Hello,
In this blog post I analyze the web site azerty.ro.
Contents:
A. General web site analysis (elements that can be applied to many pages)
A1. Copywriting
A2. Design
A3. Structure of Information
A4. Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis
A5. Usability
B. Analysis of the main elements in the homepage (cutting the homepage into pieces)
B1. The logo
B2. The header
B3. The sidebar
B4. Main content
B5. Footer
C. Conclusions
A. General web site analysis (elements that can be applied to many pages)
A1. Copywriting
+You write in a pretty correct Romanian language, this is fine;
1. You don’t use diacritics, a thing which I don’t like;
2. Sometimes you mix Romanian with English, which is not that fine;
3. I would put
“AcasÄ”,
instead of
“Home”
in the main menu;
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A2. Design
+Your graphics are just awesome, very good design, like it a lot;
1. You have a banner with a girl that starts talking the minute I enter the web site; there is this extension called AdBlock Plus, very popular in some browsers (FireFox, Chrome); what this extension does? It looks for some patterns to find banners and also uses lists created by users who browse the web to know what elements of a page to block from display; on your web site, you have put the person who speaks in this folder:
/banners/expressInstall.swf
Well, in my opinion, this is a mistake; the “banner” folder is blocked by default in AdBlock Plus; you should put the banner in a different folder, if you don’t want it to be blocked;
2. The “buy” button is not very attractive;
Have a look on these articles:
The Power of Colors: How Colors Are Used in (e-)Commerce to Influence You
How does colour affect purchases?
How do colors affect purchases?
To get a few ideas on what other color options are available;
3. Some texts with gray on white are hard to spot;
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A3. Structure of Information
+In the main menu the Contact option is the last, the first being “Home”; great!
1. I don’t see an About us page;
2. Only three articles on the blog? Quite small;
3. The gray text from the web site, which looks like a menu itself, makes the main menu harder to spot;
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A4. Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis
1. The
“Azerty : Laptop | HDD externe | Calculatoare | Multifunctionale | TV LED | Servere | Componente pc | Monitoare”
text is very spammy; you just use it for SEO purposes, it doesn’t add to much value to the web site in general; I don’t like it at all; you should have content for the user, not for the engines;
2. Your meta tags look like this:
<title>Azerty : Laptop | HDD externe | Calculatoare | Multifunctionale | TV LED | Servere | Componente pc | Monitoare</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Azerty – Notebook, HDD externe, Calculator, Multifunctionale, TV LED, Servere, Router Wireless, Console wii” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”magazin online, IT, cumparaturi online, promo, promotii, rate, calculatoare, componente, gaming, notebook, laptop, telefoane, telefon, mobil, GSM, aparate foto, camere video, lcd, mp3, monitor, soft, jocuri, sisteme premium” />
Let’s analyze them, shall we?
a. The title is too spammy and too long; read this article “The Web Developerās SEO Cheat Sheet” to see the optimal length of a title – no more than 70 characters (yours is 110);
b. The meta description is spammy; you should use the meta description tag for two purposes:
Ī±. For Facebook users who link to your web site;
Ī². For Google as a snippet;
Some theory on the description:
First of all, the meta description tag should exist; it would be very useful to have descriptions on all of the pages of the web site;
Why is it important to have a web site description? Not only does Google take that description and shows it in some searches as a snippet (small texts shown in the search results, under the title of the page ā details here: Google snippets), Facebook also takes that description and uses it when someone sends a random page from your web site (the link send via Facebook has a description, which is exactly that description from the meta tag); it is thus useful to have a description for Google, also for the situation when someone recommends your page via Facebook, to give just two examples;
How can you make a description with good usability, so that the people are invited to click on the Google or Facebook result?
