some thoughts on the Accordance store

[Kristin]

 

I have some thoughts on the store website. I understand some of my thoughts regard Accordance decisions, and some regard the web hosting company, but these are my thoughts just from the experience as a user.

 

- It is insane how long it takes the site to load. Both going to the site, and clicking around it internally. Clicking around took 32 seconds to load a page. I cleared the cookies, logged in, and pressing enter to get to the home screen took 48 seconds.

 

- The “My Account” at the top is impersonal and doesn’t actually make it look like you are logged in. I understand the name is lower on the page, but it only remains there on the home page, and is not shown on any product page. For most sites you would click on “My Account” and then be prompted to log in.

 

- After logged in, “New to Accordance? Try the Accordance Starter FREE! for 90 Days!” should not be appearing on the home screen for users who have been around for years. 

 

- The search of books obviously needs to be improved.

 

- The checkout needs a “saved for later” like Amazon. I get that there is a Wishlist, but there is a reason why Amazon has both a wish list and saved for later, as they don’t serve the same function.

 

- The Wishlist needs to be clearer. As it is, it is in skinny, pale font saying “Wishlist,” but then even after clicking it you have to click again to add it. I think this should be done away with and for there to just be a little heart outline next to a product, and then when you click the heart, that the heart turns solid. This is how most sites handle it, and it is also just one step.

 

- The pictures of resources seriously needs to be updated. Most of the pictures are too fuzzy to actually read the content, the pictures are too few, and for a lot of resources there is just one picture, and the picture is literally a picture of the front of the book. In cases like this I often leave Accordance's site to go check out reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, which often does have relevant content as their images.

 

- There needs to be more reviews. For example, a random book is currently on sale, so I clicked on it and I saw it had a two star rating. I was curious why, but there were no comments. So I clicked on the book to look inside, and was met with the cover as the only image. I understand not everyone is a reviewer, and I admit I am not. But I know some people like writing reviews and honest reviews. I know I have sometimes bought products with a 1 star rating since after reading the 1 star, why the customer didn’t like the product was exactly what I was looking for. I know Nathan has sometimes written reviews for products, which I have found helpful. It would be good if he, or other employees, could write reviews of products they have familiarity with to get the ball rolling.

 

I think those are the only thoughts coming to mind.

 

Kristin

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

By the way, I moved this to Website Feedback so that our web team would be sure to see it.

 

Great feedback! A few comments:

 

• We are looking into the performance issues. We all agree that we definitely need to address those.
• Useful feedback on My Account. Thanks!
• Right now we haven't found a way to change the home screen for logged in vs non-logged in users, but we'll look into it. Long-term, what I would personally like to see is the home screen spotlight products for logged in customers they would want to add to their library, then non-logged in customers see the free trial and some Accordance Primary Collections. That way new users know how to get started with Accordance and existing users could leverage the home page to expand their library with stuff they'd want to buy.
• We're looking into the searching issues as well. We all agree we definitely need to address those. I have some temporary (but not-glamorous) workarounds if you want to hear them.
• I like that idea on checkout.
• Good feedback on wishlist
• Good feedback on pictures. We need more pictures, more descriptions, and video demos of products. What I'd personally like to see us do is update the product pages before each sale. That would be a good strategy to get into. In the meantime, we could work on specific pages if there are some you want to see.
• We definitely need more reviews. I'll try to comb through the store and write more, especially before each sale so you have fresh reviews before each sale. This is an area we can really leverage the Accordance User Community on. Please everyone, send us all the reviews you can! 

[ukfraser]

When you see the results of searched resources, they need to be in some sort of order, price, alphabet, original language. Trying to find texts and study bibles is particularly difficult these days and quite often when you go to a second page you just get random resources which bear no relation to what you searched for. 
 

for example, search study bible. Look at the random order on pages 1-4 then look at the non study bibles on page 5. 
 

then look at categories and they are mega random and selecting study bible results in a random pages (only three compared to the 50 if you run a search. 
 

the previous site was much better organised. As usual, dont fix something that aint broke!

Edited Wednesday at 10:11 PM by ukfraser

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

We had to unfortunately migrate from the old site since it was using legacy technology that we had to replace, but with any legacy technology to modern technology migration, there's always some "growing pains" we have to endure. Feedback like this is super-beneficial for us on where to make the improvements.

 

This reminds me of when the weather company I work for had to migrate our weather radar engine from the legacy technology to the new system. At first, customers hated the new system and begged us to go back to the old one (we literally couldn't go back to the old one since the computers running the old one physically died, that's how long we ran it), but we were able to utilize customer feedback and make the new system look and feel as close to the old system as possible, with all the modern technologies under-the-hood.

 

Hopefully we can continue to improve the Accordance Store user experience so it's as easy to use as what we had before while still having a modern system under-the-hood that'll serve us well for the future.