Busy Looking For Something That CantBArsed! (cantbarsed.com)

Member Name: angeelu

Product:	cantbarsed.com
Date:	15/10/04 (272 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Find links to all sorts of shopping sites, Intriguing site name

Disadvantages: Too cluttered, Too difficult to navigate, CantBArsed with it all!

My first reason for visiting this site was pure intrigue from the web address. Before I made my first visit I was expecting something along the lines of bored.com - you know, the type of site with plenty of random stuff to keep you entertained. I wasn't very accurate with my predictions...

The HomePage
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As soon as the homepage opens chances are you'll be thinking the same as me. Cluttered and busy are the two words that first spring to mind. The page is crammed with links and text for all sorts of things. It becomes apparant pretty quickly that it seems the main reason for this sites existence is for those people who CantBArsed to look around the web for gift ideas or shopping type sites as well as a few extras. There are links across the top of the page for main categories:
~ Shopping Index
~ Gift Ideas
~ Experiences
~ Fashion
~ Electronics
~ Gadgets
~ Travel
~ Money
~ Free Stuff
~ DVD / Movies
~ CD / Music

In amongst the text on the homepage you'll actually find the site's statement as to what they are there for: "We've rounded up the latest great gift ideas, UK free stuff, discount vouchers and promotional codes for you". Well, I guess that explains it, but as the page is so cluttered chances are you'll not bother reading the text to find that out.

The Shopping Categories
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Within each of the categories that you'd associate with purchasing something you'll find a similar layout - each page is full of links to offers or ideas for things you could buy within each category. Most of the links take you to places such as buyagift.com, boysstuff.co.uk, girlsstuff.co.uk, asos.com, w1style.co.uk, hotspot.co.uk and other similar popular shopping sites.

The featured offers within each category take pride of place in the centre of the web page, and down the left you'll find a more intricate breakdown of the category you're within enabling you to search for links to more specific items. On the right hand side of each page you'll find small picture style adverts again with links to the kinds of sites already mentioned.

Money
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The money section is all about advertising money related products and services. Here you'll find links to such things as credit cards, financial services, offers on utilities, cheaper phone calls etc.

You'll also find promotional codes for various shopping sites - these are like e-vouchers whereby you type in a code as you get to the checkout of the site you're shopping at and your bill is discounted. There's a variety of codes for different sites available and you can search through the sites with promotional codes available using an A-Z style directory, but to be honest there's so many and the codes are all along the lines of spend so much and get a bit off that I CantBArsed to search through them all, and would probably not think of coming here to search through them all just in case there was one available for where I was planning to shop at.

There's a section for Earning Money within the money section, however I didn't really think the links within this section were all that related to earning money. I was expecting to see links to sites such as dooyoo and ciao, and also those kind of sites where you're paid to receive emails and that kind of thing. The links that were displayed though were things such as webmaster tools. You had to look carefully on the page to find a link for 'Reward Programs' that gave you more links to the kind of things you would expect, for example links to a couple of survey type sites. Still, nothing all that great.

Free Stuff
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Probably the only part of the site worth a bit of a browse, but don't get your hopes up too high. There are links to a variety of different types of free software downloads, wallpapers, e-cards, "funny stuff", and competitions. I still couldn't help but feel that everything was quite disorganised again though in areas, for example, there's a link to 'Free Money' but clicking this just takes you back to the Money area that shows offers for credit cards and the likes... not exactly free money (not that I was expecting a link to the Bank of England giving away free £50 notes, but I did perhaps expect it to lead to links to survey/opinion type sites where there is financial reward).

DVD / CD
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The DVD and CD categories seem to have been tagged on the end - again, don't go expecting anything special. More links to more music / film related sites such as napster, cd-wow, 101cd.com etc.


The Verdict
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I do think this site has potential... unfortunately at present it just comes across as a cluttered collection of links to other sites. It's not particularly organised, and it doesn't particularly specialise in a particular area, e.g. focussing on unusual gifts or something. It's as though the site is trying to be something for everyone, but in doing so it loses its appeal. Almost as though they Couldn'tBArsed to decide who their audience for the site was.

There's a chance I may go back to the site when I'm looking for a free software download for some purpose, though it's probably just as easy to use a search engine. On the whole though, I think I CantBArsed with going back to it and spending ages searching through all the links to links to links to find something interesting to look at.

Final score... 3 out of 5... though that's generous.

Summary: