Armin Nehzat Project Management Portfolio

Preliminary Website Analysis for David Jones

www.davidjones.com.au website report

Domain Name: www.davidjones.com.au

Date: 06/01/2012

Conducted By: Armin Nehzat

As one of the leading Australian department stores it’s crucially important for David Jones to stay up to date with existing brand and image across various media platforms. This brief analysis was put together to serve as a preliminary assessment on ways David Jones can improve its existing ecommerce solution.

So how David Jones ranks against competition?

David Jones Myer Kmart and OO

daily page view comparison

Bounce rates represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

Now let’s investigate why David Jones performs poorly in some areas compared to other department stores.

Why does David Jones use white text on black background for the product pages?

It makes the user experience extremely bad, if the colors are not easy on the eyes people are more likely to look elsewhere (increasing bounce rate).

Selecting the right text color and font style for user experience is critical

This is even more important when you consider the audience demographics.

know your demographics and who you are building for

Current website width is 1020px, this is far too big for industry standards and results in content been cut from the users window. Attached is the view from an iPad tablet.

the web standards are there to make life easy, conform where possible

Why does the site use so many frames? This affects the user experience when browsing the site as various areas of the website move when scrolling down the page.

avoid iframes where possible, search engines dont like them and user are confused by them

Why do most products have single images? Consumers won’t buy clothing or electronics with a single product photo. They want to make sure the product is right for them when buying online.

give me more then one reason to buy, critical to any eCommerce success

Could the products be better grouped to improve user experience?

don't make me look for it, showcase your portfolio to me

Why isn’t there a proper breadcrumb navigation system on the site? Users should always be able to easily trace back their steps. Below is an illustrations of how Myer has implemented that system.

online you have a sitemap and breadcrumb trail

Why are there dead links on the site with PDF files that have no call to action? When browsing the site I had to click 3 links from the home page only to land on a dead link.

you would not send your customer through to the fire exit, so why send them to a dead link

Why is there so much wasted space on the product page? This is compromising the potential sales as the buy now is pushed all the way to the bottom of the page.

You have limited screen space, so use it as effectively as possible

Does David Jones currently have a corporate style guide? There seems to be a lack of consistency in style and fonts, this can be damaging for the brand. Your retail stores seem to send a different image and vibe compared to your website.

pick one image and style, then follow it like a religion....

Facebook page icons need to be changed, the similar icons confuse user. The one on the left is what David Jones currently has and the one on the right is what St George has.

icons are there to improve user experience, not to add to confusion

It’s great to see David jones take on the initiative to develop a mobile site. The problem is that if I’m using my mobile device I probably want to locate a store or search for a product to compare prices. The other concern is the graphics should be optimized for mobile devices. Great Illustration of initiative but poor execution.

if you are going to build any website, write down its purpose on paper before you start to develop

Why are they using www2.davidjones.com.au? Search engines place high ranking on friendly URLs. It would be more suitable to have something like shop.davidjones.com.au.

Queries like product-details.jsp?productID=64880&category=2770325 should also be avoided where possible.

Why doesn’t the site have a print friendly CSS? People still do tend to print items from a websites to take into store.

retailers rely on image, so perfect that image where possible

Source code needs to be reviewed and optimized? There are lots of blank spaces in the source code and html tags inside meta descriptions. This creates problems, reduces page load times and increases errors.

always try to write good optimized code, it can go a long way

Alt Image tags are not been used correctly, they can be powerful for increasing organic search results. Myer seems to be doing it right.

spoon feed search engines, computer are not as smart as you think

Does the website have a search feature? This is a fundamental feature for any modern website. Users should generally be able to find what they are looking for with a maximum of 4 clicks from the homepage.

a website without a search feature is like a car without wheels

Why is the website not properly W3 validated? 13 Errors, 22 warning(s) according to http://validator.w3.org

try to fix errors where possible, they do effect how the website renders on different browsers

How long does David Jones intend on using flash? Most modern websites have started to move away from it.

David Jones should have a YouTube channel. Fashion and consumer electronics are hot topics on social media networks and David jones should promote its current activities on those topics.

no marketing is bad marketing, your business to the public and the public will open to you

Product recommendation engine have been proven to increase sales dramatically. CEO Todd Humphrey claims that the 75 online retailers using his engine are averaging a 22 percent increase in revenue per visitor. While David Jones does have that feature on the site, I don’t see it been actively implemented like other major sites.

your website is the best sales person you can ever employ

Additional features such as product comparison, rating and feedback systems can help to create a community of buyers.

facilitation of information, supply me with as much data as possible

The wedding registry is a powerful tool no one has done right yet. If this is done right (integrated with social media) it can be a powerful point of differentiation for David Jones and dramatically increase sales.

reinvent your business every 5 years, simple changes can make for huge profits

David Jones should defiantly consider purchasing davidjones.com if it aims to compete on a global level.

always buy .com if you want people to take you seriously

Simplifying to the website wireframe, the current system is extremely hard to navigate and does make users confused when they switch between www. and www2. with the change in templates.

