12. Sponge Store: Soaking up the customers
Category
Fashion
Overall impression and usability
When we got to the Sponge Store site for the first time we were confronted by a somewhat disjointed flash sequence. Coming back to the site, we still get the same flash sequence, which is essentially unnecessary for repeat customers. This sequence does convey the intended image of their clothes through their site--funky.
The music plays constantly during use of the site, and we longed for an option to turn it off.
Hits
- The site is aesthetically pleasing, with plenty of colour and visual effects used. The entire page fills the available screen size.
- The customer can either shop by product (e.g. belts, bags etc) or by style (e.g. glamorous). The second way of shopping is useful for customers who do not have a specific product in mind, but wish to browse the site to see what it offers.
- Customers are able to subscribe to Sponge Store. Benefits for members include newsletters, free gift-wrapping, and a membership card, and free delivery.
- One of the site's strong features is its promotions section. This part of the site offers competitions to customers, which is likely to attract customers back to the site.
- If you're buying for another person, there's a quick link off the homepage to send a gift voucher.
- Delivery costs quoted appear to be quite reasonable. The site also offers delivery overseas for international customers.
- The site includes media releases relating to Sponge Store. These may be useful for customers wanting some objective information about the site.
Misses
- The shopping homepage features images of items, but these are not clickable--no gratification for the impulse buyer. If you don't know where a product is likely to be, you've got to go through each category in turn.
- Although the site provides pictures of different colours, some of the collectable colours were not shown.
- In other parts, colours are shown, but not available. Also, the sizes were limited to 10 and 14 in a number of products. The stock range seemed to be quite limited in many areas.
- The links that lead to the shopping categories do not stand out well and are poorly positioned on the shopping page. When customers select the shopping option, they clearly want to be able to access the products available for sale--but selecting what products to view is not as obvious as it should be.
- After you add an item to the shopping basket, and click "keep shopping", you are taken to the shopping homepage and lose the shopping basket. You need to go back into the shopping categories to see the tiny link in the top right corner.
Purchasing procedures
- Browsing for products was straightforward, however, availability was considered poor.
- The process is fairly simple and does not require too many fields to be completed by the customer. Payment can be arranged online using credit card or over the phone.
- The shopping basket is not shown on the screen and there is no link to it on the shopping homepage.
Security
- Secure socket layer encryption is used, and the customer is reassured of this.
ePharmacy currently has 3 staff members. It proves that you do not have to have a massive business structure to have a successful e-commerce business.