According to the website the delivery can take on average between 5 and 14 working days.The delivery arrives in the general post and therefore arrives mostly in the morning. The delivery can however also be delayed as mentioned above if the requested DVD is not available and not in stock.
The delivery costs for the DVDs are £5.50 for the first item and further £1.25 for every subsequent item. This cost includes the processing fees and the delivery insurance. This is the same for every DVD available on the website.
Suggestions for Improvements
I think that the product description is one of the most well managed areas on this website. This is because there are enough details available for every DVD and there is also an image available for every single product. However, one possible improvement could be to add hyperlinks to other websites, which talk about the particular movie in full detail. This however is not really needed and would be just an extra feature of the website.
Another improvement could be to add a five star rating system to every movie, which is entered by customers and not by the website itself, because the website could make false ratings, whereas customers would less likely do that.
Method used to capture customer Information
Capturing Customer Information is very important to a business because this tells them what the customers want and need. This tells businesses what exactly their customers want from them and therefore they will try to offer those wants and needs to them. If a business does not capture customer information it can happen that the business does not work that well, because they are selling products and services that customers do not even want or that they do not offer those that they really want to get.
There are two different types of methods used to capture customer information, which are OVERT and COVERT. OVERT is the way where the customer is aware of that his information is getting to the business. This is often done by filling in forms, taking feedback or by taking a survey. By using this method the customer or the person whose information is being taken, is aware of that. For COVERT however the information is taken without the person knowing about it or being aware of it in any way.
The latestdvd9 website only uses OVERT methods to capture customer information. I have found only one OVERT method, which is the ability to give comments or remarks about the business, website, or its service. This can be done by clicking on CONTACT US in the top navigation bar and filling out a few fields about you and leaving a feedback at the end as you can see in the screenshot on the right.
Suggestions for Improvements
Latestdvd9.com could improve by adding proper feedback opportunities, which is not in the Contact Us site. Also they could add a survey, which customers could fill in, in order to tell them what they think of every area and give everything a mark e.g. from 1-10. This would allow the website to get more customer information.
Methods used to authenticate the identity of customers
Authenticating the identity of a customer is a very important factor, which every transactional website needs to do. The website I am investigating (latestdvd9.com) uses the method of recording the Internet Protocol (IP) of each customer, which enters the area where they have to enter their bank and other details. The main reason why this is important is to prevent fraud. A lot of fraud goes on and customers, even young children, use bank details of organisations or other people, which is a crime. For this reason the website needs to be able to authenticate the identity of each customer, so in case of a fraud they would be able to chase the customer and prosecute him.
Below you can see what it says on the first page, where customers are asked for their bank account details:
If there was no IP recorded, this would mean that everybody would be able to do fraud on the website, without anybody being able to chase you. This would make the website very unsafe for themselves and the business would rather go down, as fewer honest customers will be there and more criminals would be their customers.
Methods used to protect the security of personal Data
Latestdvd9 has to make sure that their website is secure enough to make it a transactional website. This is because a transactional website always gets personal information of its customers, which need to be kept secure and no unauthorised person should be able to get them and therefore be able to misuse them. For this reason the website has to make sure that these are save from hackers. This includes personal information such as address, date of birth etc. that can be misused by somebody easily if they get in wrong hands.
The website also has to make sure that the credit card information is kept save from hackers because if an unreliable person gets access to them, they could literally ‘empty’ the accounts of the person and buy whatever they want through the Internet.
The latestdvd9 website has a secure server, which means that it is reliable and that the information of its customers is very secure. A user can see that by looking at the top of the screen in the address bar when on a page that asks for personal information such as address or credit card details. If there is a https:// (with the ‘s’ at the end) it means that this is a secure server. Also on certain browsers such as the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome the colour of the address bar changes to green or yellow if it is a secure server. At the end of the URL there is a lock icon that also satisfies this.
All the payment details for latestdvd9 are done through another website called shopsecure.worldemail.com. An example of how a secure server looks like is shown below:
I have also looked through the FAQs to see if the website tells anything about its security. By luck I was able to find the answer to the question What does LatestDVD9.com promises on Credit Card Security? The answer to this question is shown below in the print-screen.
How easy is it to make transactions?
A transaction can be done very easily because you simply have to click on the button in order to put the DVD into the cart and finally checkout all of them at once. The final Checkout can be done by clicking on the button, which is placed on the top right-hand side of every page next to the button. These two buttons are available on the top of every single page, making it very easy to go to the cart without having to look for it.
