Any constructive feedback will be greatly appreciated! www.dragthebag.com Thanks guys, looking forward to reading your comments!
If you wouldn't mind elaborating a little bit more, I'd be interested in hearing more about which aspects of the navigation you found confusing. Landing in front of stores or going up and down between floors? Thanks!
It's a fairly complex concept from a beginner's point of view. Maybe a short introduction using modal windows for first time visitors? Once you understand how it works it's a great concept. Well done.
I love this site. It took me 10 seconds to figure out what I needed to do first. I think that by having the arrow pointing up the escalator, and also seeing the words "Drag the Bag" causes a bit of conflict, so I did not know which one I was supposed to do first. You can correct this by starting the page in the center of the bottom floor so that the escalator is not shown as yet and then the user would move the bag. Personally, I love it. I didn't mind figuring out what to do first because it was fun. So its really not much of a problem what I spoke about above. One thing which you should correct though, when you click the title of a store you are prompted to enter the store. When you select yes it opens in a new window, but the prompt on the mall is not removed. So if you could find a way to exit the prompt box when the user selects either yes or no, that should be excellent. Are you using Jquery for this? I realize its not flash.
Thanks for this review Rankx! I think that the two things that you pointed out are right on. We've actually had comments about the prompt box not going away so I know that is something that should and will definitely be adjusted. Also when arriving I was thinking that the arrow and the ticker and the finger all going at once was a little much so we are going to evaluate that whole situation as well and see what the best option is. We have thought about starting it in the middle so I think your thought process is right on with ours. Also, yes our days of flash are long gone now haha... It's made with CSS, JavaScript and HTML, no jquery or libraries. Thanks for taking the time to review it, very helpful input from you!!
Thanks for your input! A this time we don't plan on making any major changes only tiny tweaks that would help improve the site overall. We are pretty confident that the way the navigation is laid out is about as straight forward as in can get and we don't intend on adding any extra features that would take the visitor away from just getting right into it. Totally appreciate your feedback and compliment though!
Truly Amazing! I've been doing web development for 4 years and I would never thought all of that could be possible to do using Javascript, HTML and CSS alone. I thought surely you had to use Jquery or some similar library. Very good work!
Very cool concept. After playing around... I think you need one of those boards that shows all the stores in the mall... so people are not "walking" around aimlessly. (maybe even have a transport button on that which will take them to their desired store). After a minute the novelty wears off and I am wondering how you get people back to your site over and over again. Maybe you need to have some special things that they end up "walking by" such as coupon offers or other discounts. Something they can simply click on as they walk by. Make it fun and worthwhile to "walk the mall"
Hey, thanks for your review! You actually made me realize something that I should have pointed out earlier. We actually do have a directory designed and we are trying to implement that this week. You will access the directory through a button we'll place somewhere by the ticker and it will incorporate a layout of the mall so you can see which floor is what and easily access a specific floor from there, and it will also incorporate a list of the stores so you can easily access a specific store from there as well. I actually read a study where real malls have found that walking around aimlessly actually leads to more sales, lol, BUT we do want to offer a convenience to our experience as well which is why we concluded as you have that we need a mall directory. On your second point, I also love that you pointed this out because its another thing we are definitely aware of! After we implement the directory this week we are going to start discussing options of a coupon book of some sort. We think this will definitely increase visitors incentive to return and also gives the site a reason to have updated, relevant content to go through. We've also come up with some other ideas... an arcade with a few simple games maybe? People have suggested a food court as well which we think is a good idea but not necessarily much different from the other floors. Anyway, great feedback from you and we totally agree "fun and worth while" is the goal!
Thanks for the compliment! It was all the years of flash development that actually translated perfectly and got us to this point.
A quick update! First, I noticed that there have been 100 views to this post but only three reviews... What gives?! Seriously though, I thought maybe asking a more direct question would be more entertaining rather than asking you to do a general review of the site. So as browntwn pointed out above, our mall needs a good reason for people to come back, I'd love to hear some random suggestions on what features you could see being incorporated into the mall to make it more engaging and less novelty. Here's a link (I don't think the one in my first post was clickable) -- http://dragthebag.com/
Hi there, looks really nice and an excellent job revamping an old concept in such a good way. Since the future is web and smart device this is a perfect tactic to focus on. From my point of view it took a bit long to load initially as I am living in the boonies and have a mifi at 3g for my web access. Not an issue that is really easy to overcome with this concept though, and it is still very functional and not all that slow for those that go in with the desire to use it. Like I said, really like it and you have done a good job accomplishing it... Just wanted to add and not create a second post.... Have you tried this out on mobile to see how it works and translates yet? May even make a great app to get it doing the right thing the way that you want for that media
It looks pretty cool, shame that when you enter the store your actually directed to their website via an affiliate link, still a pretty good idea though.
Hello and thanks for the comments! We know that loading time is an issue and are working towards cutting down on it. Hopefully we will be able to make that change soon. Also, as far as mobile, it was designed to and currently does run on iOS and Android. Right now it's more of a web app that has not been packaged up to be in a mobile App Store but its definitely a future goal.
Thanks for the comment Nicholas. We are built up around the affiliated business model but we actually have several more features that we will be rolling out to make the mall more fun and engaging while offering more than just a directory of stores.
You have listed a great selection of stores there. As to the affiliate links, that is an excellent idea to start off with. Is that the extent of the business model besides adding other things to do? Seems that the concept really lends itself to the actual mall business model and selling(Leasing) the store front(ad or link) straight to their website or most recent marketing ads. That would actually increase and stabilize your monthly revenue. You can then increase that revenue by having featured ads etc in specific areas just like in a real mall, even the possibility of creating cart space in the front of the arcades or whatever you have planned as extras. Of course this is all dependent on traffic generation, but as I see it the concept is EXTREMELY marketable as mentioned above and then there is no reason do rely on affiliate links and having such a fluctuating and hard to dependably predict income source. Third party investors would likely jump at the opportunity to help get it started in this market, so many companies are closing down their brick and mortar stores and relying more heavily on their web markets making it a great time to pounce on it.
I personally feel that trying to impart conventional conventions into the new era of shopping is counter productive.