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Busse Design Desconstructs Gateway.com
By Joy Busse, CEO & President - Busse Design USA
Reprinted from Internet World, April 2002
Gateway stores have popped up all over the country recently because Gateway knows that American consumers want affordable computers. With that knowledge, Gateway has secured a large market share and created a brand image reflecting trust and value and adding a touch of sophistication to even its "lowest price tag" products.
Its Web site efficiently integrates Gateway's brand. The top and bottom of the page present the cow pattern, keeping graphical download to a minimum. This makes all pages very fast, a positive reflection of its products. The overall functionality and quality of the online service is also satisfying. The site is clearly structured about product purchase. By offering users different ways to get to products, by aiming product categories at specific user needs, Gateway misses no opportunity to entice users to explore its products.
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From an information architecture standpoint, the site has a few minor problems. For one, the navigational items on the main black bar might appear to first-time users as a breadcrumb navigation bar, which follows users around and grows as they navigate into the site. The arrow-like icons before each link cause this misconception. They are actually the site's primary (global) navigation links.
As such, the site's overall structure can confuse users, especially because SUpport appears twice on most pages (at the top right and in the black bar). The Support links should not be presented in the black bar with other global navigation items unless it behaves exactly the same. To highlight this area to ensure easy customer access to Support, Gateway should make it a more prominent featured content area, such as the visually differentiated "Find a Store" on the home page or the "sales Help" area on the product pages. The "Products" and "Services" areas have a similar problem, by sharing the same left-hand sub-navigation area,so they are no longer two global navigation areas but one. ALthough this issue won't cause major usability problems, it will confuse some users.
The area needs the most improvement is the search functionality. Not only is the user unable to execute a simple search from every page because a search box is not provided, but the results themselves are more than disappointing. Even when using the advanced search functionality, the returned results are only useful if the searched keyword itself was already exceptionally targeted. Something that, all things considered, is not a given. Once again, knowing who the audience is in Gateway's case, a natural language search engine is the least one would expect from a company with a mission as big as becoming the customer's friend in the business.
Most users, however, would probably not even notice some of these issues, which are generally outweighed by the ease of use, availability of information , and overall positive "buying kind of feeling" one would get from this site.
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