A Transaction is made by following these steps:
- Find your movie
- Add it to the cart
- Go to Checkout
- Enter Payment details
- The movie(s) will arrive within 5-14 working days
On the left I have shown a screenshot of the cart, after having added films to it. Now customers have the facility to delete some of the films already added to the cart, or continue shopping, update cart, or pay and finish the purchase, as you can see on the buttons in the screenshot. You can also see the total price including and excluding the shipping costs, so customers can see how much they will have to pay for the packaging and posting. There is also a field for a promotional code, which can be entered if the customer has a voucher for this website, which would give him discount on the purchase.
Underneath the cart there is more useful information written for customers, who are making a purchase through this site.
The screenshot on the left shows, what is going to come up next, after the customer has chosen the Card Type and country. Here the customer is asked to enter their name and address details and finally click on Continue to proceed to the next step.
I was not able to go any further, because I was not able to enter any false details and anyway this could have been seen as fraud, bringing me into trouble. Also I did not want to buy any film from my account, because I personally do not like watching films. Therefore I assume that after this screen there will be one, showing the details, which the customer would have to confirm and finalise the purchase with a last click.
I believe that making a transaction is not really made easy, because there is no possibility for customers to log in using username and password, which would make it easier and allow customers to make transactions faster. However the website allows customers to add DVDs to the cart, which is really an advantage.
Suggestions for Improvements
There are certain ways the website can improve, which would increase the number of customers. One very effective way the website needs to use is to allow customers to create accounts and register to the website. This would give the advantage of customers only having to enter their details once and every time after that they would only have to login using their username and password. As this is not available on this website, I believe this will reduce the number of customers because they do not prefer having to enter all their bank and other details over and over again every time they are purchasing a film.
Methods of Purchasing
Latestdvd9.com accepts all major credit cards, such as Visa, Amex, Eurocard, and Diners Club, which are mainly American cards. I have shown it in the image on the left, which shows it on the website, where you are making the purchase. The website also recommends using PayPal, which is one of the easiest ways of payment over the Internet.
As mentioned before there is the cart available that can be used without the need to register an account on that website, which is not possible. So therefore the cart gets saved to the IP address for a certain amount of time.
How effective are the techniques used to attract customers
and retain their loyalty?
The major ways that LatestDVD9.com uses to entice and retain customers is by being always up to date. Even the latest movies that have only come out in certain countries in times and that are only available in cinemas are available for customers at 2-3 days after the movie is released. This is a huge advantage for the website because this is a guarantee for getting more and more customers every day.
As proper film fans really want to watch the latest movies quickly after they are released, they will prefer this website for buying DVDs and watch the films at home comfortably with their families and with the opportunity to watch it again and again, unlike going to the cinema, which can be a lot more expensive and you can not watch it again without having to pay for the ticket again.
The most recently released DVDs are shown on the Homepage right on the left hand side at the top as you can see in the image on the left.
Another method used by the website to retain its customers is showing a list of the most popular DVDs of the week. This is a list showing the top 20 most purchased films of the wee. To see that list you have to click on TOP BOX OFFICE in the navigation bar, which has the background colour red. The red colour attracts every customer and his eyes go first to that red colour because there is nothing else of this colour on the webpage.
Furthermore there are also films available that are a bit older, but still very popular. These are shown on the homepage on the right-hand side as you can see in the image on the right. Although you will only see two films currently, but there are in fact more than 10 videos in that list.
Moreover the Domain name of the website is very easy to remember and as more people will be able to easily remember this domain name, there will also be more people to visit the website and therefore buy DVDs from them. An easy to remember domain name (www.latestdvd9.com) is a very important factor for getting more customers and this can make my transactional website very successful on the Internet.
The problem however is that it is very difficult to find this transactional website using any search engine. I have tried it with Google and Yahoo, but none of them showed the website in their first 5 pages. I tried to look for it using the key words Buy DVDs Online, but I was not able to find the latestdvd9 website on the first 5 result pages. This is a drawback for this business, because this makes it much harder to get new customers as they will not be able to find that website, unless referred to by an acquaintance or finding it using different keywords in different search engines, which however is less likely.
