Good Website #1: Dell Canada Case Study

Dell is one of the most popular online retailers of PCs, servers and electronics in North America. Its websites does tremendous business, and has experienced a lot of growth over the past years.

Here are some key factors that make Dell Canada a real award winner:

• User centric design
  Dell understands that there are several key groups of visitors that frequent their website: home-based consumers, business consumers, and people in need of help. The design lends itself to servicing these three key audiences right from the home page. It also works well by highlighting the latest news and changes to the site right from the home page.
• Consistency
  The look and feel of the site is consistent throughout. Regardless of which page you're on, you know you are still on Dell.ca. The colours, fonts, and alignments are all consistently displayed.
• Features
  A shopping cart that lets you retain your dream PC is an excellent tool, and adds a tremendous amount of value to customers. The interactive PC builder section also steps through the customization process very painlessly and reliably. Dell also does 'search' very nicely. The results are intelligent and grouped by category (e.g. products, support, articles, etc.).
• Customer Interaction
  Providing visitors with the ability to rate products is very useful. It makes people feel as though their input is valued, and it provides a good reference for other visitors.
• Cross-promotion integration
  Dell does a lot of online and offline advertising. As such, people regularly come to their site seeking out a specific deal that they saw in a flyer or a newspaper. Dell handles this nicely with an 'As Advertised' section, a 'Deal of the Day' section, 'E-Value Codes' and more.
• Grouping
  Sections are grouped very well, both logically and visually, making navigating this huge site far easier.
• Language
  Dell Canada allows for both English and French, a nice touch in Canada.
• Usability - a mixed bag
  On the good side - neat little features where you can increase or decrease text size, rearrange grids, price summaries flow with the page, etc.
  On the bad side - (notwithstanding the Flash issue) too many navigation items, too much advertising and self promotion (which gets in the way of the user experience), and some unexpected click results (e.g. clicking on certain links causes the primary navigation to disappear or takes you to a new URL altogether).

What they get wrong

No site is perfect, so let's highlight a few things that Dell could improve upon

• Home vs Office
  At Apis we get almost all of our computer equipment from Dell, notwithstanding the odd Mac here and there. The division that Dell makes of Home equipment vs. Office equipment is meaningless. That's not how we shop. Sure, we're a business, but we're interested in the details; we don't know if the best computer for us is one that falls in the Home category or the Office category. They go a step further down this path with small & medium business vs. large business. A more logical, user-friendly division is required; or they could simply do away with the division altogether.
• Overuse of Flash
  Dell goes a little overboard with the interactive Flash pieces. They're slick, sure, but they are very large files which drags the site's performance down greatly.
• Product expansion
  With success comes the "trying on" of different hats. Dell used to be focused on computers, but they've since delved into the broader arena of electronics in general. We understand the desire to cross-sell and up-sell, but some say Dell has gone too far. By losing its focus on computers it can be perceived as less of an expert. Fortunately for Dell, there are no other big contenders to come in an usurp their title... yet. If Alienware ever got their act together, mind you...