Research results

Final Conclusions from research.

Functions: Most of the sites didn't offer any kind of ordering system. Some of the ones that did used the same system that I have been asked to use, that is ordering over the phone. The other ones that offered completely online ordering were much larger and not appropriate for the size of this business. The lack of completely online ordering systems seemed to indicated people like a bit more human interaction when ordering costumes so calling over the phone should work well if executed right.

Relevance: A major problem with some of the costume hire sites, is the lack of updating that is happening, asthetically and content wise. If a site is out of date the user picks up on it quickly and as a result is offputting, making it less likely for them to order a costume from that company. The sites that were obviously current sometimes changed their page depending what holiday or event was coming up that people would hire costumes for. Eg St patricks day or halloween or something like that. I will talk to indisguise if they would consider doing something like that.

Content:The sites that were the most useful were the ones that had information that was relevant to what the user is looking for, ie costume prices, sizing, and where to pick them up from. Quite a few of the less maintained ones didn't have any information about what sizes were available and how much they were. The most useful sites also had an FAQ section which I will include in the indisguise site. I will also include all the information I can about costume hire and not ramble on about non-relavent information. Some sites gave a long history to the company on the front page which is really not inviting at all and can be offputting.

Asthetics: The most well presented sites were the ones that had lots of pictures, especially on the front page and used the same theme throughout. There were some sites that had no pictures apart from on the gallery, and they were pretty sad as well. Some sites had pictures of the costumes when they are on people at events and they looked really effective. This is a very good idea that I plan to use as it also gives the user a better idea of what the costumes look like in the real world on normal people. I found the easier to use sites had a link bar at the top, and it also looks cleaner too so I will adopt that for my site.

Quality: A few sites were obviously poorly maintaned as there were broken links to crucial pages and missing pictures. This is really offputting, as there was one site where this was the case, that also had an online ordering system. This puts doubts into my mind as i'm sure others as to how secure this service is, if the people can't even build a site properly. I will make sure that my site is rock solid in this respect so people have the upmost confidence in the company.