Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. If that’s being a human cannonball, wear a helmet. If it’s selling cool neckties online, take notes from the latest website we love.
Skinny Ties (skinnyties.com) is an online retailer with countless variations of a single product — skinny ties — and their website gets high marks for both usability and a high quality build.
EASE OF USE
The masses go online to shop. To make a sale, an e-commerce website should be functional, providing access to every product, while displaying and describing each product’s attributes clearly. Here’s how Skinny Ties measure up for ease of use.
- Sales & offers called out.It would be hard to miss the latest sales and offers, as they’re featured at the top of every page.
- Flexible product navigation.Customers might want to browse ties by style, fabric, pattern, or collections, so Skinny Ties gives every option. If you have your heart set on a yellow tie, you can even browse by colour.
- Cross-selling & popular products.They call out cross sell items and popular products, in case customers don’t know where to start.
- Positioning statement.With “Start dressing better” they let you know who they are and how they’re positioned in the market.
- Quick-check shopping cart.The shopping cart is ever-present, so shoppers can see their item count and check out at anytime. As an added touch, hovering over the cart displays a quick list of its contents.
- Clean checkout experience.The checkout experience is broken into 5 smaller steps, which is fairly standard. But Skinny Ties also shows the user where they are in the process, letting them know what to expect next, and allowing a jump back to any previous step.
PERFORMANCE
If you can’t reach a website or can’t use it when you get there, you might live your entire life without buying a skinny tie. From a technical standpoint, Skinny Ties has gone out of their way to make sure they’re a good host to shoppers.
- Screen test.This is a website that was built with mobile in mind. It is fully responsive and adapts well to all screen sizes. When you shop for ties here, you can do it from anywhere.
- Security.The site uses HTTPS, giving visitors visual cues — that reassuring padlock — that the site is secure, trustworthy, and safe to communicate with.
- HTML validation.The website’s HTML passes the W3C Markup Validation Service — the first, last, and pretty much only authority on this — with no major faults.
- Style sheets.The CSS also passes the W3C CSS Validation Service with flying colours.
- Site speed.The speed in general is very good, especially for an e-commerce site, scoring 84% in Google’s Page Speed Insights tool.
- URL forwarding.The site resolves to just one URL (https://skinnyties.com), with alternate URLs forwarding correctly to the secure address.
- Print styling.A quick print test shows that the print style sheet has been set up, rendering the printed page pretty well.
- Accessibility.The site scores well for accessibility, passing both the AChecker validator and WAVE evaluation tool with only one error and a few warnings.
RECOMMENDATIONS
What would we change? Not much! When we tested the site with mobiReady, a few minor mobile-friendly issues surface — but nothing too serious.
All in all, Skinny Ties is a pretty simple looking e-commerce site, but it does all of the important things right. In a fair fight against itself, the contest would end in a tie.