To: ben.palmer@dickssportinggoods.com
Subject: Website Revamp
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Hey Ben,
I’ve been thinking it’s been a really long time since we’ve revamped our main website. This time we should get creative and give the site an in-depth restructuring to try to appeal to as many of our shoppers as possible. Let’s each whip up a good alternate method of organization and then launch them both in a week-long test to see which one generates the most traffic and profit. It can be sort of a contest.
Maybe it would help to understand where we’re at now with the site so we can figure out what changes would be improvements.
Let me know what you think,
Ken Greene
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Digital Marketing
To: ken.greene@dickssportinggoods.com
Subject: Re: Website Revamp
Ken,
I’m so glad you brought this up, because the same thought crossed my mind the other day — we absolutely need a facelift to get our traffic going again. And you’re right, analyzing our present site should definitely spark some ideas for the modifications we will want to make. Here’s the site now.
When I look at the top frame of the main page, I notice the drop down menu buttons have the smallest fonts on the whole page. Why would the things we want the most-clicked sections to take up such a small portion of the screen? Also, instead of having the huge graphic on the front to advertise our golf-a-thon (or any other deal, depending on the day), we need the top of our home page to target the bulk of our shoppers. Golf is getting way too much attention with the huge ad and its own drop down page. Why does it get it’s own drop down menu and the advertisement? Golf should be in with the sports. Why should it be any easier finding golf club socks than finding swimming goggles?
We really need to rethink what we have in the frame when our page-viewers first get to the site.
Any other thoughts before we come up with alternatives?
Ben Palmer
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Digital Marketing
To: ben.palmer@dickssportinggoods.com
Subject: Re: Website Revamp
Good work man,
I really like your comments on our main page, and I think you hit the nail on the head. I saw a few other questionable things on the homepage. One is that it’s too long. Users have to give three good scrolls to even get to the bottom. Then near the bottom, ironically, we have a heading that says “In The Spotlight.” Home pages should be packed as tight as possible while avoiding a claustrophobic feeling in the users. The other thing I wanted to mention was that users shouldn’t have to click on the headings. Most sites structured this way just take a hover-over of the mouse, and the dropdown menu shows up — like Scheels.
Alright, end of discussion. Let’s take the rest of the week to come up with our new site structures and then email them to each other on Monday.
Best of luck,
Ken Greene
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Digital Marketing
To: ken.greene@dickssportinggoods.com
Subject: My Site Structure Plan
Ken,
Here’s my plan:
Separate the home page into four quadrants, named Locker Room, Weight Room, Closet, and Outdoors. These will use the “category” hatrack of organization to make subdivisions of each section. The categories will have great graphics or photos, and they will correspond to the sections of the actual store: sports, exercise, clothing, and outdoors. Of course some items may overlap and fit in more than one category, but everybody has been in a sporting goods store and knows which section they would find their item in. On the margins of the site, our advertisements and specials will be located. They’ll be visible right when shoppers get there, but they won’t be the center of attention like they are on our site presently.
Once the user clicks on the category they wish to shop in, they will be brought to that section of the site, which will have subcategories to further narrow the search. This will be similar to the headings of our existing site if you click on one of the top categories. Say the user is looking to buy a new tennis racket. They would click Locker Room on the home page, and then Tennis on the next page. Each sport will have a photo of a person playing the sport. Once the shopper gets to the subcategory they want to be in, the rest of the site will work pretty much the way it already does.
I think this overall scheme would solve our problem of being too spread out. It will bring all the important stuff into view immediately, while not overcrowding the user. That’s the beauty of categorizing.
Alright, send your idea back!
Ben Palmer
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Digital Marketing
To: ben.palmer@dickssportinggoods.com
Subject: Re: My Site Structure Plan
Not bad Ben, not bad.
I went way outside the box with my idea. You mentioned the Category hatrack; I want to go a different direction and use the location hatrack. On my homepage will be an overhead map of a Dick’s Sporting Goods Store. Like you said, people know what section things are in at our physical stores. It will work just like Google Maps. Shoppers can zoom way out to look at broad sections of the store (similar to the continents of the world). They can click and drag themselves around the place, looking for what section they wish to shop in. It’s just like they’re actually in the store browsing around. Then when they find a section (which will be labeled according to what’s in it, like one of your categories), they can zoom in, and the selection will become more specific.
I’ll use an example to illustrate the next part of the structure: Say a guy wants to buy a new Matzuo Akai Jig Head. He should zoom in on the outdoors section of the full store, and it will narrow into hunting, fishing, camping, etc. Then he’ll hover his mouse over fishing and zoom in further. It will narrow into rods, reels, lures, tackle boxes, etc. He’ll keep zooming, this time on lures. Then he’ll zoom on jigs, where they’ll find his Matzuo Akai.
So it’s constant scrolling in and out to hone in on the product the shopper wants to find. It’s a combination of the location and category hatracks, and I think it could work really well for our site. I know this method has never really been done with a store site before, but I had fun with it and it’s worth a shot.
Next step, let’s get this test run started. It’ll take awhile to develop the sites, I’m sure. I’ll get the design teams going and hopefully it won’t be too long before we can launch.
Good job, and may the best site win.
Ken Greene
Dick’s Sporting Goods, Digital Marketing