However I have noticed that if you type in Latest DVD in Google the link for latestdvd9.com will appear in the sponsored links on the right side of the screen as an advertisement. The screenshot of my search is shown below:
One main technique the website uses to entice customers is the use of reviews of customers to the site in general. The website shows these right on the main webpage, as you can see in the screenshot on the right, in a small window in the way ‘Credits’ are shown at the end of a film, which clearly reminds customers of the end of a film. So, using this method, to show what other customer’s had to say and also to remind new customers of the ending of a film, is a clever technique to entice and retain customers to the website. If a customer wants to read more reviews, they can click on the more.. bottom on the bottom right of the window.
Displaying customer reviews is another very important way of enticing customers, because they tell new people, what they think about the website and how this is good or bad. In this case however, I am not sure whether this will really impress new customers, because there are exclusive only positive reviews without even a single negative point. Although this could mean that the website is very positive, it could also be that they only show the positive reviews and do not display any negative reviews. Furthermore the quantity of the reviews is not really impressive. There are only about 10 reviews available, which has two disadvantages: It could mean that the website is not very popular and it also does not really give you its true colours as the reviews are not very reliable.
Furthermore the website has the FAQs section, which deals with frequently asked questions and answers these on that page. This is a very important factor for retaining customers after they have mad one or more purchases. However although the FAQ section contains 15 frequently asked questions, it does not give any detail at all about the returning policy of the website. I think this might be a drawback for the company because if somebody was not happy with the product in any way, they would first have to email them and ask them about all returning details before they will be able to do so. This clearly can be improved by answering this question there.
Also what I have noticed is that the answers to the FAQs are not very detailed and they would not answer the complete question of the customers, which is another drawback. They are in most cases only 2-3 lines or in some even only a single line. Again this shows that the FAQs section can clearly be improved.
Suggestions for Improvements
I think there are quiet a few areas the website could improve to retain and entice its customers. One major improvement, as I had recommended before, is to improve the FAQ section, which is very brief. Also the website should add more reviews from customers, because otherwise new visitors to the website might believe that people do not really like this website.
In addition to that, latestdvd9 could also start selling movies from other film industries such as Bollywood films. The reason for this would be because there are many Asian people and even European or Americans, who prefer watching Indian films. Therefore if the website starts selling Bollywood movies as well, they could get a lot more customers and from different backgrounds as well.
Effectiveness of Multimedia Features
The only multimedia feature I have noticed on the whole website is the use of images. These images are mostly from the DVD case of the film, allowing customers to show quickly what the film might be all about. Also there is that main logo of the homepage that shows DVDs at the top has been used in a very positive way as this clearly shows that the website is selling DVDs and not anything else.
After having used the website for quite a long time and gone through the majority of pages I found out that no other form of multimedia has been used on the entire website. Actually for a DVD selling website this is not really required however some sites such as the HOW TO ORDER or SHIPPING should contain other pictures or clip arts to make the pages more interesting and attractive.
However there is a kind of multimedia on the Homepage, which is that reviews box on the right-hand side, showing comments from other users. I would call it multimedia because the text goes up from the bottom exactly like they are at the end of a film. Therefore this is a very successful method of multimedia because new customers just have to go to the Homepage and can see what other customers said about this website.
Suggestions for Improvements
As there is hardly any kind of multimedia apart from images, I can recommend using videos, especially trailers to very popular films. If there are trailers available, more people are going to become customers because they can see it right on the same website, what the movie is all about by watching the trailer, unlike having to read the synopsis. In another way the website could improve by adding animations of most popular movies currently, which would take the customer’s attenction to that and will encourage them to buy those films.
Colours and Fonts
Almost every page of the website uses a plain white background and a black font colour. It is only that some parts of the text background have a slightly grey background colour, which is still very contrasting with the dark font colour. Therefore the only way that colour is presented on the pages is either by images such as the main logo area at the top of each page and pictures of the DVD front cover, or by the use of shading around some buttons and headings as the example below shows:
I did not discover any page that had inappropriate use of colours such as a combination of a black font and a dark blue background colour, which would have made reading very difficult. There were however a few headings in the light green colour, which had also a white font colour, which made it a little harder to read the text. An example is shown below of this:
The main font style that was used by the website is Verdana. This colour is very easy to read for everybody because it is like a normal font unlike others, which are more of a stylish font. Also this is because one of the most used font style is Verdana and therefore this does not make the latestdvd9 website look like the odd one out. A further reason is that the font style Verdana is available and pre-installed on almost every computer and therefore customers would not first have to download the font from somewhere, install it and then be able to use the website.
