Answer:
I visited your site, http://www.headsets.com, and tested it.
After perusing, testing and examining your site for approximately
thirty minutes (which, keep in mind, is much longer than the average
visitor will spend there), and taking notes, I decided to simply
divide my comments and observations into two categories: strong points
and weak points, with a general summary following those. Anything I
felt was completely average as a website experience I didn't mention.
Only the standouts follow.
Strong points:
--Prominently displayed 800 telephone number—I can’t tell you enough
how just seeing a telephone number—even if they have no desire to call
it—makes potential buyers fell more at ease about giving credit card
information over the web. All too often e-commerce sites are overly
anonymous, “give-us-your-money-and-we’ll send you –something”
experiences that inspire little consumer confidence. Knowing someone
is available to call definitely increases sales. I might even go so
far as to make the 800 number even more prominent throughout the
site—although it is on every page at the top, which is excellent. The
font chosen for the 800 number is a little “fat” and blurry, in my
opinion. At the same time, however, you don’t want to go overboard in
the other direction and have the number change colors and flash or
anything like that—overly ostentatious is a turn-off as well, which
you wisely avoid throughout your site's look-and-feel.
--Site navigation-- The site navigational controls are excellent—it
is very easy to get to any part of the site from the links map at the
bottom of every page, the “You are here:” info at the top of each page
and the numerous links. I always knew where I was in relation to the
home page.
--Nowhere in your site did I find any dead links.
--Kudos for the “Beginners Guide.” This type of help makes those who
aren’t exactly sure if the product is right for them or not feel much
more at home and comfortable about making an informed decision. “Why
use a headset?” and similar questions are an excellent lead-in for
potential buyers. I myself have purchased online products (I recently
bought an X10 video cam system online) after reading similar
tutorial-esque help features.
Weak points:
--As far as “look-and-feel” goes, I’d have to say that the white
background is not so easy-on-the-eyes, although I can also see that
since the showcased products are black, that white provides for
maximum contrast. (Perhaps you could have the main body of the page
background be something other than white, but have inserts with white
backgrounds for the product pictures, or use Photoshop to give the
pictures white backgrounds).
--I think the Headset Wizard dialogue is a good tool, although, I
think the “I want to spend on a headset:” default choice (pre-selected
radio-button) ought to be the “The least possible” rather than “Less
than $200.” In my experience, people shop online because they want
things cheap and fast. Also, by having "The least possible" as the
default, it shows that you are not trying to coax people into spending
more money--even your least inexpensive products are good quality, is
what that kind of gesture says to me.
--The “Chat with a headset specialist” feature is a nice idea, but not
if every single person is “Temporarily offline.” It looks, frankly,
like wishful thinking, or like you bit off more than you could chew in
terms of offering services to clients or potential buyers when they
are all “temporarily offline.”
--ON ORDER PAGE: I deliberately left all required fields blank,
selected FedEx shipping, entered “GA-researcher” under Credit Card,
clicked on Place Order, and I got a 404 error—Page Not Found, rather
than an error msg reminding me to properly fill out all incomplete
forms (preferably with those fields highlighted).
--I haven’t really made up mind yet about the “Satisfied Customers”
banner—it’s somewhat reminiscent of the old Counters that displayed
the number of visitors to a site—or maybe the McDonald’s “Billions
Served” slogan--but does it really make me think, “Wow, 53,000
satisfied customers, they must be great headsets!”? Personally I
think it’s somewhat distracting, as I start to wonder how those
statistics are compiled, and if they’re true, and what exactly
constitutes a “satisfied” customer, etc., rather than thinking about
which headset I should buy. I think what would help more in this area
is to have a page of not only simple customer testimonials, as you
have (which is not a bad thing), but actual “Case Studies,” where you
highlight companies who have made bulk purchases, and can truly say
(and demonstrate) how you have helped their bottom line.
Minor weak/confusing point: On
http://www.headsets.com/headsets/guide/guide.html, and on other pages
as well, the links table on the left (“Beginner’s Guide” through
“Glossary of terms”-- to the left of each link there is a dash with a
small box around it—similar to the Windows expanding tree diagram,
where if you click the minus sign it hides the list, and if you click
the “+” it expands the list. I found myself clicking on the “-“ signs
thinking there was some kind of expanding menu (maybe I’m just an
idiot or something, but certainly some other type of bullet style
could work).
Technical note: The first thing that happened upon logging on to your
site—and this is not necessarily a big deal—but I have MS Visual
Studio on my machine, and three “Do you wish to debug?” error msgs pop
up upon entrance to your site (but quite a few professional sites have
this affect on my system). Also, every time I hit my browser’s (the
AOL6-supplied version of IE) Back button to go back within your
site—Visual Studio would ask me if I wanted to debug an unterminated
string constant on your site. I’m not exactly sure if this is truly
meaningful information for you or not, but it was part of my
experience as a user of and visitor to your website. I didn’t bother
testing your site’s technical performance on other browsers or O/S
platforms, etc., since from your question you indicated you were much
more interested in usability for potential buyers rather than
technical issues or “how-to’s.”
On a Website Usability scale of 1-10, I’d rate this one at an 8.5,
with the only real weakness coming from the lack of error handling in
the credit card order form. Also, I'm assuming that the handling of
credit card information is secure. The actual user-friendliness of the
site is quite high, and it is certainly a professional site in terms
of appearance and functionality.
Google search strategy: http://www.headsets.com; personal
observations.
Good luck with your venture. I hope my comments are helpful to you.
Thank you for using Google Answers for this type of inquiry. |
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