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Ecommerce Website Critique – LK Bennett
July 20, 2011 adminSometimes, you come across a site that grabs your attention and instantly makes you curious about the brand in question, as well as the products or messages they are presenting. These sites inspire trust instantly and give the impression that you can count on them for great service, plus the great products to match.
This is something that, as an ecommerce store designer, I am constantly analysing. It’s vital to know what makes a website successful in terms of aesthetics and functionality, and a great way to do this is to view the site through the eyes of a potential customer. Imagining the expectations and preconceptions they might have is hugely beneficial when evaluating websites. Whenever I build a store, my aim is always to brand the ecommerce site in a way that means it fulfils the needs of its customers, places it in the right position in the market place, and encourages customers to return time after time.
With this in mind, every month I am going to share with you a critique of an ecommerce site that I judge to be highly effective in targeting an appropriate audience. I will focus on what I see to be the key components of any ecommerce site: the homepage, categories, product detail and checkout process.
Let’s start with a company I feel I should know about but for some reason – maybe I’ve actually been living in a cave for years without realising – I don’t. That company is LK Bennett. In some ways, I think it’s a positive thing that I knew nothing about them, because it meant I was able to learn about them very quickly through the design and layout of their website. When it comes to presenting a high class brand such as this, less is definitely more.
Homepage
It can often be hard to get sales messages across without accidentally making the site look cheap or crowding them out with other messages on the page. However, LK Bennett manages to carry this off very well; their homepage maintains a level of high class.
Another important aspect of the homepage is photography. In a way, this is the front window of your shop so it’s vital that you don’t show anything less than beautifully presented products. This is something that LK Bennett carry off very well; they’ve woven together three messages very cleverly. These are women’s clothing and accessories, elegance and style, and sale. There are interactive graphics on the header image that encourage user exploration and the use of the sliding banner allows them to display more messages in the same space, without forcing the page further down below the page fold. Most importantly, the main navigation is very simple and clean, allowing the user a clear set of options that takes them further into the site – and closer to making a purchase.
Category Page
So, I’ve chosen the department I want to shop in and I’m now in an area of the website where I want to home in on a specific product. One of the best things about the internet is that you can find what you’re looking for really quickly if the site you are using has been designed considerately. The category page is really important here as it is the part of the site where a large number of products will be displayed on one page.
The solution LK Bennett uses is to hide those things you don’t need to see from initial view. You can then access them once you have made some initial product category choices. There is a navigation tool on the left hand side of the page that allows you to control what you want to see on the right; this is a method of filtering that has been adopted by the vast majority of all successful ecommerce stores. If a user is having trouble finding something on a website, this is usually down to poor navigation; something that there should be no excuse for.
Product Detail Page
The product is most definitely the focus of this page, which is remarkably uncluttered. One of the most common mistakes that web designers make is to display all the information as soon as a user clicks onto a page. However, an increasing trend is to make it so that information is hidden and revealed on a need to know basis. There are many ways that this can be done effectively and there is no single right answer for it, as there are lots of ways to present product detail pictures successfully. I have only one criticism of the way LK Bennett has done it: there is no way to see the product in its entirety if you choose an enlarged view. It’s possible that they did this so people couldn’t download the images to be used on another site.
The main call to action on this product detail page is eye-catching and there is no confusion as to which path the user should take. An interesting feature is that the checkout button is not easy to find, which is perhaps to encourage the customer to continue shopping.
Shopping Basket
So far, the site has taken me through to the point of paying, while still giving me opportunities to carry on browsing. When I did land on the shopping basket, I could see the same clear layout and clear, intuitive design that allows me to complete the purchase. It’s always a good idea to remind customers that their purchase will be made in a secure environment and that their details will be protected. It’s also a good idea to highlight the return policy in case a user has any questions about this.
The LK Bennett payment page shows a 3-step checkout at the top. I think that this is a good feature and that they could have made more of it. At this point, the site is also operating in the secure environment (this is made clear by the ‘https’ in the browser URL bar). The steps used by the checkout follows the same process as a typical ecommerce site. The style remains clear and simple, keeping the user focused on the end goal of completing their purchase.
Conclusion
Overall, I would say that there is a lot to learn from LK Bennett, where the simple and uncluttered approach is almost certain to deliver a higher conversion rate of browsers to purchasers. Shopping online is supposed to be a joy, and the minute we feel frustrated or confused it only takes the click of a button to go elsewhere. In LK Bennett’s case, I would say that if purchases were ever to drop off, it wouldn’t be because of a poorly designed ecommerce store, but more likely due to the products and pricing.
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