Certain fonts may not be visual to some users because they might not have installed it on their Windows. They would have to first download the font and install it before being able to see the text that is written with that font style. This however is not the case for the latestdvd9 website, because they only use fonts that can be read by every computer and that are pre-installed on all Operating Systems.
Suggestions for Improvements
I would suggest the website to do just a few little improvements for their colours and fonts, which would be to change the background fill of a few headings, as I have shown above. This is because you can not really read the light green text in a green background fill colour. Also the website could be improved by perhaps adding more overall colour to make the website a lot more attractive and not as boring as it is now. Currently I believe that it seems rather like a simple and boring website, which did not really put in any effort in making it really attractive.
I think that these are the only improvements, which the company could make for its website to make it more user-friendly and easier to read and use.
Terms and Conditions of Purchasing
Before a customer finishes its purchase and payment for a DVD, they will have to accept the Terms and Conditions of the website, which are surprisingly short in this case. Normally they are of long texts, which is not the case for this website.
Latestdvd9 saves the IP address for Fraud Prevention and Investigation. Therefore it can tell you that the customer has agreed to the Terms and Conditions because they can find you using your IP and if you have purchased a product you have automatically agreed to the Terms and Conditions of Purchasing, which in fact only state the following:
Your IP address is logged for Fraud Prevention and Investigation: XX.XXX.XXX.XXX
Fraud will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
How successfully does the site meet its objectives
I believe that the website meets its objectives only to certain extend, but not fully. The main objective, which is to sell latest DVDs, is fully met by the website, because I have checked and found out that only 1-3 days after a film is released in the United States cinemas, it already appears on this website for sale. This clearly shows that they are updating their website and database and add new films every single day throughout the year.
Secondly, the website also allows customers from all around the world to buy the products, but they will have to bear in mind the postage costs. This is done very well, because there are not many websites that sell products to the whole world, such as latestdvd9.com. I believe that this is a huge advantage for the business, because this way they will get a lot more customers.
The negative point on the other hand is that the website only sells Hollywood films, with only a few exceptions. As the name of the website is LatestDVD9.com and it is not stated anywhere on the website that it only sells Hollywood films, it should offer films from other film industries such as Bollywood. This could also be a huge difference for the website, because there are many people who prefer watching Bollywood films, which does not only include people from South Asia, but even from Western Countries.
Suggestions for Improvements
I would suggest the website starts adding and selling films outside Hollywood, because this would increase their sales by a huge amount. This change would also provide the website with customers from different parts of the world, such as South Asia and the United Kingdom, as there are many people, who understand and regularly watch those films. This change could be introduced slowly with first only selling most popular Bollywood movies and then moving on to selling more and more movies from Bollywood.
How usable and accessible is the site?
Usability
The website is very easy to use because there are not many buttons and topics on the webpage. The easy and simple navigation bar at the top and the Category area underneath that make it easy for the customer to go wherever they want to. Also in the main logo area at the very top of every page on that website there is a search bar, which customers can use to search for a movie by entering their Title, Director or main actors. The browsing for a film is very easy because the customer can search for a movie in a lot of different ways – using the film title, director of the film, film stars, or category of the film.
The website also includes the very popular FAQs (Frequently asked Questions), which answer most of the questions that a customer might be asking. This is also a very important and useful technique because if a customer wants to find out about a certain thing, he will not have to write an email to the owners of the website and wait a few days (depending on how much mail they get) to get the answer, but simply go to the FAQs and find the answer there if it has been asked by somebody before. On the right is a screenshot showing a part of the Frequently Asked Questions section. The answers can be found by clicking on any question, which will redirect the user to the answer of that question.
Suggestions for Improvements
In the usability of this website I do not think there is anything that the website can improve, apart from, as mentioned earlier, the Frequently Asked Questions section. I believe there is nothing else to improve, because the business managed to create a very simple and easy to use website with hardly anything, that could be difficult for the customer in using it.
Accessibility
The website does not have the opportunity to enlarge its text so that visually impaired people can easily use the website and read the text without major problems. As this service is not available on latestdvd9.com, it means that people that can not read the text because of eye problems will less likely to be the customers of this business. If visually impaired people wanted to use the website and be able to read the text easily, they would have to increase the text size using the Browser settings, which however could also require someone else to do this for them.
