CRO Site of The Week - Early Learning Centre

 

Stepping aside from our usual CRO Site of The Week winners, this week High Position’s Marketing Manager, Rachael Bilby has crowned Early Learning Centre as winners of our weekly award. As ever, winners of this prestigious award will receive something from the HP CRO Drawer. All winners will be notified by High Position Head of CRO, James Root via twitter: @RootToMarket. Nominations can also be tweeted so please share and get involved!

 

Early Learning /Centre Logo

One of the UK’s oldest household brands for children’s toys, it is certainly a nostalgic brand from my younger days, but not one that I am quite so familiar with today. At an age where I find myself rarely surrounded by children, I am a novice when it comes to buying toys so I was pleasently suprised to find ELC caters for the savvy and not-so-savvy customers like myself! Armed with a “list” (1 x Smart Trike, 1 x Bus “That You Put Shapes In”)…  I knew what I needed to buy and put the site to the test from a ‘real-customer’ point of view.

Early Learning Centre Homepage

 

What does the site do?

A famous highstreet name, the ELC site nicely displays their catalogue of products and promotes a number of toys on the homepage with seasonal offers, bold brand icons and a number of easy-to-glance-at category images.

What does the site do well?

Helpful Toy Categories

Instead of grouping toys by what they are, Early Learning Centre has really thought about age ranges, types of play and the most popular toy types, helping adults find the perfect toy (even the less savvy ones like me!). Plus, if you know what brand of toy you’re after, the use of logos make it even easier to find what you want from the home page.

Early Learning Centre Categories

 

Super Helpful Navigation

Mirroring my previous point about the helpful homepage categories - although busy - the drop down navigation has a great “shop by learning skill” section for each category. This looks very well thought out and to me it says - “these guys really are the toy experts” - I’m sure it is a very helpful feature for both savvy parents and clueless, child-free folk like myself.

Early Learning Navigation Options

 

Easy To Filter and Clear Category Pages

So, I quickly found my way to the Smart Trikes, without needing the handy search box (which works really well by the way!) and was pleased to find a tidy page with clear images, arranged by most-popular sorting and handy “suitable for X ages” information.

Early Learning Centre Category Pages

 

Great Product Page Information and Incentives!

Once on the product pages, information is not scarce and call to actions are very user friendly!

Early Learning Centre Product Page

Stock and Delivery Information = Hassle free.

ELC Delivery Information

Award Winning Toy = Reassurance of quality.

ELC Smart Trike Awards

Info on how this is “Good for the Child” = Confidence in my choice!

Child Development Info

Loads of Reviews = Extra reassurance.

Smart Trike Reviews

FAQs = Saves me the hassle of Searching Through NetMums!

ELC FAQs

Add to Gift List/Wish List = Super handy for parents!

ELC Add to Gift List

 

Easy Checkout System

Once I had managed to find the items on my list, I head for the checkout and was pleased to see the usual information and options - Free Delivery, easy-to-update basket, plus a helpful “Phone Us If You Need Help” option. To me, this final option says that The Early Learning Centre really does want to provide the same customer care online as if you were to walk into a store and ask for help, which is refreshing for a popular High Street name. They also go on to offer “express” checkout for guest accounts with a helpful list of bullets as to why people should create an account.

Early Learning Centre Checkout

 

But, what could the site do better?

Overall the rest of my user journey was very simple and hassle free, with a straight forward payment system and the usual checkout functions a user would expect. However, no site is perfect does have a very busy feel and could do with a few CRO tests…

Make the most of reviews!

When looking at product pages the review information was brilliant. It was really in depth and the star ratings tended to be helpful as there were usually enough reviews for people to get a good idea of how popular the product is. But, I would have liked to have seen some star ratings on the category pages for easier comparion. Test It!

ELC Test Reviews

Try a Live Chat Feature

To better instill the “customer service is as good online as offline” I would like to see The Early Learning Centre test having pop up live chat - just as someone would approach a customer in store - especially a bewildered, kid-free novice like myself.

Overall The Early Learning Centre site is a fine example of how high street stores can successfully position themselves online, with customer-centric sites that (as far as I remember) reflect the feel and atmosphere of a customer experience in store.

As the winner of this week’s CRO Site of the Week, you’ve won yourself some stuff from the CRO drawer – look out for a package in the post!

cro drawer stuff

 

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