After reading chapter 1 of “Don’t Make Me Think”, I’ve come to recognize many of the features that major eCommerce sites utilize to streamline the online shopping process. My most recent experience with this came over the weekend, when I shopped online via the site Musiciansfriend.com.

I was searching for new bass strings, specifically from the brand DR. At first glance, the site’s home page was laid-out very cleanly. Across the top of the site is the main menu, where the user can decide which department of the site they wish to visit. These options include Shop, which also has a sub menu for what type of musical gear the user wishes to shop for; Deal Center, which is full of sale/bargain-priced items; and Used Gear, which is full of previously-owned gear. The top menu also has tabs for Videos, where users can watch video demos/reviews of various musical gear, and resources, where they can go to access shopping resources like buying guides and product reviews. Depending on what the user is looking for, this top menu is the start of the shopping process. Since I was looking for new bass strings, I looked under the shopping tab, and clicked on the sub-tab for “Bass”. From there, I was taken to a strictly bass page, where various categories were listed along the left side. Upon my first glance at the page, everything looked to be catered towards buying full-on bass guitars, not just the strings. After a bit of inspection on the page, I determined that I wouldn’t be finding a link to bass strings anywhere. I thought for a bit, then decided to instead look under the “Accessories” sub-tab of the main menu, since I guess strings could be considered an accessory. When I dragged the mouse over the tab, a drop-down menu appeared. Among the options in this menu, I saw “Strings”. This feature allowed me to go straight to the string section, without having to search through the accessories page. Once there, I found “Bass Guitar Strings” among the categories listed along the left side, and clicked on it. I was taken to yet another similar page, with categories along the side, and where I could narrow my product search by brand, price range, and customer rating. Knowing that I was looking for DR brand strings, I chose that option along the side and watched as the products listed dwindled down to only those made by DR. I found the specific set I wanted, clicked on the corresponding thumbnail image, and was taken to a page with the price, product descriptions, links to user reviews, and a boldly-colored red and white button that read “Add To Cart”. I clicked the button, and was taken to a page showing me the items in my cart. The page also gave me the options to “Edit Cart” or “Proceed To Checkout”. I was done shopping, so I clicked the latter option.

I won’t bore you with any more play-by-play of my use of this website (I’m quite confident that you know what goes into the checkout process, etc.). What I will do, however, is dish out my criticisms of the site. The site as a whole is a mixed bag. The front page of the site, although fairly clean and easy to navigate, is often dominated by images of current deals and specials. Call me biased, but bass-related items hardly ever make it to this section, so that entire demographic of users can feel alienated by this practice (“We’re not cool enough to see what we want on the front page, so we have to dig for it…”). Which brings me to the actual search process: it’s too complicated for the average person to use with confidence. I’ve been playing bass for almost a decade, and this wasn’t my first time ordering strings online. The natural, “not-thinking” process for me was to search for what I wanted on the page related to its instrument, and I was stumped for a moment when I was unable to find it there. If I was stumped, then someone with no experience shopping for that item likely would’ve been clueless and may have gone to another site to continue looking. This aspect of the site’s organization and search process was sub-par, but directly searching for a product with the search bar on the site’s homepage seems to work far better. Simply searching for “DR bass strings” brings the user to the page that took me nearly 2 minutes to locate.

On the whole, the site doesn’t do a great job of catering to shoppers. Somebody with a dead-set idea of what they want could make great use of the site, but someone without such concrete information such as a brand name (somebody shopping for a gift, for example) could search page after page before finding something of interest. This was my first time ordering online through this site, and the amount of time it took me to find something as simple as bass strings means it’ll be my last time as well.