New GAME shop site

[bigfoot]

http://shop.game.net

We've overhauled our shop site and given it an extensive redesign in terms of the systems used, now being able to offer services such as Multibuy discounts, with more to follow soon. As quite a lot of you do purchase games online I'd appreciate any constructive comments or suggestions you might have.

 

[dysfunction]

Sell them cheaper than the competition...

 

[whipped]

A little picture link to Game.Net would be nice to have on the left.

It's a little bit cluttered. I'd reduce the size of the column that the Pre-order links are in. Give more space to the games with pictures.

Just my view though.

 

[ECA]

offer game.net at a reduced price as a tick box option when you order.

 

[xane]

You may want to revise the EVE release date too

 

[lynchet]

Dysfunction:

Sell them cheaper than the competition...

Think that sums it up pretty well really



Also tho -- annoying those half price games are only for new subscribers !

 

[Tom]

Information overload - I can't deal with so much stuff on the screen at once, it makes me want to go elsewhere - like Amazon

 

[KevinUK]

When I buy a game, I look at http://shop.game.net and amazon. More often that not, amazon is cheaper by £5 so I go there which means I dont get my reward points, you dont get my custom

As for the site, how does it look with the background black with blue lines like on the forum? I think it would look better than the current white background?

And yes, too much information, dont know how you can solve that though.

 

[old.Kez]

Its staggeringly cluttered, for a start. Whoever designed it clearly didn't have usability on their priorities list.

The left nav rollovers are stupid, underlining the gt symbol despite it vanishing on hover is crap.

The "new releases" is hidden away at the bottom of each page, which is almost as stupid as the cluttered layout and lack of decent colour combinations.

For the most part, text ought to be justified or left aligned, having it centred with the layout presented goes against the grain.

breadcrumb trail ought to be repeated above the left nav of whatever 'directory' you're in - way to lose potential customers there.

The horizontal products have badly aligned images, the vertical ones don't.

It doesn't validate because there's no DTD, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't anyway, being a mixture of HTML 4.01 & XHTML 1, by the look of things.

Its all styled in pixels. Lovely move, that.

 

[Ono]

I don't like it.

 

[bigfoot]

Ono - Can you elaborate a bit more as to what it is that you don't like about it? (thx for your comments everyone else)

 

[old.D0LLySh33p]

I thought it was functional. Not too snazzy, but not to shabby.

*cough*

That's about it.

 

[DaGaffer]

Originally posted by KevinUK
When I buy a game, I look at http://shop.game.net and amazon. More often that not, amazon is cheaper by £5 so I go there which means I dont get my reward points, you dont get my custom

As for the site, how does it look with the background black with blue lines like on the forum? I think it would look better than the current white background?

And yes, too much information, dont know how you can solve that though.

Kevin - you may want to look at prices in a bit more detail, on chart in particular I think you might be surprised.

As for black, go to the site, look for a little text link on the right hand side at the top that says 'black theme' and click on it. Let us know what you think

As for too much info - damned if you do, damned if you don't. Not enough and having to click through to too many pages was one of the criticisms of the last site!

 

[DaGaffer]

Originally posted by whipped
A little picture link to Game.Net would be nice to have on the left.

It's a little bit cluttered. I'd reduce the size of the column that the Pre-order links are in. Give more space to the games with pictures.

Just my view though.

If you search on any supported title you'll see a nice link to GAME.NET in the product detail, and you'll see promos popping up all of the time. Static links in the nav are OK, but they 'wear out' quickly.

Kind of agree about the width of the pre-order column, but it was one of things people actually clicked on a lot on the old site. The only way to make it narrower is to reduce some of the info in it. Like everything in the new architecture though, we can play around with it a lot more than before. Personally I'd like to shorten the colums rather than narrow them.

 

[KevinUK]

I just checked out the 3 pre-order games on game.net for the pc, 2 were the same price as amazon but Blackhawk down is £10 cheaper on amazon.

Thanks, black version is better

 

[DaGaffer]

Originally posted by KevinUK
I just checked out the 3 pre-order games on game.net for the pc, 2 were the same price as amazon but Blackhawk down is £10 cheaper on amazon.

Thanks, black version is better

Bugger. That's a glitch, Blackhawk Down was £25 quid yesterday - something must have happened in the site move. I'll look into it.

 

[Embattle]

There is something wrong with the colours (White) which seem to be causing my eyes to fail rather badly, although black is better.

 

[lynchet]

I think the main problem with the amount of info is that the important links are somewhat obscured.

When I visit a multi platform seller like Game you expect to have to go through a few screens, but you like the route to be logical and obvious.

ie the links at the top to each individual category like PC, GC, Xbox etc are there but I think they need to stand out more and be more obviously links (at the moment they look a bit like a banner saying what platforms you do rather than just links).

That way when people visit the site, if they want to browse your offers you put on the first page they can but if they want to head straight into a particular section then thats obvious and easy to.
Personally id prefer a far less cluttered first screen -- start telling me about your offers when ive clicked a category - that way I know what Im looking at and whether they are likely to interest me more quickly.



