Usability Review: A Little Friday Chuckle
Jason forwarded me this funny ecommerce site and I didn’t know what to expect when I clicked on the link…but have a look for yourself.
The Norwegian estore Arngren.net inspired me to write a tongue-in-cheek usability evaluation. Because it’s Friday, I thought it would be appropriate to point out 13 usability problems on this ecommerce site…
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1. Too much white space. Arngren should take notes from the Million Dollar Homepage.
If you want to be a big player in ecommerce, you need to show ALL your cards up front, or people are only going to hit the “back” button faster than you can say “abandøn kart!”
2. Needs an advertising revenue stream. I’m not talking just Google Adsense, I mean full-on Kontera ads.
3. Needs animated gifs – far more animated gifs. The dancing robot and spinning car wheels are placed way too far below the fold. We want ‘em front and center.
4. Hit counter is a nice touch but I am also interested in eyeball tracking stats.
5. Pop up window – There really needs to be an ad that floats from the top center of your screen…perhaps in the shape of a helicopter (with sound effects). Only, it should remain on the screen and rather than close when you hit the ‘x’ button, it should open up a series of unrelated offers.
6. They need some creative add to cart buttons that would really set them apart from the competition. May I suggest: “PUT THIS ITEM INTO A VIRTUAL BASKET SIMILAR TO WHAT YOU WOULD CARRY AROUND IN A SUPERMARKET UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO PURCHASE YOUR ITEMS” (all caps)?
7. I’d like to see a list of things they don’t sell. Just so we’re clear about that. Come on, what might I also like?
8. I don’t see anywhere where I can trade links for my New Jersey real estate website.
9. Needs blinking text for the items that are on sale.
10. These days, the web is all about customization. And personalization. There needs to be a way to skin the site with your favorite MySpace layout or textured Windows XP wallpaper.
11. It’s missing a “Digg This” button. How do they expect to make it to the first page of Digg? Maybe offer 25% off for every Digg.
12. It’s an impressive title tag, but they need some exclamation marks in there. Too many commas! In fact, they should have more exclamation marks throughout the site!
13. They forgot Waldo. But don’t worry, I fixed that for them.
That is hilarious! And I found Waldo by the way, nice touch. I was laughing out loud - people across the hall were wondering if I actually do any work here.
All good points.
It’d also be nice if they could play some loud techno mp3s in the background (the kind that lags while streaming); if shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch has taught me anything, it’s that people buy more when they have to yell.
Wow! I swear I looked and looked but I couldn’t find out how to add anything to my cart.
I’m also a big fan of how they used ’s to position each table slightly overlapping the other. I can’t even begin to imagine how long that took somebody to do!
I think you should make a Friday tradition out of this. I enjoyed this post.
Where’s the dating website ads? Cause that’s what I’m really browsing the interweb for.
Ha ha ha. You guys don’t know how much you just made my Friday. Great find Jason, thanks for the great remarks Linda (each one got better all the way to 13, which was THE best).
It amazes me how many sites try to cram as much crap as they can on one page. This site is literally so busy, it overwhelmed me (and probably everyone else who sees it).
I think it’s about time for them to go back to the drawing board, hopefully this post will start them in the right direction.
Have a great weekend all!
I really want to buy from these guys now as that site is madness.
Is the owner of Arngren aware of this post?