Retail Websites

[rob]

I have been asked to give a lecture in January on good web design to the FdA and BA Retail Management students at work.

Have you recently visited the websites of any retailers and thought their site was designed well?

As many examples as you like welcome!

Rob

[David]

Well, Mia is very keen on the new Habitat site and I must say it's a massive improvement on what they had before. I'm a big fan of the John Lewis site. You don't say if you mean online retailers or hight street.

[rob]

Either online or high street, however high street would probably be best.

[Tom]

I use the http://www.comet.co.uk/ website as a bellweather of UK retailing sites, but mainly because of the way they agonize over pricing policy. They started with the same pricing for in-store and online. Then they began offering 'special web prices' so that, I one occasion, I went to a store to select a product and then had to go home to order it online at a lower price. Then now fudge the whole issue, as far as I can see, which makes me distrustful of the website.

[James]

I use the http://www.comet.co.uk/ website as a bellweather of UK retailing sites, but mainly because of the way they agonize over pricing policy. They started with the same pricing for in-store and online. Then they began offering 'special web prices' so that, I one occasion, I went to a store to select a product and then had to go home to order it online at a lower price. Then now fudge the whole issue, as far as I can see, which makes me distrustful of the website.

A friend of a friend worked from comet.co.uk. The in-fighting between their shops and website was legendary. They were in competition with each other and there was no co-operation between the two divisions. He couldn't stand it and left to work for another high street store's web division.

[Tom]

Thank you for the info! I wonder if the management realises that someone who uses their shop/website as little as I do has a strong sense of the problem which they have not resolved.

[Mia]

Hello,

As David says habitat.co.uk gets my vote (I guess I have used it as an example a few too many times in class!) otherwise its quite hard to think of really good ones, lots are just ok.

debenhams.co.uk is quite good, offering lots of different ways to use it (browsing, more specific searching).

Also, treasurebox.co.uk manages to have a wealth of products but uses some good information architecture to structure them into findable chunks and then cross references pieces affectively - not sure how it would come across to someone who didn't know anything about jewellery, I'd be interested to see (e.g. they have a sub section called japanish...).

Hope that helps

Mia

[Tom]

Its interesting that Habitat did not manage to buy all the Habitat domains. I had a quick look at the .co.uk site and agree that it is elegant, as fits their upmarket position. The only thing I did not like was the flashing images. I felt I did not have enough time to look at them before they flashed by. When its a retail website, I think the customer should be the king!

[Mia]

www.habitat.com (http://www.habitat.com), yes I always fall for it despite it having been there for years, I guess Habitat were slow to jump on the web wagon.

Interesting that even big companies get it wrong, the guardian too missed out on all guardian domains (www.guardian.com (http://www.guardian.com))...

[Tom]

I was in the Oxford Street Jessops today. It was very busy and I wondered why they are planning to close half their stores. Then I picked up a leaflet saying "order online and collect@store". But the camera which caught my eye (until I discovered it used AA batteries that is) was 25% cheaper on Amazon. Not much point in making a decent website if you have a business idea like that!