When you care enough to send the very best. (hallmark.co.uk)

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	hallmark.co.uk
Date:	09/10/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good price, amazing quality, easy to use site!

Disadvantages: Not a one!

Everybody knows of Hallmark, the most famous card manufacturer around. Everybody will have given or received a Hallmark card at some point in their life, whether it was for a birth, christening, birthday, first communion, Christmas, birthday, get well soon, thank you etc, there is a huge variety of Hallmark cards out there which you can buy for every occasion imaginable.

Hallmark.co.uk is a website where you can go to see all of these cards, and gifts in one simple to use place, where you can browse and buy online in the safety and comfort in your own home.

Hallmark.co.uk was launched in 2008, and on the 8th September this year they celebrated its first year anniversary with a huge card give-away, which was when I first started using the website, to buy cards for a few special occasions I had coming up; anniversary, sisters birthday, parents anniversary and best friends 21st, all of which I needed good quality cards which weren't going to cost me the earth. I was going to use Moonpig.com, but changed my mind and decided to use Hallmark.co.uk as they have a much bigger selection with famous characters and a HUGE choice! Since then I will certainly be using the service again!

Layout/Design
The website is neat and tidy to look at, the home page is a simple design with a purple heading with just 5 sub pages; Home, cards, eCards, In Store and finally My Account. Below this is a simple blue animated section to the page which shows the new personalised cards section to the site, with a simple starting point to making your own personalised cards (I will go into more detail of these cards in a little while). Below this is a well laid out section where you can easily find the occasion you need (i.e. Christmas, Age cards etc), meaning that you can easily find the correct section for yourself without having to faff around too much and without going through hundreds of images of cards for anniversaries when you want a card for a 1st birthday. The layout makes the site very easy to use and as it's attractive and tidy, it means you're not confused by the site before you even start navigating it, making it completely un-intimidating and simple to use for all, whether your computer literate or a complete amateur. There isn't too much colour and brightness which makes the site seem "grown up", and respectable, and you know you'll be able to find sophisticated cards as well as fun and exciting cards. (Basically you can find the perfect card for your 80 year old grannie who likes to talk about the war, and you can find something for your 16 year old brother who likes to talk about girls and cars!).

Navigation
Navigation around the site is very simple and as I said earlier, you can find your way around the site whether your an expert with computers and the internet but also if you're someone who has difficulty finding the on/off button.
At the bottom of the home screen, there are 4 lists of occasions and types of cards (i.e. popular ranges of Scooby Doo, OK! Cards from the popular magazine and Disney), which makes it extremely easy to find what you're looking for; as you simply click on the occasion you want.
Let's show you an example: You have a birthday for a 5 year old boy coming up and you need to find a card for him, he loves Power Rangers and watches his shows every morning. So you have two choices, you can go to Age Cards or to Power Rangers under Popular Ranges. Let's choose Age cards first...
Now at the side of the screen you can simply click on "kids", or if you are looking for another age, you choose that age range. You can also choose from a drop down menu who the card is for (i.e. brother, sister, nephew, Grandchild, boy or girl) to narrow down the search. Now you can narrow down the search even more by looking again on the left hand side of the screen for "characters", and up pops a variety of cards with characters on them, and sitting right there is the perfect card. A Power Ranger card for a boy with the number 5 on it. And it only took me a couple of seconds in a few clicks to find it, no walking to the shop and rummaging around the shelves!
So as you can see, navigation is so simple, it's even easier than going to the shops!

Content Update
Since I have been using the site it has been updated with a couple of extra cards been added. The content of the site is updated often with new cards been added when new characters arrive (i.e. when there is a lot of interest in a new Disney film for example), making the site brilliant and up to date with what people want now, rather than what people wanted 5 year ago. The site is only a year old, and over this last year there have been hundreds of new cards added to the site, and it is been made better all of the time. The site is updated also with each season, at the moment there is a huge section on Christmas cards, which in Spring will be changed to Easter cards and then it'll be changed again and again, until again in a year's time more Christmas cards will be on sale once more! Of course with this kind of site, it doesn't get updated daily, as there is nothing for it to update in the content side of things! But the site is updated when it needs to be, so when a new occasion comes around, or when there are new cards made, and also when the site is improved and new products are brought out!

Quality of Content
The content on the site is excellent, as I said earlier on in this review, the content is up to date and reflects what customers want NOW and not a few years ago which makes it excellent quality, when you have the cards delivered, they are just like how you would buy them in the shop, only with your own personal message printed inside and the name on the front of the card which is amazing, and definitely not something you can get if you buy the cards from a shop, although they do seem a little impersonal as they're not hand written, but such an amazing idea.

The cards are typical Hallmark cards, they're great quality, a good thickness and they don't feel like they have just simply been printed from your home computer onto a bit of card, and the quality is exactly the same as the quality of the cards from the Hallmark shops!

