The website I chose to do is rightstuffanime.com. I’m a huge manga collector and sometimes, Barnes and Noble doesn’t have the book I’m looking for, so I head to right stuff anime to buy manga. Although I use it mainly for manga it offers multiple other products like CDs, figures, games, and apparel.
When you first open the site it usually always has a pop-up that offers 10% off your order if you give them your email. The homepage of the site shows the search bar promptly placed in the top middle of the site and under it has the different categories of items you can shop for. It’s nice that when you hover your cursor over each category, it underlines that subject so you as the user know for sure that you can click on it. Under the categories, it has a small slide show that shows the deals for the week or weekend and then offers new items coming. As you scroll down you can see other featured and popular items. If you scroll to the bottom they have a plethora of different links that are categorized with “Let us help you”, “Get to know us”, “Just the FAQs”, and “The fun stuff”. I feel this is important to a website because if customers have questions on returns or other items they can easily scroll down and find where to go.
The color scheme of this website is red, white, and blue, although blue is less predominant than red and white. While clicking on the manga category it has a drop-down menu that allows you to choose whether you want to shop by genre or book categories. This is a good thing to add because shopping online for books can be difficult and overwhelming, having it already broken down can help the user ask fewer questions and be easy to follow. I then chose the manga and it loaded up a page where you can look at all the different options they offer. It states how many products there are and on the left side, it allows the user to narrow down their search. For example, it shows different authors, themes, what’s in stock, and other deals they are having. Above the books it also allows the user to choose how many books are shown on each page and how you would like it organized to allow the experience to be easier.
While looking at the books it first shows the front cover of the book and has the title right below it. This is useful since many people like to skim over a page and it’s easier for them to look at pictures than read the title. Below that it shows the rating of the book, then shows a retail price and what the site’s price is. This is a good decision because it makes the user think/know they are getting a good deal and they are saving money by buying off this site instead of competitors. However, with the rating, it seems most books don’t have a rating and it might be more beneficial to remove the stars to create more space. Below the price it allows you to select the quantity and add it to the cart, right below that shows whether the item is in stock, some items are out of stock and expecting more, and pre-orders with the date it will ship out. Once you click add to cart, it has a pop-up of what you added with all the item’s information and then provides two separate options of whether you would like to view your cart and check out or continue shopping. The view your cart is a red button which matches the color scheme and the continue shopping is a white button with a black outline and has its letters the color blue which also matches. If you hover over the red button it deepens its color to show you on top of it and for the white button, it flips the colors making the button blue and the text white.
If you decided to keep looking and chose to continue shopping, it takes you right back to where you were while browsing. In the right-hand corner of the site, it shows a picture of a shopping cart and the number of items you have. This is a good design because it saves on space as well as is easy to see. Also, it would take more time for a user to read out the shopping cart whereas having a picture clearly states what it is. Also what works is if you hover over the shopping cart it has a small drop-down menu of what’s inside. This also saves time for the user instead of clicking on it. When you get to the checkout menu it gives the description of each book you selected on the left and on the right it gives you your subtotal and allows you to enter any promo codes. I appreciate how this website allows you to put in the promo code before you move to your payment to see the total before entering your card information. Afterward, you would enter all your personal and shipping information.
Furthermore, rightstuffanime.com proves to be user-friendly. Although it has a ton of products, it makes browsing its website easy to understand for all ages. The navigation element is made with the options of different categories and labeled icons. Most sites like this can be overwhelming and this site tackles that with clearly labeled icons and a clean crisp look. It doesn’t have any weird or super bright colors and doesn’t have any distracting pictures plastered everywhere.