Oh and I still want to know why existing subscribers cant get the half price games

 

[Tom]

Its just far too cluttered, anything that requires a persons time to 'figure out' is just not going to bring any more custom in.

Perhaps you could make the page use more of the screen - take those annoying offers on the right, to the extreme right, near the scroll bar - or put them on a horizontal bar.

Make the GAME logo bigger, make the shopping basket icon bigger and more obvious. Also, when you click the computer icons at the top, the resulting page doesn't really change much. Also, the GAME logo doesn't take you to the web address it displays.

Websites like Amazon and such work because the interface is quite similar to windows, and people are used to windows by now. Overall, there are just too many vertical elements and too much information to deal with. Its like trying to watch a mosaic of 32 satellite tv channels all at once.

 

[dysfunction]

Originally posted by DaGaffer
Kevin - you may want to look at prices in a bit more detail, on chart in particular I think you might be surprised.

I just pre ordered a PC game that I think is going to be very popular from somewhere else as they were considerably cheaper.

I also compared quite a few of the newly released games and they too were more expensive.

As for the site in general it looks fine to me. It is a bit crowded but on the whole its easy to navigate. which is always a good thing.

I also prefer the "black theme"

 

[(Shovel)]

I agree with all the current comments about "too much vertical".

Also, there seems to be a bug when viewing in Mozilla 1.3 that leaves a block of whitespace after the right hand advert column, which puts in a horizontal scroll bar.

Login/Signup buttons could be made more obvious maybe? Use of thicker coloured borders rather than black might do it? Maybe the same with the Username/Password text fields.

It is very cluttered though

 

[Clowneh!]

how about half price subscription for two games or summat? then we get more gamers here!

 

[Clowneh!]

oh, yeh i found what i wanted to find on the site so it worked for me

 

[Mellow-]

Biography: Boss of GAME.NET

Eeeeeeeep!

 

[adslrizla]

TBH the website is a bit of a mess. You need to sort out s/w categories as a matter of urgency IMHO. Eg - you've got a pretty bizarre viewpoint if you think this is a "Lifestyle" PC Game

Another example - Simulations. Spread all over the place (heh - just noticed BF1942 is under the "Driving" category ) - group things at the top level (for each platform) by genre and then subdivide them as it's neither logical or quick to use with the current design.

In fact it's actually quite frustrating for just browsing and unless I was looking for something specific I wouldn't persevere with the site - so you're unlikely to get any impulse purchases from me

 

[buffys_boy]

I said constructive criticism, not insults.

 

[bigfoot]

Aside from Ono and the idiot above has been interesting to read so far, please keep them coming.

 

[mank!]

It's very cramped, I don't like that. It's something that has put me off game.net in the past actually

Minimalistic and spacious = win!

 

[MYstIC G]

Frankly who thought this one up, the old design is far less cluttered and easier to navigate. Redesign doesn't even fit in with the current GAME.net look, so what was the point?

I mean it's really intelligent as well. Orange arrows in the nav bar on the main page with orange & underline hoverover so the arrow disappears & gets replaced by a pointless white line, but then of course the arrows don't even exist on some sub pages (DVD anyone?). The offer symbols force you to scroll in hopes of there being many, except there aren't which is disappointing & makes ya look stingy. The buy links for the first set of vertical 3 boxes get cut off if you have any other toolbar installed in your IE browser, ya know, like maybe the GAME.net one.....

Rating: Silly, should have kept the existing one, bad web monkey.

Oh also: http://shop.game.net/browse.aspx?cat=10034 - Nintendo planning some big style educational titles then? ;P /me chuckles, though having said that this one is probably worse: http://shop.game.net/browse.aspx?cat=10101

How bout doing the list so its only made up of the items actually used by GameCube titles? ;P

Ya know, this is getting fun so I'm gonna keep going..... in the blue horizontal Home > PS2, navigation, whats the point in it being that far over from the right hand side. Help section needs updating I'd presume if shop.game.net is gonna eliminate game.uk.com. The rewards points link in http://shop.game.net/member/myDetails.aspx doesn't work, should be https://

Frankly I could go on, but you ain't paying me and I've got work to be getting on with

 

[DaGaffer]

Originally posted by adslrizla
TBH the website is a bit of a mess. You need to sort out s/w categories as a matter of urgency IMHO. Eg - you've got a pretty bizarre viewpoint if you think this is a "Lifestyle" PC Game

Another example - Simulations. Spread all over the place (heh - just noticed BF1942 is under the "Driving" category ) - group things at the top level (for each platform) by genre and then subdivide them as it's neither logical or quick to use with the current design.

In fact it's actually quite frustrating for just browsing and unless I was looking for something specific I wouldn't persevere with the site - so you're unlikely to get any impulse purchases from me

Um. You're always going to miss things when you port from one database category structure to a completely different one, mea culpa. As for BF being in 'driving' - its in there as a secondary characteristic, its primary location is 'action'. Don't know about you, but I drive a lot when I'm playing BF (mainly coz I can't fly for shit ) so it gives people more opportunities to see games they may not have thought of when browsing.