Range of Services/Products
I have picked upon this before, but once again the range of products is huge. You can buy cards for
all occasions imaginable and within each category there are hundreds of cards which you can choose from, the subjects and occasions you can choose from are: Christmas Cards
Kids' Cards
Birthday Cards
Friends Birthday
Family Birthday
Kids Birthday
Age 18 - 21
Age 30+
Funny Birthday
Cute Birthday
Classic Birthday
Modern Birthday
Belated
Popular Ranges
OK! Magazine
Other Occasions
Anniversary
Blank
Christening
Christmas
Congratulations
Engagement
Friendship
Get Well
Good Luck
Leaving
New Baby
Retirement
Sympathy
Thank You
Wedding

Meaning you can find a card for every occasion imaginable, along with these above occasions there are also other subjects to choose from and you can also have photo upload cards, where you upload your own pictures and they become part of the card, which is great and a very personal touch.

Search Facility
The search facility on the site is average, and I find it much easier to find a card I want by going through the pages myself, but you can search for a specific character or occasion card yourself by simply typing it in the search box, and it will bring up all of the cards with the word in its name or description. Very simple to use, but with a website which is so easy to use it's not really needed much!

Pricing
The cards vary in price, as with everything in life! There are three card sizes; small (103mm by 144mm), Regular (137mm by 195mm) and Large (204mm by 290mm). Prices are as follows:

Small cards cost £1.95 for one card with P&P from 49p.
Regular cards cost £2.90 for one card with P&P from 49p.
Large cards cost £5.80 for one card with P&P from 75p.

When you buy the cards in bulk (a group of say 20 cards with the same personalisation and of the same size), you get money off each card. So for example if you were buying 40 regular cards to send for Christmas cards with simple personalisation of "From Steph and Sean" inside all of them, you would pay £1.45 per card instead of £2.90 per card, with P&P from £3.17.

There is a very easy to use table on the website to show this, and to show the savings you can receive by buying in bulk.

The prices are less than what you would pay in the shops for the excellent quality cards, and it gives you the knowledge that your cards have been sent without the hassle of having to go out and buy your cards, write them, go out and buy your stamps and then actually send the thing, when you have a busy (or a very forgetful...!) life, it's a great idea and so helpful as it's just one little thing you don't have to worry about!

The prices are very acceptable especially for the quality of the product you receive!

Security & Privacy Statement
Hallmark, like every internet order site, has its own Privacy statement, which can be found easily on the website for anybody to read should they wish to. This gives you peace of mind that your information is not going to be used for anything other than for your order, and will not be sold on to other companies (as some companies do, resulting in junk mail through your letter box and email inbox telling you about things you have no interest in...like Viagra and weight loss pills). The site of course needs to collect information from yourself in order to make your shopping experience perfect and in order to personalise your orders. But in today's society you do have to be very careful what information you give out, and you have to be sure that information is not going to be used to steal your identity!

Hallmark use your personal information in the following ways:

Customer Communication, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Convenience; all of which make your online shopping or browsing experience much more satisfactory! Hallmark does not share your personal information with any third parties, unless requested by you (i.e. technology providers, credit card authorisation companies, merchandise distributors, delivery companies and vendors), and Hallmark can guarantee that these third parties do NOT store your personal information.

With the personalisation part of the site, you can upload your own pictures, and sometimes it may be a worry who may be seeing those pictures, especially when they may be of our children. But you can be rest assured, the pictures will only be viewed by the Hallmark employee who is processing your orders, and other Hallmark employees who may have to correct and validate your orders, but no outside parties will ever be shown the pictures unless you yourself show them to those people!

IP addresses and Cookies are used in a limited way (this is where information is shared between your computer and the website), and they will only store information which they need to store and will not be able to access anything which is on your computer!

Your personal account on Hallmark is password protected, so only you can see it which is also something which you can be sure will not be shared with anyone! For more detailed information on the above, there is an excellent page on the website which goes into much more detail, but these are the important facts which Hallmark state in protecting their customers privacy.

Purchase Tracking Function
You can track your order with Hallmark.co.uk as you can with most online shops these days, it's very simple to do, just enter your order number, and it will tell you where the order is in terms of ready for dispatch, been dispatched, or even whether it is still been processed or delayed. It's a fantastic function which means that you can see when your items are going to be delivered and so you can be sure they will arrive on time, but also so that if your items are delayed, you know why, and how long they will be delayed for.

Speed of Delivery
As with everything, you pay for service. And you can expect to pay more for next day delivery than you would for normal delivery.

When I used the service, I had the next day delivery as I was having my card delivered to a friend for her birthday, I ordered it at around 10am the day before her birthday, and it was delivered the next day with the normal post, less than 24 hours later! If you are having your items delivered to your own address for you to send yourself at a later date, then the items will cost less to have delivered (specified when you order!), but will take between 3 and 5 working days. Nothing I have ordered has taken more than a day to arrive even with the postal strike last month!


Ability to Customise
As I have touched upon, you can customise each card either with a photograph or your own typing, whether it be a name or greeting, and also you can customise the inside writing of the card to say whatever you like.

It's very simple to customise your cards, and you can go through the easy to use system which will help you with a step by step guide through customising your cards, making it simple for everybody to use, whether it be the old the young, the smart and the not so smart...well I managed to use it!!

The customisation tool on the site makes it possible to make your cards much more personal than the shop bought varieties!

Well in conclusion, the site is absolutely amazing, and much better than its rival, Moonpig.com, I will definitely be using the site again whenever I need to send a card to someone, it is so easy to use, and so fast, cheap and everything else you want from your online shopping sites!
100% recommended to everyone who needs to buy cards for any occasions!

Summary: A fabulous and easy to use website which is great for all!