At long last Waterstones has a website worthy of a big bookselling retailer.
The new look/design is a huge improvement on the ‘pathetic’ [Daunt’s own description] previous offering.
The site is beautifully ‘responsive’, making it user-friendly on whatever device you’re using.
The landing page is crisp and clear.
And the navigation tab opens up to show a full listing of the online shop’s different ‘departments’.
I would like to see more detail on the individual title listings. The Publisher and ISBN should be included in the box that shows the price, rather than underneath the synopsis.
Amazon is more successful in summarising basic descriptive information. For the same title:
And also in linking to other editions.
But all good websites are works in progress and I’m sure Waterstones will want to make improvements in its listings design in the weeks and months ahead.
What the site does really well is promoting its John Lewis style Click-and-Collect service. A good deal of thought has clearly been given to making the website a user-friendly experience for this type of buying. In most cases, the online price will be lower than the store price.
How well this works out in practice will be a determining factor on customer satisfaction. It does mean that individual stores will need to be very on top of their stock audits and that this information will need to be updated to a central database. I assume that this will be done through the till, at point of sale. It is not altogether clear whether the click-and-collect service will apply to same day purchases.
A shame that the site’s copy-editors have let that ‘recieve’ slip through 🙁
It’s been a time a-coming, but on the whole then, an extremely promising relaunch.