Search and post jobs for the Multichannel Merchant. Including jobs for brand & agency marketers, e-commerce, catalog marketers, ops & fulfillment, direct marketing and more.
Ward's Natural Science (www.wardsci.com) has been a source for chemistry education products for 144 years, selling items ranging from maps and molecular models to beakers and butterfly nets. While the Rochester, NY-based merchant has clearly embraced the Internet as a selling tool, is its site the creation of mad scientists or the work of Web marketing geniuses? Critiquers Amy Africa, president of Helena, VT-based Web consultancy Eight by Eight, and Stephan Spencer, founder/president of Madison, WI-based SEO-specialist agency Netconcepts, put the Ward's Website under a microscope, with Africa examining the site's content and functionality, and Spencer testing its search capability. Here's what they learned.
Amy Africa
Ward's Natural Science has long been one of my favorite business-to-business sites. I don't shop there, as I really have no need whatsoever for science supplies (contrary to popular belief, I gave up trying to make my own bombs long ago), but I like the site anyway. It's clean, it's simple, and for a company operating on a limited budget, it does a lot of things right.
Ward's primary market is high-school and college teachers. The company sells products for biology, chemistry, earth science, forensics, and physical science. It has a very extensive product line online and a professional offline business to back it up. Ward's has been around since 1862, so it must be doing something right.
As a b-to-b company driving a lot of catalog traffic online, Ward's need only concentrate on a few specific things to make the site work, which is what it does. If you visit Ward's and are expecting lots of bells and whistles, you are going to be sorely disappointed. The site has none. No fancy animation, no dynamic content, no automated lists of things you should buy or look at, no recommendations from your peers, just a good, old-fashioned site with solid (albeit limited) navigation and a pretty decent (although not perfect) checkout.
Navigational matters
Three elements are critical for creating navigation that's spectacular for the user: top navigation, bottom navigation, and left-hand navigation. Navigation accounts for 40%-60% of your success online at minimum, so clearly the better your navigation is, the better your conversion will be. Period.
The top navigation is the “action bar” navigation: It's there to tell the users what they are supposed to do on your site, be it inquire or order. The most-successful top navigation usually employs three layers — tabs, an order bar (where you give the users their marching orders), and a problem/solution level.
Currently Ward's employs the top two levels, and unfortunately they are reversed. The tabs, also known as the top bar, should be the product categories — the eight or so most important areas that you want people to look at — and the second level should be the things that you want them to do. Ward's action bar, which appears above the tabs, is weak in that it doesn't have many actions. “Web Specials” is perfect (although the page itself is dismal at best), but “Support” and “My Account” are too passive. In a perfect world, the site would include an e-mail sign-up in this section.
The left-hand navigation is easy to understand and navigate. It would certainly benefit from a bit more art direction — it is rather plain and could use a bit more delineation between the e-mail sign-up box and the text search box — but it's comprehensive and in a logical (alphabetical) order that users like and are accustomed to.
The left-hand navigation does a nice job of calling out the site highlights, although you should never have more than five highlights; three works best, and Ward's has seven. And if one of your descriptions takes up more than one line (as does “Professional Development” on the Ward's site), you should indent the second line so that the users know it's a continuation of the first.
Ward's has a solid customer support area near the bottom of the left-hand column, although it would be better if it could be condensed a bit. Below that area, the column tends to lose it — the area is filled with stuff that doesn't look clickable. Considering that the bottom of the left-hand column is just as important as the top, Ward's would be better served if it put its “Refer a Friend” link there and added some aggressive banners to get people to click through.
Ward's bottom navigation is nonexistent. Solid bottom navigation is basically a repeat of the top navigation along with links to “contact us,” your privacy statement, your customer bill of rights, and such. In a site where the main focus is to get an order, you should also put a perpetual shopping cart at the bottom. In fact, the sites with the highest conversion tend to have a cart at the bottom and in the right-hand column as well.
Turning right
There's no such thing as right-hand navigation; generally speaking, users can't “navigate” from the right-hand side of the page. With that said, the right-hand column serves an important purpose, which is to “save” the user from exiting, as it's the last place they look before they leave your site.
Ward's uses a series of plugs (nonanimated banners) down the right-hand side of its home page. These could definitely use some oomph! When you design a self-banner, your sole goal is to get people interested in something — anything — so that they drill deeper into your site. A good banner might ask a provocative question, make a controversial statement, or create all-around urgency. Ward's banners don't really do any of those things.
One of the things Ward's does well is include a list of its top 10 sellers in its right-hand column. The company also includes a “click here” link on all its plugs, which is another good thing.
