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Views > website review By Kevin Galway


Born Gifted has excellent visibility in searches, but more can be done to convert that traffic into sales.


Born to be mild


B


orn Gifted, www. borngifted.co.uk, is a website selling Christening gifts, baby presents and baby toys. Landing on the


homepage initially gives the impression of a well thought out site and a nice design with the target customer in mind. I get an immediate impression of who Born Gifted are and what the site sells, via the centre tagline and the copy beneath. Immediately my eye can see a vast array of different gifts on offer, and a gift selector on the left. However, I am presented with a lot of text on the homepage; some of this is derived from the imagery of the products and brand logos. This can make the visual categories in the top centre banner quite difficult to read and adds to the sense that the homepage is quite cluttered. I would suggest testing variants of the homepage with reduced text and analysing any subsequent bounce rate improvements.


Navigating the site Navigation is a tricky one, but for me getting the


Featured Categories higher up on the page, above Shop by Brand, is a must. It will allow potential customers to see a broader range rather than stumble across it. Born Gifted has elected to dispense with drop-down navigation and has seven category page links in the top menu bar. If, under Baby Toys for example, the subcategories were listed dropping down off the main navigation with a small visual aid, you could get to where you want and eliminate one click—and it would just make for a nicer customer experience. Also, there are some useful featured categories, lost below the fold on the left-hand column, most of which beg to be integrated within the top nav. First Birthday Gifts could be renamed Birthday Gifts, and in turn links to the First and Second Birthday Gifts provided in a drop-down nav. Subcategories are presented in different


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ways depending on which category page you visit. Take a look at the Baby Toys page versus the First Birthday Gifts page as an example. It may be that the taxonomy of baby gifts makes it difficult to achieve this in the First Birthday Gifts category, but the usability of this section of the website could be enhanced by avoiding


Direct Commerce Catalogue e-business www.catalog-biz.com The Born Gifted homepage


presenting seven pages of 202 unsorted items. A start would be to give the consumer the ability to sort by price, brand or name. On a reassuring note, it’s a nice touch to see the SafeBuy certificate and accepted methods of payment, however some visitors may immediately start querying how they can contact the company, and the lack of telephone number for customer service enquiries and even a standard contact form on the contact page, is a little off-putting. In addition, the returns policy is lost within the


terms and conditions and would be better served on a dedicated page and linked to from each product page. Testimonials could be improved by chunking out the text and annotating them with dates. This is tempered somewhat by the effective and simple delivery promise—“Free Delivery on all orders”—plus an easy to find link to find out about other delivery options. I personally feel free delivery on all orders, plus a premium for next-day delivery, is the best strategy for delivery pricing on ecommerce sites when the average order value might be under the £50 threshold. Notice how I said that the site had the target


customer in mind, not the purchaser. Whilst initially the site to me looked quite good—design is subjective anyway—as we’ll discover later on, the site doesn’t really have any specific features or


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