I came across the new DV8 website recently whilst checking out belfast studio Front’s portfolio. I have a passing interest in DV8 - I used to work for the former owners before Eastwoods Clothing bought the rights to use the name. Anyway, I was keen to see how the site would end up because I really liked what Eastwoods had done to the DV8 brand and I have a high opinion of Front. My first impressions were pretty good the site complimented the brand, some innovative use of flash, non-offensive music and it was kept nice and simple. But as I used it I hit some problems and saw some things that simply didn’t add up. First off I was confused - did it sell online or not? I wasn’t sure, I saw a little window that mentioned ‘online offers’ so I searched around but after a fruitless search concluded that no I couldn’t buy. I was also struck by the product catalogue - the site gives great prominence to the clothing catalogue (without an eCommerce facility presumably the user will see something and go offline to DV8 and buy it) which shows this seasons latest and greatest but I noticed a problem. In any eCommerce venture I’ve been involved in - product photography has always presented a problem, its vital to sell the product but its also expensive and time consuming. With the DV8 site the product shots have a spraycan background; I might be wrong here but I guess that means some poor bastard has to photoshop each image to remove the background. If the site sold online the photography costs would be hard to justify but in a catalogue site where they’re hoping for users to get up and head down the street to buy, its money wasted. It just doesn’t work and I’d be surprised if it isn’t revised within the next year.

The other problem I had is with Flash - when I talked about Clockwork Orange last week I commented on the search indexing problems inherent with Google, which this site also suffers from. In addition to this, when viewed at 800×600 and with extra toolbars the site isn’t fully viewable due to the nifty screen filling effect employed (which works great on my big monitor). I wonder wether the desire to design a cool flash site has overshadowed usability. In a way I respect the attempt here to produce something innovative and different but I just can’t see that it’s been implemented properly and as ever I doubt it’ll have the cash register ringing.