Hitting the nail on the head
According to a survey by the consumer organisation, WHICH, completed by 10,000 online shoppers, the Homebase website has been rated bottom of the pile for online shopping experience in UK retail. Its closest competitor, B&Q, fared almost as badly, finishing just two places higher in the list of 118 sites considered.
So where is Homebase going wrong? Consumers criticised the site for being hard to navigate, and with unclear information, not user friendly, and to quote one respondent "one of the slowest sites I've ever encountered". Believe me, it isn't the slowest, but it does remind us that speed of response is a key consideration in keeping the customer engaged.
People don't come to online sites because they want to admire the carousel of slow-loading images,and read the corporate PR. Successful sites are the ones which are thinking about what works for the customer who wants to spend money, not what impresses the people in the boardroom.
Usability and navigation of many sites, Homebase included, is desperately disappointing. When you click on an option on the top menu at Homebase, such as "Lighting & Electrical", you get a very big drop down menu, and on smaller screens, not only are some of those options off-screen, but there also doesn't seem to be any way to scroll down to read them, which leads to a lot of frustration and unintended clicks to random pages.
It is surprising in this day and age that so many major retailers with considerable website budgets struggle to make sites accessible, and to embrace the concepts of fluid RWD in web design.
Smaller sites can often compete well online with the larger retailers, not by trying to mimic the incumbents, but by offering a better, and more personalised service. WHICH has found that the biggest bugbears expressed in its survey was online deliveries using too much packaging, (48%), insufficent online info about the product to be able to make an informed purchase decision (46%), and the extra postage costs (43%). Shopping sites which offer cheap and speedy delivery, with reliable delivery dates, can easily gain a strong competitive edge.
30th November 2018
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.