Site Review

[Rich]

I was wondering if any of you had time to have a quick look around a site of mine and tell me what you don't like about it?

It's a redesign of my book comparison site. Most of the features are the same as the original site, but its nearly all new code due to switching to the new version of Amazon webservices and other changes to make it more efficient.

You can view it here: - http://beta.bookkoob.co.uk/

I'm really looking for any suggestions that will make it easier for visitors to use and any obvious SEO errors.

Thanks in advance.

[giveasyouget]

Rich I think that's brilliant, *very* fast and stylish my only comments would be:

Rather than the quicklinks at te bottom, why not have them at the side too when it's not displaying subcategories?

When you copmare different books at once it's not immediately clear what to do next if you want to add more books rather than buy them straight away - again perhaps if you had the main categories down the side rather than just at the bottom it'd be clearer?

at first glance i thought the two search boxes were a login/password combo - probably would have understood what to do from compare page better if i hadn't.

a sitemap of all categories and subcategories is always nice from an seo pov, linked to from every page.

other than that well done - jealous

[Elaine]

really fast site - nice and clean

I always click on the logo to return to the home page - surprised it didn't work - and I would make the categories more prominent - swap them with the search boxes.

but other than that really brilliant.

[Rich]

Thanks both.

I've assumed that most people getting to the site know what books they want so thats why the browse links are down at the bottom. They are mainly as a pseudo sitemap for searchengines to dig into the site, but I have made some changes to make it a bit more useful for people that arn't sure what book they want.

The idea was to have more stuff in the right hand menu but I never quite worked out what else put there! I agree that the notes on the cart page could make it a bit more clear what to do to add more books.

The logo does need to be a link, thanks for that.

[Keith]

Hi Rich

It certainly looks good, just one thing long titles that wrap onto a second line are partly hidden in Opera and Firefox http://beta.bookkoob.co.uk/book/0563521139.htm

[Barry]

Its nice and clean rich, good effort.

Only one suggestion that I could make that differrent :-

---- When you click 'add this book to the price comparison cart' - I'd have it automatically going to the cheapest merchant

either that or make the 'calculate best deal' button appear at the top. (that is unless you have it going to the highest commission bookstore by default and its part of the design)

Other than that it look excellent - you should do this for a living

[999gi]

I dont like the home page much - theres no real obvious call to action

What do you want the vistiors to do?

If its search for a book then why not have the search central to the page (almost like Google search although theres is extreme in being so minimalist)

The current search looks more like a login to me when I first glance at the page


Only other thing Id add is to build a basket feature so you build a basket of your books and it tells you which shop is best when building in the shipping & bulk discounts etc.

[Rich]

Keith: I had noticed it, but din't think it would be that much of a problem. Since you spotted it I've changed it to show a shorter version of the title which should help avoid the problem - it looks odd with a smaller font size.

Barry: The problem with the comparison cart is each book exponentially increases the number of calculations that are needed. E.g. if all books are available at 15 stores, calculating the cart for 4 books will take 15 times as long as for 3, or 3375 times as long as for a single book. This means that calculating the best buy as the page loads would cause quite a wait for the user. The next step is to try moving the calculation for javascript to php to see what the speed is like, but I did spend a few weeks optimising the javascript.

999gi: I don't like the home page much either really, was the last page I slapped together before posting. The plan is to try to increase the rankings of individual book pages as thats the way I expect to get more visitors. I will have another look at it.
The build a basket feature is there, see the "add this book to the comparison cart" link directly below each books price table. I'll have to look at making it more obvious.

[Elaine]

re the home page - 'less is more' - maybe just going with the simplest of explanations and make the 'popular' books a more prominent feature - 'Silly Jokes' came up with some excellent advice re my latest site about making the copy more punchy.

[Rich]

Thinking about it last night the current homepage is a lot better (http://www.bookkoob.co.uk/) even though the content is very similar. I'll start from that again and try harder!

[Keith]

Perhaps a prompt would help the user eg after
Bestselling cheap books: - you might put something like click a cover to compare prices