Snow Valley

The new Whistles site has already sparked a thousand comments on blogs across the UK with its decision to break with e-commerce convention.

Without quantitive insight into users’ behaviour on the site, I can only add my own opinions to the mix, but let me say that at first the site felt to me like a breath of fresh air.  While there have been a number Flash-based e-commerce sites with a varying (lack of) success, the new Whistles site feels like a genuine attempt to bridge the gap between that and something more standards-based.  In much the same way as the Gucci website, it feels like there has been a drive to introduce some retail and brand  theatre, but without the all-Flash pitfalls of yore.

That said, after some time playing it becomes apparent that maybe things aren’t quite so experience-orientated.  Or at least, that all-important component of the experience – the user – hasn’t been as considered as you might think.  The gigantic product shots in the Flash homepage are fantastic, but discovering them and interacting with them can feel sluggish and slightly clunky – and those small grey buttons don’t seem like an intuitive hit area.

When we move into browsing the shop, do the smallish photos showing the entire model focus well enough on the specific range or product in question?  Although overall the attractive, minimal page feels as if there is plenty of interest, try expanding “knitwear”.  Is it possible to find or be inspired by one product when you see all 40-odd ranged like that?  Or to browse for an interesting item of jewellery when it’s a few pixels at most somewhere on a model shot?  For me, no.  It becomes congested and confusing, difficult to determine tones and shapes, and I feel a little lost.  This isn’t helped that the primary navigation – that grounding point in times of browsing befuddlement – is often far off at the top of the page.

That said about the nav, I do like the shallowness of the site architecture and the lack of a discrete product details page.  The simple product overlay works very well in a compact range of products, with the product list in the background serving by way of cross-sells. But then again, this means there is no easy cross-pollination of departments to allow simple building of outfits, something that I personally feel is quite critical in fashion e-commerce.  And while we’re on that point, this is a site that cries out for some ”recently viewed” as it can be quite difficult to get back to that must-have item if you’ve browsed away.

I like the zoom and the full-screen image view – although some of the buttons might seem a little cryptic, things are very responsive and simple to play with.

Within the checkout things remain very minimal. However, the layout doesn’t always allow the eye to easily follow the page flow, and some form elements feel rather oddly sized and spaced as we tend to have preconceptions about the dimensions of stuff like “title” or “post code” fields.

Overall I like the site aesthetic very much – I’m rather minimalist at heart – but I do wonder whether it will be a successful e-commerce site, if that’s the intended main function.  Small photos and an unconventional and (for me, anyway) awkward navigation make me wonder if as many users will buy as much as they might.