i. Directly ā invite the people to visit your web site: āVisit our web siteā / āClick hereā / āWe invite you on our web siteā / āSee our web pageā;
ii. By presenting benefits, giving a motivation to enter the web site ā āOur web site offers you X and Y and Zā, āThe advantage of using the web site is A, B, Cā, āIf you enter the web site, you can register to ā¦ā, āThe visitors of the web site can benefit from ā¦ā;
The description should be made thinking about the people who search for a term on Google, find your web site, and two rows of text appear; you should make the text thinking of those people on the Internet, and things will be fine; in other words, avoid writing:
āOur web site sells potatoes; the potatoes we sell are cheap; we have other vegetables, but we sell mainly potatoes; buy potatoesā,
or, even worse:
āpotatoes, small potato, potatoes, potato food, packed potatoes, visit our web site for the latest potatoesā,
with the thought of obsessively repeating a keyword in order to have better positioning in the search engines; no important search engine (attention!, no one!) uses the description for positioning in search results; you should do the descriptions for people, ignore the web spiders; this doesnāt mean you shouldnāt use keywords, on the contrary, you can use it and even repeat it (but donāt overdo it); on the other hand, you should write the page description thinking about the visitors; a good example:
āOnline potatoes: web site about fresh vegetables in Romania. In order to choose from the biggest offer of online potatoes, visit our web site.ā
Finally, I advise you to keep the description under 155 characters (spaces included), to fit in the space allocated by the search engines (otherwise, it will be interrupted by suspension points āā¦ā);
Right now, on your web site you have a short description, made for Google rankings (totally not useful), with no aim for the visitors;
c. The keywords tag should be eliminated completely;
<meta name=ākeywordsā> was a tag which was useful in the past; it was used to inform the search engine what the page is about; so, if you were doing a page on Alain DELON, it was somewhat useful to inform the search engine that the page is dedicated to French cinematography:
<meta name=ākeywordsā content=āalain delon, movie, movies, french, france, fan, fans, filming, actor, cinemaā/>
With time, this tag got to be so abused, that the search engines decided to ignore the tag completely; Google, for example, can tell, by itself, with todayās technology, that a page on Alain DELON refers to French cinematography and cand correctly establish categories for a page; on the other hand, the web page creators tend to catalog a page (also) according to some unrealistic criteria (for example, I can put in the list of keywords ābuy movieā, although on the web site I may not sell movies with Alain DELON, but I do have advertising on the web site with selling movies and I am really interested that my web site is visited by people who want to buy movies, so that I would earn money from advertising; another method for abusing this tag was, in the first years of using the meta tag, the obsessive repeat of keywords, with slight variations: movie, movies, the movies, filming, films, shooting); at the end of the day, you should remember that the tag is not relevant anymore;
But the initially created wave (in the first years of the search engines) still persists; you can still find, today, web page creators who will still add the keywords tag, in order to attract visits; if the engines donāt give you any boost by using such techniques, they can, instead, penalize you based on this fact ā if you abuse the tag (by repeating keywords), Google may consider that you are trying to SPAM it; so, the tag is not helpful if you do create it, but if you use it in a bad way, you may get into problems, so itās best to eliminate it altogether;
As a side note, Yahoo! still takes into account, with a very small importance, this tag; since Yahoo! search engine will soon be replaced by Bing, it is irrelevant whether Yahoo! takes into account the tag or not;
While the meta keywords tag is hidden to typical visitors and itās visible just for the search engines, on the other hand the obsessive repetition, with no real sense for the user, just to get better positioning in the search engines of some keywords is very visible to the visitors (alongside to the search engines); this process is calledākeyword stuffingā and it is a weak (and inefficient and unethical) method of promotion; my suggestion is not to repeat in a page a keyword obsessively just for positioning; of course, in a page about potatoes, you will naturally speak about this vegetable, but, as a main idea, donāt push things;
So, remove the tag completely;
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A5. Usability
+The shopping cart is nicely placed, as a study by Liviu TALOI would say;
1. If I were you, I would put the search function in the upper-right corner of the web site; right now it’s somewhat central in the upper part;
2. If I click on the password field on the login, the ***** disappear, and then if I click somewhere else, they don’t appear; thus, I might have some difficulty in knowing what that field was all about; you have the same problem for the search function, if I click on the field, then somewhere else, the text “CautÄ” doesn’t reappear;
3. The links are not underlined, which makes them a bit hard to spot;
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B. Analysis of the main elements in the homepage (cutting the homepage into pieces)
B1. The logo
+The logo is very simple and scalable – you can use it in printed materials; good job! I also like the use of white space near the logo, nice!
1. Your company name says “azerty”, your logo says “z”; OK, give me something – an idea, a motto, a principle, a thought; you use a modern font for writing “azerty”, and you have the “z” as a keyboard’s key; your name is related to the “AZERTY” (as opposed to “QUERTY”) keyboard layout; I want more; give me something like Amazon’s A to Z; show me an idea, put some thinking in the logo;
2. “AZERTY” is usually written in ALL CAPS; you write it in small caps; why?
3. The tone of blue used as a color for both the logo and other parts of the web site looks very cold;
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B2. The header
+The shopping cart is in the upper-right portion of the web site, good!
1. The
“Azerty : Laptop | HDD externe | Calculatoare | Multifunctionale | TV LED | Servere | Componente pc | Monitoare”
text is very spammy; you just use it for SEO purposes, it doesn’t add to much value to the web site in general; I don’t like it at all; you should have content for the user, not for the engines;
2. If I click on the password field on the login, the ***** disappear, and then if I click somewhere else, they don’t appear; thus, I might have some difficulty in knowing what that field was all about; you have the same problem for the search function, if I click on the field, then somewhere else, the text “CautÄ” doesn’t reappear;
3. Why do you type “TV” in ALL CAPS, while “pc” is written in small caps?
4. I would put
“AcasÄ”,
instead of
“Home”;
5. The symbol of the shopping cart looks very small;
6. The “create new account” and “forgotten password” options are placed above the login data, which is a bit strange; I would put them below;
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B3. The sidebar
+You have listed most of the categories in the sidebar, good!
