I chose to analyze the website of Lush, http://www.lushcanada.com/, a Canadian store that sells handmade bath products and cosmetics.
Entering Lush's website
The first thing I noticed about Lush's website was that the URL brings you to an entry page where you have to click to enter. I don't really understand the purpose of entry pages unless it serves to warn people of adult content which is not the case for Lush. One complaint I have about the Lush entry page is that the background (www.lushcanada.com repeated over a light blue background) makes it very difficult to read the text on the page, the date of the last update. The background makes the entry page look very busy and it seems unnecessary to repeat the URL so many times. I would suggest removing that text from the background on the entry page to make it cleaner looking.
Site Navigation
Upon entering the site I found that it used frames. There is a menu along the left side in the border of the frame with options to begin shopping, order a catalog, locate a store, check out, track your order, contact the company, and tell about your experiences with the company. One feature lacking in the menu in the border of the frame is a button to go back to the main page. Upon entering the options in the frame border, the only way to return to the opening page is by using the back button. There is also a menu along the top of the frame with links to pages on PR, privacy, shipping, employment, what the media has said about Lush, and an FAQ page. Each of these pages has a link to go back to the home page, a useful feature. A more seasonal feature for customers on the opening page that I like is the inclusion of Christmas shipping cutoff dates. The links for shipping and order tracking easy to find which is also very nice. They know it is important for customers and don't make them guess where they might have hidden this information. Since they are based in Canada, the information on shipping to the US is not as specific as for shipping within Canada which I see as a drawback. A Canadian might not feel the same, however.
The Opening Page
The opening page of the site is not the most professional looking that I have seen. It uses several different fonts and has a cheesy-looking drawing of Santa Claus tiled in the background. There is a confusing bit of animation that says "Click begin shopping on the left" with an arrow above it that points to the left of the words. However, the arrow is not on the level of the "Begin shopping" choice on the menu in the frame border, and it's hard to tell where exactly the arrow is telling you to click. There is a picture of a present just to the left of the animated arrow, and I thought at first that that was where I needed to click to enter the catalog. It was not immediately obvious that it was pointing at the menu bar along the left side of the page. I don't think that the animated arrow adds much to the page and is more likely to be a source of confusion for users. If the arrow hadn't caught my eye by blinking and moving, I would have noticed the link to get to the catalog much more quickly. I would suggest removing that feature altogether.
The Catalog
Clicking on "Begin shopping" opens a page with product categories with a link to each category with a corresponding picture. Within each category, each item is listed with a full description of the ingredients in each product. This is necessary because Lush bills its products as cruelty-free (i.e., not tested on animals), and that information is important to people who want to buy animal-friendly cosmetics. Another nice feature of their catalog was that each product description included a link to return to the main catalog page to browse another category of products.
The Lush catalog has no search options, a minor problem with the small selection of products on this site. However, the user has to scroll through every single item in a particular category to see what is there. I would suggest changing the catalog setup so that clicking on a product category opens a page with pictures of each item within that category and links to each product's description. This would be helpful for someone who knows exactly what they want to go to but not its location in the product list. Another change I would make in the catalog is to combine the listings for different sizes of the same product. Having to scroll through the same description three times for the 100 ml, 250 ml, and 500 ml sizes of "B Never Too Busy to Be Beautiful" shower gel is a waste of time. It would be preferable to have a drop-down box for sizes similar to the one for quantity with only a single description of the product.
Checkout
When items are added to the cart, the list of your selections appears at the bottom of the frame along with a "Change" button that conveniently allows you to change your mind. The "checkout" button is on the side in the frame border and thus ever-present. This is nice because it allows customers to finalize their purchases at any time without having to hit the back button and find where they began.
Conclusion
The Lush site does have some user-friendly features. However, it could use some improvements to make it easier for customers to navigate and to make it more professional looking.
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E-mail questions to Meghan Lafferty at
melaffer@email.unc.edu
Last updated November 25, 2002.