Scan's new website layout

[Gordy]

Couldn't agree more Saracen, usability has taken a back seat to design and even that's not particularly nice.

I fear that no usability testing was done whatsoever when designing the site. If it was considered at all.

[Chris P]

Thanks for all the feedback guys

The last thing we want to do is degrade the user experience; however the majority of the feedback we have received has been excellent.

We certainly did not have the intention to simply create a pretty looking site without taking the customer experience into consideration - Give us some credit guys / gals !

In once instance the site is aimed at Customer's using higher resolution screens and I agree ALL of our customer should be catered for, On the other hand we receive negative comments that the site having too much basic information, but we could come back and say in this instance we are catering for all of our Customer's, who we know have a varying level of hardware / software knowledge

Of course there should be a balance of information shown and the placing of this information. To re-iterate we are taking all the feedback seriously and working in the background to further improve the usability of the site for everyone.

There a lot of other comments I have not specifically addressed but be rest assured that we are taking ALL the feedback on-board

Best Regards

[Funkstar]

And the speed?

Loded and read three Hexus threads in the time to took to load the front page!

[BlackAle]

The new website is a total disaster for me at the moment... slow, searches are unpredictable, error messages, unlogical layout, the list goes on.

[Chris P]

The speed issue will be a temporary issue ( As with the site change 4 Years ago )

Please bear with us

[BlackAle]

I've just search for 'Antec' cases, sorted by price, 1st page is sorted, goto 2nd page it's sorted again, though there are prices lower than the last item on the 1st page.

Do you sell the Antec NSK 4480B ...I'm surprised you don't, but your website can't find it, but I've got little confidence in it atm.

[Bios]

We all have different preferences and any design will have some that love it and some that don’t.
However for me the new layout is not pleasing to the eye when compared to the old layout - everything just seems to be spaced out and grown in size (esp the centre of the page - looks horrible).

The old layout was more compact and much more pleasing to the eye and looked more professional.

[Chris P]

BlackAle

We can confirm there currently is no issue's with the actual listing of products at the moment and everything we do currently have in our inventory is listed on-line.

The Antec NSK 4480B is a product we do not have in stock or listed as a New product from the manufacturer, but I can source a price for you if you are interested in purchasing this case?

The sorted by price issue will be looked into as with all the feedback we have received.

Best Regards

[Saracen]

Thanks for all the feedback guys

The last thing we want to do is degrade the user experience; however the majority of the feedback we have received has been excellent.

We certainly did not have the intention to simply create a pretty looking site without taking the customer experience into consideration - Give us some credit guys / gals !

In once instance the site is aimed at Customer's using higher resolution screens and I agree ALL of our customer should be catered for, On the other hand we receive negative comments that the site having too much basic information, but we could come back and say in this instance we are catering for all of our Customer's, who we know have a varying level of hardware / software knowledge

Of course there should be a balance of information shown and the placing of this information. To re-iterate we are taking all the feedback seriously and working in the background to further improve the usability of the site for everyone.

There a lot of other comments I have not specifically addressed but be rest assured that we are taking ALL the feedback on-board

Best Regards

Oh, I'm sure the intent is there to get it right, Chris. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be spending the time giving fairly detailed criticism - it's because I want Scan to understand what I don't like, and why, and that I'm not moaning for moaning's sake. And it's not just that it's new and takes getting used to either.

Only then might something be done about it, 'cos if you don't understand what those of us that don't like it don't like, you can't evaluate how to fix it, or even if you want to.

For instance, on the issue of the gumph about hard drives ..... at the top of each section there's that graduated grey section header, with the category title (like SATA 1 & II - 400GB - 1TB) in it. Then, you've got

Overview
These High Capacity hard drives are designed to be used with todays newest connection - Serial ATA. Providing more bandwidth and advanced features such as NCQ, Staggered spin up and much more, these drives are ideal for todays systems which can have upto 8 SATA ports and support various RAID styles which are ideal for power users, people who want data security and much more. Please refer to the drives information for a full list of features. Remember the New SATA II Drives are backward compatible to SATA and shouldn't cause any issues.

How about, on the right hand side of that graduated bar, a little button (icon, text link, whatever) which you either click or mouse-hover to get that info in the quote above.

Then, it's there and fairly easy to find IF people need it, but not in-yer-face for those that don't. Most people, after all, will need that info once or twice at most, and not every time.

Similarly, the "Tek-Spek - Technology Explained" could be similarly embedded, as could the button to change to large view.

