I’m not sure if this website is the same one I’ve seen 1-2 years back so if you do know of any other that uses the same business model, do update us on it. Getting down to a woot! review now, it’s a simple and straight to the point website offering a single item for sale everyday and once the day is up, the product will be taken down.
Yeah, I know it sounds something familiar that I too have heard before either in the past Computimes (NST: Tech&U now) or The Star: InTech. woot! has definetely come a long way since I last visited them. The last time I saw it, it was selling a G-Shock type watch and at the moment of viewing, it was selling off a projector.
The website has very strong points for its business model but I also noticed a weak spot on their website. So let’s find out what they are.
woot!s layout is to the point but I find certain things affecting its efficiency. For instance, the sponsor bar on top sticks out like a sore thumb and placing ‘be a woot sponsor’ below the bar makes the space very claustrophobic like.
The homepage definetely fits the woot! goal and aim of the website, which is to sell their products. All the most important details required to a customer (techy stuff in content area) is placed prominently beside the large thumbnail. If you’d not like to buy the product and read the ‘review’ by some of the members who bought it, there’s a link to the comments. That link brings you to the community or forums.
The other thing I’m realling liking about the homepage is the option to view the product stats. The product stats tab is part of the driver for purchasing this product. It’s alluring details of how many customers purchased the product to the experience of the customer is all there.
The one weakness I find with the landing page is their login that’s hidden at the corner. Probably a boxed or colored yellowish-orange background would bring out the login better or maybe making an introductory bar to explain that you must be a member to purchase the product. Yes, you must be a member before you can purchase one, another weakness of the website.
The website navigation is defined clearly and besides its selling point, the woot! community is no tiny family. They’ve few thousand posts already and the community is kept simple.
Though the front of the website looks like a weblog, it’s not. There’s a stand alone blog section.
If you’re really interested in woot! they’ve got a huge ‘what is woot?‘ section ready. Seeing all the text jam packed together really scared me a little there not to mention I’m only a first time ‘customer’.
Discovering woot! again from the Adsense newsletter is great because the case study said their monetization was improved 4x or 10x. That really made me think why my older blog is generating all the Adsense instead of this one. But I’ll leave that to another discussion.
So have a look at woot! and share your points that I might’ve missed out. :)