Sydney-based eCommerce Website Designs We’d Change. Part One.
Banana Peels
This week, I thought we’d explore a different angle away from the conventional ‘top ten/five/seven/whatever of everything’ list. The reason for this? Well, I’ve just been itching to execute this idea to be honest, because firstly, there’s not much emphasis placed on what’s available to us locally.
We live in Sydney, Australia. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to take a look around this majestic harbour-side city, you’d find yourself in amongst a spectacular zen garden of boutique shops, historic sights and sounds. Don’t get me wrong, our shopping might night be as illustrious as, let’s say, Melbourne, but our seaside city has quite a lot to offer consumer-culture. So does the Sydney-based web space.
In saying this, there are tons of Sydney-based retail stores, either privately owned or in a franchise, that are making their products available to buy online. A lot of these shops are simply awesome, very cool to shop in and with great service available. There’s just one downside to them though – their websites!
For this post, I felt that I could offer some constructive criticism for some existing Sydney-based eCommerce websites, should they choose to stumble upon this post. I guess you could pretty much call this another Ziller ‘banana peel’ 
1. 99Degrees Skateboard Emporium – If you’ve never heard of these guys before, don’t be alarmed – you’re most likely not into skate culture or clothing. For the record, I am. After checking these guys out a fair few weeks ago, they’ve got some really awesome gear. In leaving the store after buying a pair of shoes, I thought I’d jump online to check them out and see what else they’ve got going on. To my dismay, I was kind of let down when confronted by a… uhhh… not-so-good eCommerce template. A TEMPLATE!? Come on guys, you’re a skate store… You have so much potential!
Obviously, there’s a lot of room for improvement – seeing as your site is ‘currently in construction’? I can’t be sure. What I will say, however, is this:
Skaters shop online for pretty much everything nowadays. You need a reliable storefront, something quick to load and easy to use. Skateboard.com.au runs a monopoly on the online market for skate brands in Australia – you have the potential to be better. We have the potential to make you better 
A blog should be the central focus of your website. Skaters don’t want to wait… They want the latest gear presented to them on a platter. Blogs are a great way to keep them in the loop about shop activity. A good example is the store around the corner – check out: http://halfsleeve.net/news/
Skaters love a sense of community. Check out the Emerica site and then check out the forums. We’ve built similar stuff in the past, and would likely build a built-in community engine to promote some more customer centric activity on the site.
As a customer, it’d be great to see this amazing store do something better with its online campaign. It’s been around for over 10 years, and it certainly deserves better.
Utopia Records Sydney – A 30 year old record store based in the heart of Sydney, around quite a while before stores like JB Hi-Fi started moving in for the kill. Utopia is a fun place to shop, and every experience I have ever had there has been superb. Their website on the other hand, not so superb. With the record industry becoming more and more competitive, you would think that selling CDs and merchandise online would be an imperative part of your business strategy. For Utopia records, it is. But is it done correctly? Not quite. Here’s why:
The site conveys too many mixed messages, particularly the home page. To be honest, my mind blanks out from the flashing gifs and harsh use of bright red before I know what I’m looking for. Flashing animations are the enemy of usability, so are meaningless banners and scattered thumbnails.
The navigation font and colour combination kills my eyes! Also, it’s not very intuitive. Between the menu at the top of the page, and then a random menu on the far right (?), I’m not really sure where I’m going. We would simplify the navigation at the top, remove a lot of the unnecessary clutter and make it easier for the user to navigate.
The news feed on the home page – Woah… The size is a bit extreme. It takes up too much home page real estate. People are only interested in seeing the latest news on your home page… Not what happened 2 months ago. If they wanted to see older stuff, they’d go to your news archive! If it was our call, we’d clean it up, style it a lot nicer and give it an allocated section on the home page so that it doesn’t confuse the user.
Contact information – The most vital part of ANY online store, and Utopia Records have hidden theirs on the bottom right underneath the mailing list!? This doesn’t make sense at all. The call to actions need to be made a lot clearer – in fact, they could even change the position with the social network icons and there’d be a huge increase in the number of phone enquiries. It’s that simple.
For Utopia Records, they’ve got a lot of potential to be massive online – they just need to give their design a bit more thought!
Anyway, this is just some food for thought. We’ll be posting more critiques of Sydney eCommerce website designs in the up and coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Tags: 99degrees, sydney ecommerce web designs, utopia records