Updating the website more frequently, the about page seem to have been last updated in 2000.

update your website frequently or else people will forget about you

Educate and market the facebook page to increase likes by giving people incentives. If people land on your facebook page you want them to instantly connect so you should make the like (subscribe) before they can take benefit of special offers and ect. This is an example of what we created for St George bank.

Educate your customers with today's technology, forget about newsletter and start with social media.

It seems that most of the content of the website is generated using aggregated feeds. A company the size of David Jones should be taking ownership of the site.

In the annual general meeting report PAUL ZAHRA (Chief Executive Officer) of David Jones mentioned “It is our intention to be a major player in multi-channel retailing in the future and to provide our customers with the best shopping experience and range of products regardless of which channel they choose to shop from (i.e. online, in-store, mobile application or a combination)”. With that quote in mind I developed a mockup of what I think the David Jones website should look like.

anyone can criticize but not many can contribute

Please note that this report was developed only for research purposes. Any other use, including for any commercial purposes, is strictly prohibited without our express prior written consent. In consideration, the individual, group, organization, business, spectator, or other, does hereby release and forever discharge Armin Nehzat severally from any and all actions, causes of actions, claims and demands for, upon or by reason of any damage, loss or injury, which hereafter may be sustained by this report.

This release extends and applies to, and also covers and includes, all unknown, unforeseen, unanticipated and unsuspected injuries, damages, loss and liability and the consequences thereof, as well as those now disclosed and known to exist.  The provisions of any state, federal, local or territorial law or state providing substance that releases shall not extend to claims, demands, injuries, or damages which are known or unsuspected to exist at this time, to the person executing such release, are hereby expressly waived.

The Result

It's great to know that my recommendations actually got heard and David Jones is working on resolving these issues.

Do your homework

I recently had the opportunity to review www.dicksmith.com.au from an outsiders perspective and I'm really glad I made the effort to do my research as it seemed they appreciated my efforts as well

This brief analysis was put together to serve as a preliminary assessment on ways Dick Smith Electronics can improve its existing ecommerce solution. As the techxperts is it crucially important for Dick Smith Electronics to stay up to date with existing technological trends in its product range and marketing strategy. With today’s market trends online presence is one of the main point of connection with a brand.

Based on the current market analysis it seems that Dick Smith Electronics has recently migrated to a new domains and have successfully adopted a new branding strategy. Since late 2010 Dick Smith has moved away from www.dse.com.au to www.dicksmith.com.au and that does create some confusion for consumers during the domain migration but it has not affected the website traffic too dramatically.

For the purpose of this report we will consider the following candidates as Dicks Smith’s Major Competitors and use them as the current market benchmark.

• www.jb-hifi.com.au
• www.harveynorma.com.au
• www.kogan.com.au
• www.binglee.com.au

It is evident that Dick Smith Electronics shares a reasonable amount of traffic with the Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi however kogan is starting to get a fair amount of market share and traction. While the difference between JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith Electronics is not a great deal it is still reasonable for us to say that JB Hi-Fi does have a better position in the market compared to the other Consumer Electronics Retailers.

After doing several generic searches I could not find dick smith in the organic or the paid search listings however I was able to find Dick Smith with more specific search terms.

Below gives you an example of the search result you get when searching for LCD TV, as you can see both manufactures and retailers are bidding & working for this position.

Recommendations:

• Missing Meta description & keywords on most pages.

• Choice of SEO words should be more optimized

<title>Great deals on Apple ipods, laptops, notebooks, 3D TV, LCD and Plasma | Dick Smith Online Shopping</title>

• Better Use of header tags across the website and especially the landing page <h2>Your Cart</h2>

• Optimizing and reducing the number of images been loaded on the home page, while visually the website does look great there are a lot of images been loaded in the background that can slow down the user experience. It is recommended that Dick Smith should reconsider 277 images been loaded on the homepage to improve site performance.

• YouTube videos & product reviews in coordination with manufacturers (talk to the techxperts)
• Implementing a stackoverflow.com style community for consumer electronics
• Google adsense and Youtube Self Service Ads
• Marking RSS feeds more accessible for shopping comparison websites
• Getting listings on Google Shopping (JB Hi-Fi currently on there)
• Promotional microsites coordinated with manufacturers (redemption offers)
• Creating iphone catalogue app or photo app similar to Harvey Norman