I have chosen to use the Puma website to review and critique. As a well known shoe and athletic-ware company, it would be expected that they would have a very user friendly and accessible site. One would expect this, but the only way to be certain that the site can be easily used for shopping is to use it and find out.
The first impression of www.puma.com is overall positive. The site is quite aesthetically pleasing right off the bat. The image of the colorful shoes is of high quality and catches the eye right away. Directly upon arriving at the site, the two options: “World of Puma” and “Start Shopping” are seen, big and bold near the middle of the page. I found this direct route to shopping very effective at first. A menu then pops up, with options to link to sites for many different countries around the world. This accessibility is great for their international market, though from my aspect I would have liked a direct link to shopping when I selected the “Start Shopping” option.
Once arriving to shop.puma.com, it is apparent that the sports that are in season, and the deals the company has going on at the time, are the priorities of the website. Almost the whole page is devoted to a rotating banner, showing off specific products. Above this, seeming much more secondary is a bar of selectable categories of products that Puma offers including: Men, Women, Kids, Collections, and Sale. Upon running my mouse over any of these options, a menu appears showing every type of product they have in this categorie. I found this menu much more effective than the last, as it narrows down much the scope of what product is being looked for, as apposed to having to visit another page before doing so.
Selecting any option will take you to the desired type of product, ex. men’s running shoes. The page allows you to order the list of products by the categories of: featured, newest arrivals, best sellers, rating, name, price (high), and price (low). These categories are helpful to help the user get to the product they are looking for quicker. The products are shown off with a medium sized photo, three products wide scrolling down the page. To add an item to your “Shopping Bag,” one must click on one of the pictures of the products, which will take you to a page with all the product information, and a button stating “Add to Bag.”
The site is overall easy to use and can be quickly navigated. To make the site even more successful, it would be nice to have an “Add to Bag” button directly next to each image of the products, so one would not have to navigate to a new page every time they wished to add a product to their bag. Other than that, I found Puma’s site to be a success.