Miva HeLp! E-commerce for the rest of us.
E-commerce for the rest of us. 

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         Boston Pete
   By Sabra Lutz © Copyright 2003
 

Loads well on 600x800 screen. Good load time. Free shipping on all orders is prominently displayed. Toll-free number is also very visible under the logo.

Nice Buttons. Clear icons and clean look however, logo is simply text and does not express anything about the business. Home page is a bit disorganized/crowded at the top. The first paragraph would do well to be re-written to flow in a more intuitive manner. "New Featured Product" feels slightly out of place. Category tree loads slightly in from the edge of the page whereas the header goes all the way across. Not sure if it is intended as a design feature- it almost feels like a mistake. Search box is well placed and very useful for a site like this where searches would be for specific products/artists. Categories are clear and easy to find.

Clicked on Webring Network and was taken to a page with three webrings and a promotion for the affiliate program. This is semi-related to the page topic so it did not cause too much confusion, however underneath there was a list of products with reduced prices. It was completely unclear as to what relevance this had to the page and whether those reduced prices were for a specific group, or available to everyone.

Account page has a brief privacy statement at the bottom - good location for anyone thinking of signing up. Also has clear instructions at the top to walk customers through the process.

The Radio Network page is a nice content addition and there is a nice tie in with the "shop with ----" feature for each host.

Search page is configured to bring up full information on product matches. For me this was too much information and I was turned off. The thought of having to sort through multiple pages of full product descriptions was too much for me. Most customers familiar with what they are looking for will only need a list of titles (with or without images) in order to sort through which ones they may be interested in.

Product list took a very long time to load and was overwhelming in scope. One very nice feature is that it is sorted into sections, and there is a link to each. The colors clashed a bit, and there was no alternating lines to help break up the monotony.

The top of some category pages becomes too crowded with the back link, the free shipping image and the Sub-category links. This area should be given a little more space. Also there is yet another search box on some categories which is unnecessary and could lead the customer to think that the search will be run on that category only. I would remove this. On some category pages there is a complete list of products underneath the links to the subcategories. It is a bit confusing and does not have a clean feel. I would simply put the links to the sub-categories and give customers a list of products under those only. Clicking on the Popular Vocalists brought up a nicely arranged page with a variation on the traditional "add one to basket" and "buy one now" buttons. Instead there was "add one to basket" (at which point the customer will be taken to the basket and given the option of check out or continue shopping) and more info (which takes the customer to the product page).

The newsletter sign up is a nice addition, but the link to the newsletter shows it to be more of a "special deals" section rather than a newsletter. Some content should be added or it should be renamed.

The privacy policy, contact info, and return policy were all "hidden" under the 'about BostonPete' link at the bottom. Clicking on the logo also brought it up. It is not an intuitive place for customers to look for this information. The 'help/faq' page also contained the info on returns, but it was not prominently placed and it contained no info on privacy. The 'about bostonpete.com' link is misspelled.

Was forced to create a test account in order to access the shopping cart- login "testaccount" can be deleted. Good use of upsale products during checkout. Was defaulted on the option of 'expedited shipping' for $4.80. There was the option of "Free shipping" but it has to be selected. This was initially confusing to me since Free Shipping has been promoted throughout the site. Nice use of additional information gathering before order completion. Clear instructions on how to enter the payment information.

 

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