Yet another shopping site

eShopExplorer.com

This is a shopping directory aiming to help users to locate quickly and easily information on online stores, products and any promotions they may be offering. The site is supported by affiliate marketing and we are planning soon to offer some incentives to our visitors. Please note that our site is still under development but the main sections are in place.

For the time being we would like to get some feedback regarding mainly its usability in all terms. Therefore we would greatly appreciate if you could answer the following questions and provide you comments and suggestions for further enhancements and corrections.

1) What was your first impression by visiting the site?
2) Did you find the design appealing?
3) Did you find the navigation intuitive?
4) Do you find the site usable?
5) Do you find our service and the information provided useful?
6) Would you use the site as a reference point for your shopping needs? (Consider that once the site is finished will feature over 3000 online stores offering both products and services, over 5000 promotional offers and over 150 million searchable products)
7) Would you suggest this site to a friend or someone you know?
8) Did you experience any compatibility issues?
9) What about load times? Was it fast enough?
10) What did you like or/and dislike the most about the site and why?

Looking forward for your replies. Thank you!

1) What was your first impression by visiting the site?
It was "what the hell is this site about?"

2) Did you find the design appealing?
No

3) Did you find the navigation intuitive?
No

4) Do you find the site usable?
No

5) Do you find our service and the information provided useful?
yea I guess

6) Would you use the site as a reference point for your shopping needs? (Consider that once the site is finished will feature over 3000 online stores offering both products and services, over 5000 promotional offers and over 150 million searchable products)
Not really. Personally I get all the stuff I need from Amazon.com, and the rest from street/mall shops.

7) Would you suggest this site to a friend or someone you know?
No.

8) Did you experience any compatibility issues?
No.

9) What about load times? Was it fast enough?
Yes.

10) What did you like or/and dislike the most about the site and why?
OK here are a few random issues:

- Those people on the top banner makes the banner take too much attention on the page. I think it would be better if the banner was shorter and without them.

- The login fields need to have a white background. I didn't notice them until later because of their green color.

- You're asking me to sign up on the home page, but you're not telling me why I should bother.

- The text of the navigation links should be white in my opinion so it has better contrast.

- The tabs don't really look like tabs. I think this is because even the currently viewed page has a bottom border under its page tab. You need to get rid of the dotted border in all tabs so it looks more like tabs.

- The "shop by letter" feature looks ugly and shouldn't be on the home page in my opinion. Users tend to use the search bar first when they're looking for something. Not many would be willing to click 'A' for example and search through a big list of shops. They need something fast and effecient.

- What is an 'EXPL. RATING'? you need to use a more descriptive term.

- Make the left side menu Javascript based. When users see a [+] next to a link these days, they expect it to expand once they click on it. The refresh is unneccessary.

- Make the number of shops you have more obvious. Your site is a directory, so this one of the things that really matters.

- The 'Visit Shop' link isn't necessary when clicking on the name of the shop leads to the same place.

That's it for now. I hope you find those points helpful.

Thank you for taking the time to go through our site and provide us with your feedback. We will most certainly take your suggestions into consideration.

1) What was your first impression by visiting the site?
Also didn't understand what the site offered. The template doesn't fit the site. Those tabs on the top fit a blog type site, not a shopping one.

2) Did you find the design appealing?
Kinda thin [width-wise], nothing special I guess. Everything looked kinda scrunched.

3) Did you find the navigation intuitive?
It was alright.

4) Do you find the site usable?
Yeah, gives you reviews, what more do you need?

5) Do you find our service and the information provided useful?
Yeah the reviews seemed detailed.

6) Would you use the site as a reference point for your shopping needs? (Consider that once the site is finished will feature over 3000 online stores offering both products and services, over 5000 promotional offers and over 150 million searchable products)
Yeah I may check it out before a purchase.

7) Would you suggest this site to a friend or someone you know?
Probably not. I only suggest very large sites.

8) Did you experience any compatibility issues?
Nope.

9) What about load times? Was it fast enough?
Yeah speed was fine.

10) What did you like or/and dislike the most about the site and why?
Something I would change... On the frontpage, the icons of the stores, don't link them to the company site - link it to your reviews, and let the user go from there. The customer will only buy the product after reading a review, so let him!

- Tom

Thank you Tomer for your feedback.

When you say that the tabs are not suitable for a shopping site what do you mean? Shopping.com and epinions also use tabs and they are some of the biggest sites out there. What navigation system would you propose.

When you say I only suggest very large sites do you mean in terms of content or publicity?

I am not a critique pro by any means,but my first impression was that i felt i had to make extra effort to get what this site is about .
I second Mperor for his first impression.
I would remove the first entry and have an About paragraph instead
Good luck

Thank you Titika for your comments

3 out of 3 so far.

We need to get this home page up and running soon.

Currently the first page that comes up is not supposed to be the home page. It seems however that we need to make a statement on all pages what’s the site about, as is uncertain where users will land if they are coming from a search engine.

One thought was to use that banner space on the top to clearly convey our message to our visitors. A reference will also be made to the number of stores, offers and products available at all times.

Another thought is a complete redesign But that will have to wait until all the features have been developed properly so we can have a better idea on the volume of the content that needs to be laid out .

One more thing I would like to add is that the registration option is there as we are planning to offer points to our visitors for writing reviews, and using the site for their shopping. We intend to return about 50% of our commission for their purchases in points redeemable for vouchers, gift certificates, discounts or even cash in their PayPal account. Also 30% of the resulting commissions from non-members will go for prize draws and other give aways.

Our concept is to establish a small community where people can benefit even more from their online purchases in additions to special offers and coupons that they may find on the site. We are even thinking of finding some sort of reliable investment s where people will be able to buy shares with their points.

If you ask me why would we do something like that, I will tell you that at the moment all of us when we buy a product we pay more than 30% for advertising expenses. So returning back to the consumers (us) a small part of these expenses benefits everyone, both consumers and retailers. Consumers can buy more products with a fixed budget or lower their budget, and retailers get to generate more sales.

you are most welcome !
rich-feature sites like yours need more than a traditional layout and design.Interestingly,they need to be simple.If I were you I would hire a designer with menu skills.Menus can unleach the power of features while keeping the site design simple.
but then again this is just my point of view
thanks for the opportunity to share my views.

The site looked very "busy" and I found the background very distracting.

Sorry, I didn't. I did like the header tho.

Easy to use but not very web2.0

Easy of use = yes.

I was lost ..... honestly.

Perhaps if there was more insight into why I am looking at this site instead
of the manufacturers site - really I saw no purpose to the site. Was it a
top merchants site because I find it looked no different than all the other "topsites"

Sorry, no.

Nope - worked find.
Yes.

The site basically looks like a "topsites" website and aside from the header
I found it lacking design.

Thank you classact for your honest feedback.

We would like though to hear some suggestions on improving things on the areas that require urgent attention. From you comments do far and our statistical observation it seems that the design has failed in quite a few areas that the best approach would be to drop it and start from scratch. However, this is not possible at the time being so we would like to tide up things as much as we can till the right time comes.

Shopping.com is obvious it's a product comparison site. On the front page, you right away see many product images, so it's very obvious.