DIGITAL MEDIA

BUNNINGS www.bunnings.com.au

DESIGN: Of all the reviewed sites Bunnings is all-round the best.

Arriving at the site you are immediately comfortable. The brand is present in the design and the copy tone and the treatment is consistent with other media. There is also good use of engaging imagery. Arriving at the site you immediately have faith that it will help you to the level you would expect from such a brand.

SCORE = 20/25

USABILITY: Diving a little deeper into the user experience we see the basics are covered: dynamic navigation, Flash elements, some video with available viewing of Bunnings TV commercials, and a handful of practical tools to help the average handyman. However nothing really stands out. The site caters for the first time and frequent visitor. Navigation is clear and the site is immediately easy to find your way around. There are shortcuts to frequently accessed content, and standard web conventions such as drop-down navigation, breadcrumbs etc are well covered. There is also an option to sign-in/register for email newsletters but it’s not made clear what the benefits are.

SCORE = 20/25

ACCESSIBILITY: Amazingly a lot of retailers fail to consider accessibility, thinking it hinders the brand experience. Considering most people online now are over the age of 40, clear and functional content is critical. Bunnings understands this – the site loads quickly and text is easily scaled. However there is room for improvement for people wanting to buy DIY manuals, as delivery details and product descriptions are lacking.SCORE = 20/25

SEO: The power of the brand is combined with good optimisation, which should give Bunnings greater overall share of traffic. A generic search for ‘hardware Australia’ sees Bunnings come up sixth, which jumps to number two for a more specific search such as ‘home hardware Australia’ and number one when keying in ‘hardware stores’, ahead of Mitre 10. Another key competitor, Home Hardware, follows them in third place on their own search term.

SCORE = 15/25

TARGETwww.target.com.au

The Target site is a friendly place to arrive, mainly due to the good use of hero shots. That said, the fun and personality that that comes out in other media such as TV is very much missing from this site. If there is one brand that gives you permission to play with the logo, it’s Target.

SCORE = 10/25

This site fails to convert the quirky and well crafted personality into an experience. There is little engagement and it seems as though the site is just one big toe in the internet water. There is little to do other than browse through available catalogues. Providing feedback would be much better through an online section rather than downloading a PDF to print and drop into your nearest store. There is the ability to shop from home but again, not through e-commerce but through catalogue browsing and placing your order via phone/email/fax. The navigation structure is crude and does not choose to distinguish areas of importance, meaning that the site is not designed for a particular purpose other than be a basic online catalogue. A strong point is the demographic centric email newsletters that are available.SCORE = 8/25

When looking at the Target site I assumed it is several years old, and this may explain the technical approach. Accessibility is on par with the rest of the site’s execution. While the load time is reasonably quick, and most of the copy is in text format so those with poor eyesight can easily resize the copy, there are still readability issues and those who are not loading images are unable to navigate the site. SCORE = 15/25

The brand name is a big help here. The site ranks well for brand terms however struggles to rank on product or designer terms. There were a few problems with the way the pages were titled and lack of meta tags which meant search terms such as ‘target store locations’ could not be found via search engines.

SCORE = 10/25

CHADSTONEwww.chadstoneshopping.com.au

The Chadstone shopping website strangely scores worst where you would expect it to excel. The shopping centre devoted to fashion and style lacks every bit of style online. This site should rock, but product and store presence is sadly lacking. Yes you can find a store, and there is a minimalist sense about the design, but where is the pizzazz and sizzle that you see in the shopping centre’s printed glossy magazine? For many people these days, the shopping experience starts online at 3pm on a Friday. The Chadstone site does not bring the centre’s powerful assets to life (and you can’t buy a raspberry Slurpee.

SCORE = 13/25

Technically all key aspects of usability are covered, it’s fairly simple and allows users to get the basic information easily. However, the site search is a bit hit-and-miss. ‘Clothing’ failed to return many results, and ‘fashion’ returned many miscellaneous results but only two relating to stores. Store finder worked well for specific store names.SCORE = 18/25

Generally good and far better than the other sites reviewed. The code structure considers alternative browsers such as screen readers for the blind. The site can be accessed with images disabled and style sheets off, which is important when you have a wide audience. The site loads quickly and there is text scalability, but not much room for growth on some popular browsers like Firefox before the design is compromised.

SCORE = 21/25

Not surprisingly, the site is well optimised and the various search requests such as ‘Chadstone cinema’ and store listing or trading hours can be easily found. This SEO strategy will ensure a both a large volume of traffic but also helps the user by taking them directly to content within the site, instead of forcing them through the site from thetop down. SCORE = 13/25

DAVID JONESwww.davidjones.com.au

OK, this site is all over the place. The colour variation throughout the site is disappointing and the treatment of the logo on the red background is a real shame. First impressions give me little to go on brand wise. There is no sense of style or sophistication. The site navigation and general style also bares a striking resemblance to the Myer site. From an experience perspective, the visitor is able to begin the shopping (or more accurately retail researching) via clean product imagery however it’s not easy.

SCORE = 7/25

The shopping or retail experience of the site falls well short. The images on the home page are inviting yet not interactive. The catalogue is the only way to research product however it is limited and very unsophisticated in its execution. There is no site search, though the site map is functional. It’s not a deep site with loads of content, which makes it relatively easy to get around, however the addition of more content would create real navigation issues.

SCORE = 17/25

Over use of graphic elements instead of text for headings, links, navigation, and in some places, actual content makes this site very limited for accessibility. Site performance becomes slow because of the over use of images and without the consumer benefit that comes with rich content, it’s a big wait for little in return. SCORE = 8/25

Even with poor SEO David Jones still ranks highly in Google & Yahoo! including site links for the former. It holds the number one position for ‘David Jones’ and ranked in the top three for ‘department store Australia’. Interesting when searched on a Friday afternoon it came up number one, then in a subsequent search on Monday it came up number three. A logical conclusion for its high ranking with poor SEO is that there are only a few department stores in Australia. Plus the David Jones brand is quite strong and likely to have good link equity.

SCORE = 5/25

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