1. You keep on saying “more categories”, but aren’t those actually sub-categories?
2. What’s that product:
“Notebook Laptop”?
How does a Notebook Laptop look like?
3. On the “Computers” categories, you list all sort of items which don’t belong in there:
“Notebook Laptop
Mini Laptop / Netbook
Genti notebook
Accesorii notebook”;
4. You say
“HDD-uri”
and
“SSD”;
I think you should opt either for plural or for singular for both of the items;
5. You have these categories in the sidebar:
“Aplicatii
Antivirus
Aplicatii Office”;
How is not the antivirus an application? What differs between:
“Applications
Office applications”?
I would make the categories clearer;
6. Same problem here:
“Telefoane Mobile
Telefoane Dual SIM”;
Aren’t the dual sim phone also mobile phones?
7. Same thing:
“Camere de supraveghere IP
Camere de supraveghere”;
8. I would use a different text for:
“UrmÄreČte-ne”;
Why?
9. The icons for the newsletter and blog are very small;
10. Regarding the newsletter box ā if I were you, Iād create a page dedicated to the newsletter, instead of having the option right in the sidebar; why the need for a dedicated page?
a. In the sidebar you give me no warranties ā what will you do with my email address, how will I unsubscribe, how often you will send me emails, in what purposes you will use my email address; in a dedicated page, my advice would be to have all those details;
b. Also, a tip to you would be to register to Data Protection Romania, and get an official act which allows you to use email forms;
c. Right now I canāt see any of the previous newsletters; this would be an important function ā I would like to know, prior to subscribing to a web site, what other newsletters have you sent; have a list of previous newsletters in a dedicated page;
d. Also interesting to have would be the option of displaying the current number of subscribers;
e. Also, still about the newsletter box, I would include the options to subscribe via:
– classic newsletter (email);
– RSS feed (you can specify this for a specific section in your web site);
– Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / other social network account in which to announce the most important events; you have to be where I, your visitor, already am;
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B4. Main content
+I like the fact that you have your own video reviews;
1. You use a sliding solution similar to the one I’ve first seen on eMAG; to me, it’s stressful to see the timer for each slide; I would prefer to just switch between slides, not having a timer;
2. If I put the cursor of the mouse over a picture in the slider, the slider shouldn’t change images anymore;
3. Instead of:
“ĆČi recomandÄ”,
I would put:
“ĆČi recomandÄm”;
4. Your “buy” button leads me to the page of the product; why? I want to buy right from the homepage;
5. If you do discounts, you should list the discount also as a percentage;
6. On the review box you have a scroll function to scroll vertically, but when I scroll there is nothing to see; thus, the scrollbar doesn’t do its purpose;
7. You have a box with “products that have been searched for on Z”; in my opinion, it should better be: “most searched products on Z”;
8. On the homepage Iād only put products which are:
Ī±. Most bought by the clients (top sales); or
Ī². At a price reduction right now (bargain); or
Ī³. Offer a best-value-for-the-price ratio (efficient); or
Ī“. Are top products for their niche (quality); or
Ī¶. Are new additions to the web site (novelty); or
Īµ. You personally recommend (team recommended);
You would love to have an option to pick from the above options;
9. In the homepage, I canāt sort the products; I wish to sort the products by:
a. Order in which the product added;
b. Number of views;
c. Number of the times bought;
d. How many times was a product shared to others;
e. Price;
f. Title/name of the product;
g. Brand;
h. Promotions;
10. On the homepage, I canāt filter the products; I wish to filter the products by:
a. Availability of a product;
b. Price range;
c. Date added;
d. Number of sales;
e. Number of views;
f. Promotions;
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B5. Footer
+Very nice looking graphics for your partners, cool looking; I also like that each partner has a link with more details on your web page; I also like that you adapted the logos of some partners to make them with gray and blue, like your web site; nice!
1. I reach the footer area; give me something to do; scenario: I visit your homepage, read what it is to be read, I reach the footer area; here there are more options:
(i.) I can click one of the links in the footer, if there are any;
(ii.) I may leave the web site;
For (ii.) scenario not to happen, you should have some interesting links in the footer; top pages on your web site would be a good place to start;
2. Information to also put in the footer:
a. Contact data;
b. Links to top visited pages/products; or most sold products; or cheapest products; newest products? etc.;
c. Pictures with your employees / store / map location ā helps me build trust;
3. The slides in the footer are hard to notice, I didn’t spot them at first;
4. The menu with two lines in the footer is hard to read;
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C. Conclusions
The azerty.ro web site is well-rounded web site, with stunning graphics and good quality products.