Sanx
02-07-2009, 11:57 AM
You wanted feedback (or so this forum area would indicate) so here is some. I don't claim any great expertise in this matter, but I am a web programmer who designed, programmed and operated an online motorcycle accessories store in New Zealand before I left for warmer climes.
Initial thoughts:
Prices seem very good. Glad to see.
The website's ugly as hell. It has the look of a stock storefront that's simply had the BGW logo and colour scheme carelessly dumped on it.
Navigation around the site is quite slow. In certain places you have to click through many categories, only then to find that there aren't any relevant products. If categories are empty, why have them there at all? I appreciate that loading the products onto the website can take time, but you should be able to pre-stage categories and simply hide them from the end user; or at least, if the site's been well-design, you should...
The search function is flakey, which is further exacerbated by BGW's failure to use consistent motorcycle model names. The KTM SuperDuke is listed as a 'Superduke', 'Super Duke', and '990 SuperDuke', for example.
It would be much better to have a "show products for my bike" facility as most customers aren't generally interested in, say, the range of sprockets that you stock but whether you have a sprocket for their particular bike. It's also nice, should you have a bike that isn't a GSX-R (i.e. common as muck), to simply see what's available for your model.
There is absolutely no reason why you should have one login for the forum and another for the store itself. That's just sheer laziness on the part of the web designers.
Another example of sheer laziness is making the various help sections simply contain forum posts within IFRAMES. Either pull the content out of the DB and display it directly or recreate it. Neither option is particularly difficult.
Although Mr Mladin may be based in the States, this is Australia. Let's have Australian spellings in product descriptions, not American ones. And while you're at it, you might want to read the product descriptions and remove the myriad of spelling and grammatical errors.
Talking of product descriptions, it might be a good idea to list what bikes a product is suitable for within the product description, rather than just relying on the categorisation. Try this for instance: search for 'Pazzo' and then identify which of the 41 products listed is suitable for a 2008 GSX-R1000.
If, within product descriptions, you tell people to Fitment Charts (http://www.bikegearwarehouse.com.au/Help/Size-Charts) to find the correct size or model, it might be a good idea to provide said fitment chart...
You might want to size photographs correctly (http://www.bikegearwarehouse.com.au/Supercross) too.
I do realise that BGW (and therefore the website) has just opened and therefore is possibly still in development. However, you did ask for opinions...
Initial thoughts:
Prices seem very good. Glad to see.
The website's ugly as hell. It has the look of a stock storefront that's simply had the BGW logo and colour scheme carelessly dumped on it.
Navigation around the site is quite slow. In certain places you have to click through many categories, only then to find that there aren't any relevant products. If categories are empty, why have them there at all? I appreciate that loading the products onto the website can take time, but you should be able to pre-stage categories and simply hide them from the end user; or at least, if the site's been well-design, you should...
The search function is flakey, which is further exacerbated by BGW's failure to use consistent motorcycle model names. The KTM SuperDuke is listed as a 'Superduke', 'Super Duke', and '990 SuperDuke', for example.
It would be much better to have a "show products for my bike" facility as most customers aren't generally interested in, say, the range of sprockets that you stock but whether you have a sprocket for their particular bike. It's also nice, should you have a bike that isn't a GSX-R (i.e. common as muck), to simply see what's available for your model.
There is absolutely no reason why you should have one login for the forum and another for the store itself. That's just sheer laziness on the part of the web designers.
Another example of sheer laziness is making the various help sections simply contain forum posts within IFRAMES. Either pull the content out of the DB and display it directly or recreate it. Neither option is particularly difficult.
Although Mr Mladin may be based in the States, this is Australia. Let's have Australian spellings in product descriptions, not American ones. And while you're at it, you might want to read the product descriptions and remove the myriad of spelling and grammatical errors.
Talking of product descriptions, it might be a good idea to list what bikes a product is suitable for within the product description, rather than just relying on the categorisation. Try this for instance: search for 'Pazzo' and then identify which of the 41 products listed is suitable for a 2008 GSX-R1000.
If, within product descriptions, you tell people to Fitment Charts (http://www.bikegearwarehouse.com.au/Help/Size-Charts) to find the correct size or model, it might be a good idea to provide said fitment chart...
You might want to size photographs correctly (http://www.bikegearwarehouse.com.au/Supercross) too.
I do realise that BGW (and therefore the website) has just opened and therefore is possibly still in development. However, you did ask for opinions...