Worms Direct UK

By Geoff Jackson on 8 April 2010 @ 12:23 PM.

Tags: reviews, ecommerce, website review, worms direct uk, ecommerce reviews.

WormsDirectUK.co.uk

Worms Direct UK are a supplier of worms for composting, live pet foods and fishing bait. First impressions of the website are clean, tidy, easy on the eye and user friendly. The only initial problem some visitors may find is the size of the font, some visitors could find this difficult to read.

Homepage

Upon landing on the homepage, the site divides it's main categories which are easily identifiable above the fold; 'Fishing Bait', 'Composting and Worm Composting', 'Garden Care', 'Fish, Birds, Reptiles & Amphibians'. This allows visitors to navigate to the appropriate category they are interested in with ease. The homepage is not overloaded with information and does not display any unnecessary content, the colours used are various shades of green and could be perceived as a natural colour for the nature of the site, the colours do not have any implications on site usability and do not present any difficulty in reading text. The text should be kept compact and not contain any more 'white space' than is needed.

Search Functionality & Navigation

The site search is clearly displayed on all pages, this is a must for any ecommerce website. The search results displayed are clear and concise and are supported with a small image associated with the appropriate search result. The way the search results are displayed allow many to appear in the results without an excessive amount of scrolling increasing a searchers chances of finding what they are looking for quickly and easily.

The site navigation is simple, the way it should be. The top navigation menu on the site gives visitors quick access to the main pages on the website and the left hand side menu allows visitors to navigate directly to the product categories. The one issue I could raise with the side navigation is the length of the category titles, it does make it harder to distinguish between the categories however, at the same time, it does clearly indicate the contents of the categories. One resolution to this would inserting some CSSAn acronym for 'cascading style sheets'.

Learn more about CSS to create a slide menu navigation so when you hover over the parent category, it will slide the sub categories out (this would then expand across the screen and not rely on multiple line category titles).

Category Pages

The category pages don't display consistently throughout the site which is arguably the main issue, granted, it's not probably going to put a potential customer off from purchasing from the website, but at the same time, a tidy, cleanly displayed and consistent website is favourable. Landing on the parent categories give you a break down of the sub categories, this is basic and it would be nicer to see each sub category contain an associated image like the search results display or larger similar images as to what the homepage contains. Some of the category pages contain a larger image, other contain a smaller one supported with text, applying the same style throughout each category page would display consistency and give the visitors more information on the products.

Products

The product pages are good, very informative supported with imagery and clearly allow a shopper to select the weight/quantity they want before adding to their shopping cart. Whilst it is beneficial to display multiple, clear and large imagery for products on any ecommerce website, in this particular instance, I guess there is only so many images of worms you can display and therefore ten different images of worms from different angles serves no real purpose (for example).

Search Engine Optimisation

The onsite SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO needs work, the metadata (page title, description and keyword tags) are the same throughout the site, each page should contain it's own keyword rich, unique title and description which best describes the content of that page. The meta title tag is too long and could be considered 'spammy', as it currently stands, any indexed pages of the website in search engines would not display all of the titles/descriptions. The SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO for images could be optimised for keywords further. Search engines are currently seeing wormsdirectuk.co.uk and www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk as two different websites, it would be recommended to apply a 301 redirect from the non www domain to the www one, this will ensure that the maximum value of any backlinks pointing to the website will be received.

Despite the limited onsite search engine optimisation, this website does rank very well for it's main keywords, by optimising each page uniquely to it's content, this could see the site perform even better in the search engine rankings. Containing a forum is an excellent way of ensuring frequent updated content resulting in getting more indexed pages in the search engine and being crawled more regularly.

Checkout Process

Very simple and straight forward which is all a checkout process needs to be. Displays clearly the payment methods accepted and also accepts Paypal which gives shoppers an alternative method if they don't own a bank card (and there are shoppers out there that will only purchase from websites using Paypal as well believe it or not). The website installs trust with the accreditation badges from Safebuy and GeoTrust, this gives shoppers confidence in buying and can ultimately make or break a sale. The shopping basket is clearly visible on all pages and shows products currently in the basket and the total amount with the option of proceeding to checkout at any point. It is a good idea to include the terms and conditions on the checkout page as has been done as it cannot be missed, many shoppers would not click through to a terms and conditions page.

Conclusion

For an ecommerce website, this checks most of the boxes. It is user friendly, contains simple navigation and is easy to purchase from and if you can't find what you are looking for, you can visit the forum to speak with other wormery enthusiasts and ask questions/queries. It lacks amazing and quality website/graphic design however that isn't likely to hinder potential custom and there does not appear to be any obvious competition that produces anything better in the way of it's website.

If you would like a professional ecommerce website review to be featured on Clubnet Search Marketing, then please let us know.

About the Author

Geoff is more commonly recognised online by his internet pseudonym 'zigojacko'. He is the Director of Search at Clubnet Search Marketing, founder of The Clubnet Group and has a huge involvement in the music, clubbing and entertainment sector where he also manages operations at Clubnet UK

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