set of these and how for the second. Adding out-bound links cannot increase inbound traffic. Flash is great only when used sparingly for a specific purpose.

Next time

It was a lot of work to pull all your ideas together but I hope that you will find this page useful. When you are looking at sites in the future it is important to generate a long list of possible changes and recommendations but then to focus in (and explain) the ones that are most important.

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