Layout, design and customer service

Just a quick site review, since I’m off out in a moment! Yes, I do actually see daylight occasionally.

So, after my recent raft of shoe e-Tailer site reviews, I thought “Why break the habit?”. After unsuccessfully trying to find some specific trainers in the Schuh site, and subsequently finding further frustration on the Raw Shoe site, I found success on the Team Hell UK site.

I may as well call this The Unashamed Shoe Fetish Critique Centre, quite frankly.

A critique of www.teamhelluk.com

After a relatively choppy and truly tumultuous journey trying to find somewhere that sold what I wanted, I stumbled across what was an all-round good e-tail experience. Read on!

First impressions: design

I will start by saying that this site isn’t perfect. There’s a surprise!

• The site templates could do with a revamp. At the moment they currently cater for screens in 800×600 resolution. Whilst this could be a conscious decision based on their visitor stats, I’d say that, generally speaking, the lowest common denomination screen res these days is 1024×768. Sites should be designed for that - or ever better, be fluid design, meaning they’ll reshape to the resolution of the browser regardless of size
• If the templates could be rejigged a little, the homepage could perhaps do with a revamp into a new layout (columns/grid for preference): no-one wants to scroll past loads of images or text to see what the offers are
• As an additional point to the above, all the useful ‘card payment types’ and ‘This site is secure’ type graphics - which are essential in gaining a customer’s confidence in online purchasing - are all right at the bottom, waaaay below the fold
• The Favourites Icon (favicon) isn’t persistent throughout the site, only on a few pages. That’s a very minor point though

All that said - because I like to get the negative points out the way - it’s definitely heading in the right direction: a solid (if perhaps slightly outdated) template, robust design & colour scheme, and appropriate graphics for the audience.

Structure

There are some minor structure issues at a folder/product level, with shoes and brands hidden in directories like “teamhelluk.com/skatewear.php?products_id=1822“. This could be solved by a URL rewriter and some coding.

Other than that, though, it’s all looking good: it’s obvious what sizes/colours are in stock, and the ‘Enlarge image’ links all work well and don’t launch annoying popups or similar.

In the My Account section, everything is where you’d expect it to be, and it’s easy to update any of your details. My only comment is that, when viewing your order history using Firefox 3, occasionally the text is in white…on a white background! Oops.

A good consistent left nav shows the way clearly to all sections and search/account functionality, and this is important. The last thing you want to do is lose your customers before they’ve even started. Sound bloody obvious, but it’s true.

Content

The content is the site is largely good, and the shoe sections certainly feature plenty of fluffy copy about the brands and products…perhaps a little too much irrelevant stuff (shoe materials etc) in some cases, but overall it’s good - certainly from an search engine and content optimisation perspective.

Customer service…eh?

This is possibly the best bit of the whole lot.

Firstly, my expectations were managed from the outset. Before I’d even ordered, there was a big message on the site explaining that their warehouse would be closed for a week or so, but that online orders would still be taken. This was great, as it meant no-one was left in any doubt as to what was going on.

Secondly, when the warehouse finally re-opened, I was sent an email thanking me for my patience, the order, and acknowledging its dispatch. They also wished me a nice weekend.

It all sounds bloody obvious, but this kind of personal touch is absolutely key in creating a loyal customer base…and I’m not the only one: a quick look on their MySpace profile shows scores of similar comments. Top notch!

I’ve not yet received the trainers, but will update this post when they arrive.
The trainers have arrived: they’re great.

Nice one TeamHell UK!

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  The Boston E-Party is a blog written by George Rosier about web design, usability and anything else that takes his fancy

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