Boxman.com is among the largest online music resellers in Europe labelling itself the biggest entertainment superstore in the universe. Boxman was recently ranked as number 2 and later number 20 in a ranking of European Internet ventures. The company is currently in urgent need of cash.
Homepage Dominated by Frames and Whitespace
When users go to Boxman.com, they are asked to select language before the actual site reveals. Having wasted one click, users are redirected to national sites, in this case Boxman.co.uk.
The most prominent elements on the homepage are the black and very dominating frames and the plenty of whitespace (on a standard-sized display).
Frames make it impossible for user to bookmark product pages and send URLs to a friend. So, only very little word-of-mouth marketing to Boxman. The content presented in the left frame is a hard read because the frame is too narrow for the text. Also, all links have non-standard colors, which makes the user doubt which areas are clickable.
Product Pages
Product pages are dominated by black frames (left, top, and bottom), a huge search area, and blinking banner ads. Product pages suffers from several usability problems, including:
Buy button is too small to be noticed. The button should be increased in size and a standard HTML-button should be used.
Product title is not obvious. It should be larger and darker in color to catch user attention.
Product titles have the same color as clickable search button, buy button, and text links in left-frame (non-standard link color). This is highly unfortunate as some users will mistakenly believe that the product title is clickable.
Links within product pages are not obvious due to the use of non-standard link colors (black, not blue).
Thumbnail product pictures are shown. Good. But there is no link to a larger picture.
Moving nodes indicate that users can listen to music online. However, the moving graphics steal user attention from more important content items such as the product description.
Search Form on Product Pages
The search form on product pages is terrible to use. Boxman is for music lovers, not search engine experts. Despite this fact, seach form usability suffers as users need to make technical choices before they can search.
The search feature demand that users perform two searches if they only remember some of the artists name and some of the CDs title. The inability to combine words that are logically linked together (artist and CD title) put a high load on users' memory.
CD/Vinyl/MD
Track
Artist/Group
Video
DVD
Actor/Director
Games
o
SEARCH
Search in:
Dance
All of Boxman
Inactive search form.
Users would be significantly better off if the search form looked like this (Form is inactive):
The form should be placed in a less dominating position to allocate more user attention to information about the product. The most important improvement from the simpler search form is that users can search all words they find relevant. It is not advisable to provide advanced search - the added complexity does not equal the benefits to the user experience.
Search Results
I tried to find Madonna's CD Music, which was featured on Boxman's homepage. It turned out to be very difficult. Performing a standard search for the words "madonna music" gave no hits.
Another standard search for "madonna" resulted in six difficult-to-interpret results:
DVD - Madonna
Madonna - (correct search result, kb)
Madonna/Otto Von Wernhe
Madonna/Otto Von Wernherr
Madonna.=tribute=
Madonna.=Tribute=
Clicking Madonna in the above list gave another list with 25 CDs by Madonna. Madonna's CD Music was not found among the search results.
The search result page also present a number of clueless options to the user in the page bottom. Users can browse search results by CD (2 pages), CD-single (6 pages, sic!), DVD (1 page), video (1 page), and vinyl (1 page). All of these options are ignored by mainstream users.
Searching for the popular hard rock group D-A-D also caused difficulties for Boxman's search technology.
No results were found for searches for the words "Disneyland After Dark", "D-A-D", "D:A:D", and "D.A.D".
Search for "DAD" gave a long search list - first result was "Adrian Y Los Dados Negros"(?), while D-A-D was number 12. :-)
Site and Page Navigation
It is difficult for unskilled music buyers to navigate the content. Users cannot browse content using simple links. Only obvious way to navigate is the search form. Adding a browsable link structure would do wonders to the sites usability - the structure should be available at (the most visited) product pages and as a general structure that complements search.
Navigation at the product page level can be improved relatively easy by pre-defining searches for related artists and CDs. For instance, pages promoting Madonna's work may also present 3-5 other CDs by Madonna and another 3-5 CDs by related artists. Note that this requires improved site search.This requires that Boxman links artists with their work and with each other but there is no need for more editorial staff.
About the Author Kristoffer Bohmann (biography) M.Sc. thinks and writes about high-quality user experiences. His philosophy: Users first. You can contact him at kb@bohmannusability.com.
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