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give you the option to be notified when the product comes back in stock. This is a feature that I, as a consumer, find really useful when shopping online. Another useful tool to help you in your purchasing choice is customer ratings and reviews and I was pleased to see new reviews on the home page. This is an excellent way to highlight popular and highly rated items. With the popularity of social networking, it’s great to encourage conversations to take place on your own websites. And what better way to endorse a product and generate buzz than to have someone else talk about it on your behalf. Reviews also allow you to monitor feedback and fix any issues that arise. I would have liked to have seen more product reviews on Magicbox. Apart from the few on the home page and the “new reviews” section, I didn’t come across many during my product searches. Magicbox could consider incentivising customers with a discount off their next purchase if they submitted a review of their previous one. This would encourage this content to grow and help to get conversations started. Also, automated email campaigns sent to customers after the sale has completed reminding customers to write and post a review, can also be very effective
Once you have found a product that you
are interested in, the zoom function is easy to use. The scale between small and large images wasn’t great enough though in my opinion. But even more helpful than the zoom feature is the video demonstrations, which I came across on some of the products. They show how the tricks work, which is a fantastic idea and can really help capture the wannabe-magician’s imagination. I really hope Magicbox is going to introduce more product videos as this could really be the deciding factor for many between making a purchase or not. It could even consider taking this one step further by inviting happy customers to post videos of themselves performing their newly acquired magic tricks from Magicbox. So, after a good old look around the site,
I thought I’d bite the bullet and do some shopping! On quite a few occasions, however, I found that the products I wanted were out of stock—annoying particularly when you’ve got as far as the basket level. Magicbox could have redeemed itself slightly by offering a “you may also like” or “other people who bought this product also bought…” feature. But worst of all was after having to work fairly hard to find some tricks of the right difficulty for me, at the right price, was getting a call the following day to say that one item I’d ordered was out of stock and now discontinued. This really was quite frustrating and could quite easily deter a customer from a repeat visit.
With the popularity of social networking, a good way to encourage conversations to take place on your own website is to let users review products.
A bit wonky I noticed a couple of anomalies
On a more positive note, it’s great that all
orders seem to have free next-day delivery which is excellent customer service, provided of course that the product is in stock.
Trick or treat My Professor’s Nightmare magic trick arrived in
the post and I was eager to try it out. The trick involves taking three bits of rope of differing lengths and making them all the same length. I thought I’d practise on my husband before impressing my children with my new-found magical powers, but he was far from amazed. I think that has more to do with my small hands rather than the product itself! One thing that might have helped is taking a leaf out of John Lewis’s book. It sends an email to customers after they’ve checked out just to ensure that everything is okay. I think this is something Magicbox could benefit from and could be used to find out how customers are getting on with their new tricks. I would have loved to tell them about my woes with my Professor’s Nightmare trick, and perhaps they could have suggested alternatives for the small-handed budding illusionist like myself! Finally, it should be pointed out that the current version of the site has only been live since late June but it’s a vast improvement on its predecessor, which was cluttered, clunky and difficult to navigate. Magicbox is obviously an organisation that cares about its online presence, takes it very seriously, and its recent overhaul demonstrates that it is committed to improve where possible. On the whole it’s a well-constructed and structured site with some great features, but lacks any real brand feel or personality that reflects the intrinsic qualities of magic. I do hope that the new design provides the company with a good return on investment and will be following it with interest, and hopefully brushing up on my new magic skills along the way.
Sarah Hughes is joint managing director of BT Fresca, the ecommerce division of BT’s multichannel retail arm, BT Expedite
that I would consider changing. Fun copy like “Ahoy there...Wanna Log In?” seemed out of place and I wondered if I was missing a secret magicians’ joke here. Also, I came across a link at the top of the page to a fancy-dress site called “Fun at your Fingertips” I clicked this expecting it to be complementary content, or even a social site on magic and wasn’t expecting to be whisked away to a completely different location. I could find no obvious way to navigate back to Magicbox and would be concerned that this may unnecessarily increase its exit rate.—SH
By Sarah Hughes
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