8
Website review
Parrot fashion O
n first impressions, Northern Parrots (www.
northernparrots.com) looks like a medium- sized, presentable online
business, with the site well thought out and merchandised in a manner to get the user’s attention. The topic of parrots conjures up an image of a bright, colourful, and lively site, yet on arrival I was faced with varying shades of blue, which I found a little overpowering. It would be great to see more use of colour, or the contradictory— creating a grey-toned site that would allow for bold and colourful photography. The imagery on the homepage, in particular the banners, seem very flat and a little washed out in colour, not the sort of look and feel that you’d imagine a store selling parrot- related products to have.
The site appears to have been built from an “out of the box” template rather than applying some bespoke creative elements to represent the business, though this may be due to budget restraints. The homepage has good industry- standard capabilities suitable for larger retailers, such as mega menus; featured products; special offers, highlighted with categories; new in and best sellers. There is also the choice to view pricing in euro and including or excluding VAT, which would entice b-to-b purchases.
From an initial scan of the website, visitors get a clear picture of what products and ranges the online store offers. The layout on the homepage is clear, if not a little “boxy”, and again follows some standard practices when positioning search, basket and top navigation. One thing that is a little confusing is the second navigation bar along the top of the page, which shows what’s new? and special offers, along with the sales hotline number. The location and positioning of these elements tend to imply a relationship to the navigation bar above it, in other words, they are positioned like second-tier subcategories.
There are a few obvious improvements to the homepage to be considered: • The main banner transitions should be slowed down to allow easy reading of the rotating banner’s content. • The speed of the brand logos should be slowed down to help smooth out the jagged transitions. • The best sellers box on the right-hand side, would be more outstanding and
appealing if the top three had a thumbnail image of the product. • “The customer from...” message gets a little tedious once it’s flashed a few times, especially when business is a little slow and shows the same customer. Perhaps flash it a few times then either it remains static or disappears. • The banners at the bottom of the page, relating to articles, Q&As and guides could be made to stand out a little more. The washed out, faded background seems a little old-fashioned and does not do much to entice the user to read on. • Although there are mixed opinions on card logos, security logos and such, I believe the current footer display is far too prominent, steering customers away from what is important. Also mixing these logos with social media icons for Facebook and Twitter means that we would expect a lower uptake in the social platforms, as the icons are not easily identifiable.
Landing on the
category page When moving onto the what’s new or special offers pages from the homepage, the theme and styling is followed through and is consistent. The pages are well merchandised with large photography, clear brand labelling and additional graphics displaying top rated, reduced and new. One recommendation would be to run tests on these pages for the position of the Buy Now and More Info buttons, aligning them to the right. It could allow the user to hover, showing a quick view image to the left. This would make the purchase button more prominent, encouraging customers to buy from the category page. Other features that contribute towards making this a successful landing page include reviews, stock check and Q&A.
One section to highlight for development would be the facetted navigation, or refinement navigation, as some call it. This helps users browse and find the products they are looking for in the way they want to, allowing them to prioritise the different refinements. For example, one person may find price the dominant deciding factor rather than brand, while others may want to first browse by bird type.
The home, category and product pages on
NorthernParrots.com
Direct Commerce | Catalogue e-business |
www.catalog-biz.com
A few suggestions to help Northern Parrots spread its wings By George Ioannou
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