Competative Analysis

Nokia Music Store (http://www.music.nokia.co.uk/)
Additional facilities:
• Clips of music
• Steaming of music - monthly fee
• Search option
• View album art (front cover)
• Free track of the week

Pros
• Clean, bright colours
• Very visually orientated
• Obvious search option
• Easy to navigate - List of genres, charts, playlists, etc.

Cons
• Quite compact design - too many images together can be a bit confusing
• Could be confusing for new users

The Nokia Music Store was the first of the web sites I visited and I found it to be very good. It used very simple and bright colours on the page but at the same time used vast amounts of album artwork to bring more colour and vibrance into the site.

I found the obvious search engine to be very helpful as with the huge amounts of music available for download finding what you want merely by browsing would be a very complicated task. If a user was wishing to simply browse however the navigation of the Nokia Music Store site is very simple and uncomplicated with obvious categories.

The biggest problem with the Nokia Music Store site is the vast amount of information it packs into its pages. Although there is quite a large amount of negative space around the page the main design seems to be very cramped allowing very little room for features to breath. This can make things confusing to find as everything appears to blend together, and to a new user this may want them to click off the web site as soon as they come on it.

Mbop Megastore (http://www.mbopmegastore.com/)
Additional facilities:
• Search option
• Clips of music
• View album art (front cover)

Pros
• Clean, bright colours
• Very visually orientated
• Very spacious design (though some parts are too constrictive)

Cons
• Some text sections are forced to scroll individually in very tight boxes
• Complicated navigation - 2 separate methods of viewing genres
• Awkward for new users to understand

The Mbop Megastore web site is very similar to the Nokia Music Store site. Again it uses very clean and bright colours allowing for the album artwork to bring colour to the pages and it has a very obvious search facility for people wanting to search for exact music.

Unlike the Nokia site however, Mbop’s navigation is very complicated. The most confusing aspect I found was that there is actually 2 ways of viewing the genres on the site. This can make users very confused and make it very awkward for them to find their way around.

The navigation isn’t the worst thing about the web site however, the worst thing is the large amounts of space the site leaves but then cramps certain things up. By this I am referring to the 2 scroll boxes on either side of the page. The box on the left hand side contains important information regarding the web site such as what the site is actually about. This information should be more predominant or at the very least users should not have to scroll almost constantly to read it.

Connect (http://www.connect-europe.com/)
Additional facilities:
• Clips of music
• Search option
• View album art (front cover)

Pros
• Animated clips catch the eye
• Easy to navigate
• Clean, bright colours
• Very visually orientated

Cons
• Very cramped design
• Could be confusing for new users

The Connect website was quite different in some respects but at the same time had quite a few similarities.

Once again it was very visually orientated, probably one of the most visually orientated web sites I looked at. One of the best things about the visual aspect of this web site was it used a lot more animation than the other sites which really captures your attention.

It is also once again very easy to navigate with yet another obvious search box and obvious categories down the sides of the design, although some of the tabs can appear to be a little hidden at times and are easy to miss.

The Connect web site also once again uses quite a basic and plain colour scheme, but unlike the other web sites it adds in its own, quite bright and bold, corporate colours as headers of categories, articles etc. instead of relying solely on the album artwork.

Bleep (http://www.bleep.com/)
Additional facilities:
• Clips of music
• Search option
• View album art (front cover)

Pros
• Spacious design
• Good colour scheme

Cons
• Complicated navigation system
• Images quite small, could be difficult to see
• Text very small, could be difficult to see

The Bleep web site is very different to the other music stores I looked at. Unlike the other music stores Bleep uses quite a spacious design in comparison to the other sites. It also uses it’s own very bright and colourful colour scheme, as apposed to the very plain and somewhat boring colour schemes of the other sites.

As the Bleep site uses less album artwork than the other web sites this is not necessarily a bad thing as it brings colour to the areas of the site that are lacking, however as the images are so small on the site it could be awkward for users with disabilities (e.g. poor eye sight, colour blindness) to distinguish between the artwork and background.

I also found Bleep to have a very complex navigational system, with no set area of navigation in place. The most obvious navigational system is at the top of the page but this is even confusing in it’s self (with both a link for the FAQ and a Help section)