4. ePharmacy: Good medicine for e-business
Category
Health and beauty
Overall impression and usability
ePharmacy was voted most usable site in a recent Global Reviews survey. We were impressed by the overall look and feel of the site, but the overall green colour to the site limits easy differentiation between major sections, until you're in the section.
Overall, the site has a large range of products, and supports the purchase of prescriptions, after receiving the prescription by mail.
Hits
- Great range of products, and a good search capability. Product lists were easy to get around and the details pages were comprehensive.
- The design was easy to navigate, and the use of trail navigation made it easy to go up and down the product categories.
Misses
- Although the site fared well in the general usability, a number of smaller extras would make it even more usable. These include roll-over feedback, returning to the correct point after adding an item to the basket, adding more than one item at a time from the product page.
- The purchase process for pharmacy medicine is unclear. You can't add it from the product page, but if you view the details you could. We weren't sure of how it works, and later found out that you need to send in the prescription by mail. The main problem was the lack of clarity, not the mail-based aspect.
- Searching through the prescription area worked well, however, if you search for a non-prescription item, we expected the search to expand to other items, so you don't get a zero result.
- You need to be registered before you can make a purchase.
Purchasing procedure
- The procedure is very straight forward and we found no problems. Scripts need to be included for prescription-based medicine.
- For customers requiring alternative methods, they can download a word document and fill in what they want and fax it through.
- When ordering prescription medicines, it wasn't clear whether all products would be shipped together or the non-prescription goods would be shipped first.
Security
- ePharmacy uses SSL to protect customers details in transit.
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.