i had a look about last night. in my opinion:
PRO
shipping prices - cartons of wine bottles aren't exactly light weight, and they aren't small either. DW8 doesn't have a warehouse local to me, yet when i priced up a carton of wine delivered to me in suburban Perth it was $13 in shipping. compared to what Auspost charges to send a parcel across the country that was quite reasonable in my opinion.
shipping profiles - under my login details i was able to add and save various shipping addresses. it was then quite easy to choose which address i wanted to utilise at the time of purchase.
site navigation - the site was fairly easy to navigate and intuitive. the menu system was quite easy to understand, and multiple search options were offered in the main menus.
CON
lack of known items - Cant say i saw any items available that were instantly recognizable to me. recognizable brands are a key metric for consumers, they subconsciously use the info around these items to form opinions about your offerings. one item used in this vein by the main three supermarkets is bananas. Australian consumers know the expected price and quality level for bananas in their local area, having cheap bananas in your store creates an idea of good pricing across the store, expensive bananas creates a perception of expensive pricing across the store. not having bananas leaves the customer not knowing whether to proceed, as they cant gauge if your store will be a waste of their time or not. By not having a comparative bunch of known items, DW8 becomes hard to judge in terms of shopping value.
low number of offerings - I'm in WA, while we may not have a DW8 warehouse locally, there still really isn't many items available on the site. why would i shop online with DW8 when I can use Dan murphy/first choice/graysonline etc which have a much better selection.
lack of shipping info - to get a price on shipping you have to proceed deep into the checkout pages. when shopping you select which shipping profile you wish to use, so why cant the predicted shipping price be displayed on the item page when you make your selection?
loading problems - I had issues loading the check out pages. I could easily select what I wanted and how much, but when it came to checkout, there were issues loading the final pages. ironically this is where the shipping info is contained, so it took me a while to work out what the shipping prices were like.
overall I would give my experience a 6/10. the site was easy to navigate, shipping prices were decent, however loading problems, and lack of offerings dragged the score down. if DW8 can add in more offerings, especially from popular brands, and fix any site loading issues to create a seamless experience then we could be onto a winner. currently though, if this is what customers experience, then I am left somewhat disheartened by the experience.
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