By just reading the first chapter of “Don’t Make Me Think”, my knowledge of the
different elements that mostly all eCommerce sites use has already grown
tremendously.
For my first site review, I decided to actually do some shopping for myself. I needed
a new pair of shoes, so I used one of the most popular sites to do so, which is
Eastbay. Eastbay primarily sells shoes, but is also a redistributor of clothes.
On first glance of the homepage, everything is setup very clean and modern. They
stick to a nice dark grey, almost black navigation with white text and off white
background with black text for their color scheme, and those colors remain the same
the whole way through even in the checkout process. This is a very simple color
scheme, something I would expect out of a stock template for like a Squaresapce or
Shopify sort of deal, but nonetheless it is effective because of how simple it is to the
eye.
Now onto the navigation, which is the biggest issue I have with the site. At first
glance, the navigation bar looks great. It’s split into three categories, Shop, Releases,
and Community. Now what happens next is initially I tried to just hover over top of
the Shop category, expecting that it would activate some sort of drop-down menu,
but it didn’t. This was very confusing to me, and I thought maybe the page didn’t
load properly. It wasn’t until I actually clicked on the Shop category that the drop-
down navigation appeared, and when it did, it was very cluttered. They lay out
everything right in the navigation down to specific sub categories as specific as
“Wrestling Shoes”. I guess in some ways this is a good thing because right from the
home page you are able to find exactly what you want, and even shop by your shoe
size, but it just seems like too much in a navigation for me.
Let me explain a little further. So the main navigation bar is a horizontal one right at
the top with the Shop category in it, and when you click Shop it brings down not one
but two more horizontal navigations. The first one that comes down has nine
options to click on, from Men, Women, and all the way to Sale, and Team. Depending
on which one you click, it changes the second dropped down navigation with the in
depth parts. It’s just way too much for me right off the bat I think.
So, I know roughly what kind of shoes I want, which are Nike Roshe’s. So from the
first drop down I click on “Brands”, and from there the second drop down has logos
for each of the brands. I am able to locate the Nike swoosh very easily and go off the
homepage and into the actual process. This then goes to a huge list of Nike items,
15,627 of them to be exact. However, it does come with a vertical navigation bar to
refine your search some more, which is always a nice feature. So I limit mine to
Shoes, for Men, Shoes, Size 13.0, and Red color. From there I am still having trouble
finding them, and it’s not until the 7th row of shoes on the search in their site until I
find the type of pair I’m interested in. This was a big let down for me. I then realize
that there is a search bar in the top right corner, and I could’ve just typed in Nike
Roshe, but I didn’t figure that out until after all of these clicks and wasted time.
Once I’m finally on the specific product page, it is very easy to add to cart, which sort
of redeems the site a bit. It already remembered the size I wanted from the vertical
drop down earlier and already selected it for me. The add to cart button is in black
and gold and is very hard to miss. Once clicked, another navigation drops down
automatically from the main navigation bar, this time showing the product I just
added and asking on a big button if I would like to review cart or checkout. This
navigation was actually very nice and avoided an extra step for me, because I am
just ordering shoes and that’s it, probably like most people are on the site. So having
the ability to get to the checkout fast is a plus. I choose to pay with PayPal, an option
that redirects me to login and approve it on PayPal’s site, which is very simple to do
as well. From there all I need to do is verify my billing info and then hit the Place
Order button at the bottom.
So even though it got confusing at the beginning a little and their navigation of the
site is massive, overall I think the other positives make this an above average site to
me. Looking back on it, it’s kind of hard to do anything differently, because Eastbay’s
inventory is so massive that by default it also takes a massive navigation to
accomplish, and rather jumping from page to page refining that search they are able
to limit it to the homepage.