The website uses simple and basic colours, which make the reading and recognition of text easy. The background stays either white or very light grey on every page. A black font colour on this light background colour makes it very easy to read the text. Other main colours that are used by the website are light blue and especially light green for the background of certain buttons and subheadings.
After having tested the website in four different Internet browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari) I have found out that all its features work perfectly on all four of these without the need of any add-on. This makes it easy for new customers to use this site because they will not need to wait to install the plug-in before starting to use the website.
In order to use the website properly I would recommend a minimum screen resolution of 14” because this makes it possible to see the whole width of the page without having to scroll horizontally, but only vertically. If however someone with a smaller screen, which is less likely, wants to use the website, he can do this, which will however be a little more difficult, but still without any major problems. The problems might be that you will not be able to see all the contents at once or the text would be harder to read.
Suggestions for Improvements
The website could improve in this section by firstly adding the opportunity for visually-impaired people to enlarge the text by clicking on a button at the bottom or top of the page. Apart from that I think there is nothing the website could improve in the accessibility, because it does not use many features and can therefore be used by anybody on any kind of browser.
What sort of customer experience does it offer?
The website is a really boring one, which does not include any special features, which would make a customer wanting to buy products over and over again. I do not see any such thing, which really attracts customers. The prices for the films are all set and they are hardly ever reduced or changed, which shows that the website does not want to make any special offers even on special occasions such as Christmas or Easter. To me it seems that the website is only updated by adding new films to it, but not by any other way.
The prices are an important factor, which is a huge drawback for this website. The main reasons are that the price for each DVD is very high, whereas these can be found in the local store for much cheaper. The main problem is caused by the delivery costs. These are in most cases more than the actual price of the product. This is one possible reason why I believe that the business is also not performing really well.
There is a section called CONTACT US, where customers who have any questions or remarks can add these there. The problem is that there is only one way of communication, which is using E-Mail. The customer is not able to call up the business if they want to find an answer to a question very quickly and also there are no post details, which could also be important.
I have also tested this service of E-Mail contacting this website and I was honestly really disappointed. I asked a question about the business and did not get any response for more than 4 weeks. I did not even get a confirmation E-Mail telling me that the message has been received. After one week of no response I sent the same E-Mail again and again almost everyday, but I did not get any answer at all. This is really disappointing for a customer, who wants to know about something and is not able to contact the business in any way at all.
The problem also appears for the text size. Customers who need bigger font sizes are not able to increase their fonts, without zooming into the page, because this option is not available on the website. This is also a drawback because this means that people who are visually impaired, are not able to use this website because they won’t be able to read the text properly.
However, one further advantage is that the website uses a secure server, which keeps it very safe and those customers who know about it, are more likely going to visit this website because they will know that the details they are entering are not watched by any hackers currently (unless their own PC has been hacked).
But as a whole I am still not satisfied with the customer experience the website is offering.
Overall Evaluation
I am now going to evaluate my overall impression of the website and what I think has been managed very well and where there could be some improvements. Furthermore I will be comparing the key features of this website to other transactional websites that I have seen on the Internet and also suggest improvements that could be made on latestdvd9.com.
I found that browsing for DVDs has been made very easy on the website, because there are so many ways you can use to search for products, which include the criteria such as Title, Director and Actors. Another way the customer can search for a film is by looking in the according category, which can be done very easily using the wide number of categories available. The results to any kind of ways to search are also given very clearly and in a very user-friendly way. You get a list of all films that match the criteria including the picture of the film’s front cover.
Also there is the facility for customers to browse for films if they do not really have a plan, which DVD to buy. In that case they can simply go to the TOP BOX OFFICE section, which includes the top 20 films of the week, where unsure customers can more easily find out which film to buy, which I believe is a very good method to help customers, that just go to that website without having done any planning before.
After having investigated the website I found out that the range of products is impressively wide. You can find almost every video of the past 10 years and the most popular ones of before. Also there are a few Bollywood films available, but only the most popular ones and not many of them, which I believe is not really positive, because the website does not mention anywhere that this is a Hollywood movie selling website. As it is a general DVD selling website, it should also offer Bollywood films.
The product description on the other hand is done very well, and includes all main details about every film. The problem with this is again that there is a five star rating system, which is however only about the video and audio quality and it is set by the company itself and not by customers, which does not really give a reliable and accurate image of the film as this could be biased. There should rather be a rating system, which the customers set. This would give a more reliable image to new customers.