Total Confusion (The dooyoo Redesign)

Member Name: zebra

Product:	The dooyoo Redesign
Date:	30/08/02 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Possibly has some potential.

Disadvantages: Very badly organised, lacks clarity and takes too many clicks to find things.

I am not going to comment on the many basic problems afflicting members such as not being able to rate or comment, that many links don't work etc. but focus instead on the overall usefulness of the new redesign to consumers.

The new front page

The tabs at the top do not give the best overview of what is available on dooyoo. Listing electronics, computers, games, movies etc with no mention of health, beauty, kids gives the impression that dooyoo is biased to the male youngster more than to the general public. I preferred the left hand navigation bar which at least listed all the categories on every page.

Since I started checking out the new dooyoo I have now noticed that they have re introduced all the categories on the front page - so this tends to make the tabs at the top superfluous on the front page. However, if you are anywhere else on the site you do not get access to all the categories.


The Top lists are an interesting new addition but it is difficult to know quite what 'top' means. Does it mean the most popular on dooyoo or something else? For example 'top food' included cheddar, marmite and Thornton's chocolate but while members might know that there are very few foods even featured on dooyoo a visitor doesn't.

These top lists seem to be rotated frequently but the sample listing of reviews is randomly generated. The opinion I was taken to was a badly written 'useful' opinion which not only would give a very bad first impression to a new visitor it might even put them off looking at more reviews. I think it might be better to randomly generate show piece examples from 'very useful' opinions.


The new system makes it necessary to visit far too many pages to find, or most of the time NOT find, any information. This no doubt increases page view stats for dooyoo but it is a pain for the consumer seeking information. I have read a couple of reviews that say
the site is faster but I am not finding it faster to load and having to continually click to get to where I want to go is seriously annoying me.

On the old dooyoo it was possible to reach a category in two clicks. I was looking for hobbies which used to be in lifestyle I had to click on the more tab, then under lifestyle>more lifestyle. Here I found sub categories listed alphabetically which as I have mentioned elsewhere is not the best way of arranging things. It seems that many of the categories have disappeared - complementary health, hobbies, and lifestyle websites have disappeared but we now have a wonderfully useful category called shoes.

So I clicked on Misc health, here again not all the categories are listed and to access the others you can either use a drop down box or click yet again on more. Having done this I still couldn't find complementary health so I gave up.

Related Sites

On the right hand side of the screen, which I have to scroll to access, is a new box containing Related Sites. Misc Health, for example lists 5 sites, the online slimming club, virility products etc. There is no warning that these are direct links to the sites in question. I think this is a rather sneaky alternative to banner advertising and the cynical side of me assumed that dooyoo were being paid to place these rather obscure links on these pages. I would prefer to be warned that these were links or for the link to go to a review of that website from which one could choose to go to the site or not.

Products

For the purpose of this opinion I decided to look at movies. I had Lord of the Rings in mind and decided to check out DVD reviews. I clicked on Movies tab, then had to select movies, DVD or video, I seem to recall more categories than these three in the old dooyoo. Then I had to select genre. I assumed that Lord of the Rings would be in Sci-fi and fantasy.

The default setting for the listings was most popular
and I was surprised to find Mad Max 2 and War of the Worlds, and Angel - Season 1 topping this list. I rather thought Lord of the rings would be at least on the first page. With the pages loading very slowly I plodded through several pages but Lord of the Rings was not listed.

This is ridiculous where is Lord of the rings? I entered it in search and discovered it was classified under sci fi and fantasy but I knew it wasn't there. I clicked on it and was taken to Movies DVD.

Each product now has four main pages which are accessed from tabs titled overview, opinions, prices, resources.

Overview

The overview shows the top 3 reviews on the product but at the moment we have no way of knowing what this means and whether these will always remain the top 3 reviews as under the old system. It also shows the latest short opinion on the product. More space is taken up with this rather useless short opinion than with the three top reviews. A large space on the left is taken up with a dooyoo sort of ad.

I really can't see the point of this overview page at all. It would be better to simply have opinions but I expect it is part of 'the generate more page views' strategy this new redesign was clearly intended to implement.

Opinions tab

Lists 'all the reviews of this product' showing twelve per page.

Prices

This took me to the old dooyoo format with a price comparison on the DVD giving 3 stores. My consumer mind said although this is obviously a very useful feature can I really trust this or not at the moment?

Resources

Silly me I expected resources to contain resources on the product, in this case Lord of the rings. I would have liked to see links perhaps to the books and reviews, a Tolkein site, the IMDB and other similar resources. But no - instead I found links to places to buy DVD players etc. This section is in fact just the same as the new related site
s box and is direct links to commercial sites and this really annoyed me.


I was really hoping for some wonderful improvements to dooyoo possibly based on ideas that the members have given over the past couple of years. There has always been a feedback section on dooyoo and we recently had another short lived feedback category (for which we are still awaiting promised payment - and if we were paid I could cash in if that facility was still available MOAN MOAN) So on the whole I am rather disappointed with the new dooyoo.

PS. I really miss the login and mile counter being on view.

Summary: