OCUK Website

In my opinion yes, the layout is old fashioned and quite bland.

But, in it's advantage, it's simple and easy to use.
 
No, its simple, easy to navigate and fairly low bandwidth.

It does exactly what is says on the tin without additional pointless stuff, imo.
 
It's not a bad design but searching for some products is a bit harder than it should be. OcUK don't sell SATA laptop drives but you have to search through all the hard drive pages to know that. It's not too bad because OcUK don't have a huge product selection like other companies so it's not to difficult to locate what you need. I just find OcUK harder to search than other sites, it involves a lot of manual browsing.

The forums are defianately a major part of this site though, I don't think OcUK would be as sucessful without them.
 
RobH said:
The forums are defianately a major part of this site though, I don't think OcUK would be as sucessful without them.
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Apparently not. Its been said that very little sales come from the forums.

Spie did advertise for a web developer some time ago so he's probably still got them locked in a dark room working away. :p
 
I LOVE it how it is. It's the most simple site to use and always has been. Do OcUK really want customers so shallow that they wont buy from a place (Even though it has the best range of products and prices) based PURELY upon it's websites appearance? I know if I owned a shop I wouldn't give a toss about losing these sorts of customer.
 
I don't think it needs revamping at all, it's easy to find and buy the stuff you're looking for compared to just about every competitors site, if people are put off buying from here based on the look of the site then bugger them, it might be a few less stupid people registering on the forums.
 
Not a problem with it visually - I don't base purchasing decisions on how flashy the graphics of a website are - but I think there are a number of usability issues that might hamper things.

I think the whole site would do well to be more "dynamic". As of now, there is usually only one way to get to a product, and that's via drilling down through categories. Things are usually nestled within at least a couple of subcategories, often with little indication of their presence at higher levels.

I think it would be best if it presented the user with the main categories initially, with the hierarchy becoming explicit when the user mouseovers/clicks the higher-level categories - think a tree-view or slide-out menu. That way, if you pick the wrong sub-category, the entire hierarchy is there so you can easily work your way back up and take a different route, as well as the bonus that it makes grandchildren and great-grandchildren visible as well as children.

This is only one way of solving things, however. Why have products only in one place? Sure, a DVD burner should be in the CDs and DVDs section, but when viewing a DVD burner why not suggest some other things for me to buy? Make customers realise "hey, I do want a stack of blank DVDs with this burner... ooh, and some boxes too!", which is really easy to do with any database worth its salt. You could even go further and monitor users' buying habits (anonymously, of course), introducing an Amazon-esque "customers who shopped for items in your shopping basket were also interested in..." type display.

Also, it really needs an efficient and more importantly obvious system of searching. Nowhere on the front page is the user presented with a search form; are users really more likely to want to find out about the jobs available at OcUK than search for a product? Almost every successful online retailer presents a search box as the first thing the user sees, and provided the results they get from searching are worthwhile there's not even a need for a category-based system. Make searching the primary system of navigation and have categories as a fallback or for people who like to just browse around.

Phew! Bit slapdash but hopefully it makes sense.
 
It could do with being proof-read by someone, rather than just passed through a spell-checker.

Staggering mis-use of "its" and "it's" all over the place.

Which is my only gripe - the website is probably one of the nicest for just browsing through computer bits and trying to work out how well you'd function with half your organs to afford all the stuff you want to buy.
 
Mr^B said:
It could do with being proof-read by someone, rather than just passed through a spell-checker.

Staggering mis-use of "its" and "it's" all over the place.
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OcUK are given the descriptions to use by the manufacturers, and I guess most of the time their first language isn't English :)
 
Definately agree about having a search feature. It would make things a LOT easier to locate on the site.

As it stands at the moment, I like the minimalistic approach because its quick and simple. :)
 
On the surface the site isn't too bad. It's got a bit of a 90's look to it, the navigation is in a rather strange place and not much thought has been put into emphasising important elements — researching user flow and adapting the design in accordance with this. Overall it's certainly not the worst website out there as far as the visuals are concerned.

The back-end coding, on the other hand, is a different matter. The front page, although relatively content-heavy, has a file size of approximately 40KB; that's excluding images and the content of any external files (stylesheets, javascript files etc.). To give you a concept of the scale of things, the CNET.com homepage — a marvel of thoughtful design and semantic coding — is a mere 26KB.

The URLs aren't friendly at all; the amount of times I've had to dive into the source code to find the unique anchor name for a product on a page to avoid the old "Yes, it's the fourteenth one down... no, that's the tenth.... i said the fourteenth, not the fortieth!" Navigating through pages is an equally painful experience. Imagine you are someone who knows little about computers. Your motherboard has just blown and your friend has recommended OcUK to you. You fire up the website and click "Motherboards". "Job done!" you think, as you wait for the page to load. But oh no, you are then forced to choose between intel and AMD motherboards — straight over your head. You blindly select one of them then are forced to choose the socket type. You give up and go to your local retailer and ask a real person what you should do...

Likewise, take on the role of someone who is looking to purchase a new computer. Their friends have scoffed at your proposal to buy a pre-built system from [insert company here] and have directed you to OcUK amid claims that building your own system saves you thousands and allows you to get exactly what you want. You're presented with the front page — SATA? IDE? AM2? DDR2? Now cowering behind your sofa you find a discarded catalogue for that company and go back to Plan A. Obviously I don't the statistics to come to this assumption, but I think there is a huge amount of potential for clutching these sort of customers. Knock together a script which allows them to select compatible components and construct their own rig. Heck, set up a customer services department for complete systems — that's what a certain computer retailer based in Texas did, and now they have an annual turnover of $56.74bn.

Looking at all the static pages, the scattered file names and the general static feel to the site, I imagine the content management system (Actinic) must be a right pain. If I were in charge of OcUK and had a bit of cash in hand I'd hire a team of professional web developers (not your brother's friend, who learned to design websites using Dreamweaver; more like 37Signals, Nice-Design, BlueFlavor or clear:left). Heck, even if I didn't have a bit of cash I'd take out a loan to pay for it — especially considering the amount of sales OcUK get through their website. I'd get them to build a totally custom content management system fit to suit the needs of both the customer and me, and a user interface which is full to the brim of usability aids and thoughtful features.

I'm sure someone has mentioned it before, but why not start a competition for forum members to redesign the front page, or something similar?

av. :)
 
I have no problems with it. As said it's clean and simple.

But I could see how newcomers maybe put off by the initial design and functionalities, especially when they compare with more popular competitor sites which in their eyes may appear to look "more secure and professional" perhaps.

Just a thought.
 
JonRohan said:
Apparently not. Its been said that very little sales come from the forums.
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how would you ever prove that? not every forum member who buys is going to a) click the link to the shop every time they buy, and b) put that the forum referred them every time.

i like the layout of the shop - only problem for me (not with OcUK, i use another shop that has the same software) is that you can't link to individual products - you have to be like "that link...5th one down" or "ctrl f, "this"...bit annoying, but it's better than some of the crap there.
 
Sic said:
how would you ever prove that? not every forum member who buys is going to a) click the link to the shop every time they buy, and b) put that the forum referred them every time.
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I believe Spie has stated before that few orders come as a result of the forums. How he knows, we can only guess...
 
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