In the product section on hard drives, there's a column that gives manufacturer. The presence of that column means the description column is fairly narrow, which is why it runs over half a dozen lines and that's at least partly why so few (relatively) products fit on-screen at one time. And, as it happensd, the manufacturer is repeated in the product description anyway, so at least in that example, the whole column for manufacturer is rather redundant anyway. I appreciate, though, that that may not be the case with all products. But if the template build a description field as part of the query, could it perhaps concatenate "Manufacturer + Description" into the description field and dump the manufacturer column altogether?

You'd end up with Manufacturer (in bold) as part of description, and about double the column width for description, and therefore maybe three lines in description instead of six, and about double the products visible on screen at any time. Yet, exactly the same information is still displayed on-screen.

I'm sure there's any number of ways of going about improving usage of space and that's just one, and may well not the be best one. But it illustrates what I'm getting at.

[pow1983]

Hi Guys,

Here is my 2 pennies worth!
I dont have the time to look at the huge amount of posts so I may be repeating others

Firstly I'm not too keen on the new product filter. I felt the previous design worked better. I liked the ability to filter by Manufacturer. Now if I filter for example by power supplies, then by Wattage I then do a search for Coolermaster it searches all the items in the database and brings me back everything made by Coolermaster. The search field should be located somewhere else if it is not designed to work with the filters.

Referring to the screenshot below, I think that the area marked in red should be hidden by default, its over 600pixels. You have to scroll quite a way down before you see any products, also the Advanced Search is in a bit of a weird place, I'd have put it near the filters above it:


I do prefer the top navigation area to the previous design. A lot easier to see.

Cheers,

[BlackAle]

The Antec NSK 4480B is a product we do not have in stock or listed as a New product from the manufacturer, but I can source a price for you if you are interested in purchasing this case?

Yes, I'd normally be interested, though I'm looking to buy by the end of day tomorrow.

I would of PM'd as this isn't thread related, but I must be blind atm I can't see 'send PM'.

[moogle]

Yes, I'd normally be interested, though I'm looking to buy by the end of day tomorrow.

I would of PM'd as this isn't thread related, but I must be blind atm I can't see 'send PM'.

you haven't got enough posts to pm, it's a spammer thing don't worry.

[Chris P]

Guys - We are noticing similar points, repeatedly being raised - We understand the fact the thread is large and as we don't expect you to read the whole thread before you post.

So shortly we are going to list all the points, which have *already* been raised for you to prevent further duplications and to keep any new points raised easily viewable.

Lee H will be posting shortly

Best Regards

[Saracen]

Oh, and Chris, I'm bitching about what I don't like .... which is the usage of space in presentation and layout. That doesn't mean that there isn't plenty that I do like. Top of that list would be the way the background engine seems to be far more capable, and you can drill down to what, again based on initial impressions, seems to be a far more detailed and informative base of detail.

How this develops will be interesting, because it looks to me like this new system has huge potential and the possibility of being a fantastic improvement. But, for me at least, right now it's let down by the poor layout.

The potential I refer to could well makes things much better for buyers, but after all, the primary purpose is to sell, and it's that mainstream usability issue that's (IMHO) getting in the way.

I suspect that once you've got the teething issues sorted and (I hope) the template design tweaked a bit, you'll quite likely have a massive success on your hands. But right now, that layout .....

[Lee H]

So far I've condensed the thread into a simple easy list for us to digest and work upon.

The list of Constructive and Positive feedback..

Positive Feedback
Nice clean design
Quick add to the basket


Constructive Feedback
Server load times
Errors when loading/searching - time out system
Order History - can view the list of orders, but not the individual order details.
Breadcrumb trail doesn't work
Drop shadows are too soft (and suddenly cut off leaving a hard edge), tabs are shadowless
Icon shadows are inconsistent
Icons on the right menu should be on the left of the menu, not the right
Dtyle of the site is in conflict with itself
Hovering over a product header no longer brings up a sub menu (loved that)
No today only tab
Sort by Manufacturer (WIP)
Option for Site not to SAVE CARD INFORMATION
Delivery ETA page required
No option to save basket on the website

All these are currently being looked at, but if you have any others that are NOT listed above, please let us know ASAP so we can add them to the list accordingly.

Best Regards,

[BlackAle]

BlackAle
We can confirm there currently is no issue's with the actual listing of products at the moment and everything we do currently have in our inventory is listed on-line.

If you search for 'P5Q-E' nothing is listed, though you do stock it http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=818508