Solo Stove

Solo Stove is a brand that specialises in selling outdoor fire pits and portable camping stoves. Their webpage is e-commerce and has the main purpose of promoting their items and gaining sells. This requires the webpage to have easy navigation to finding their ideal product and enough information to convince a sale.   

The target audience of solo stove is mainly citizens of the USA, and predominantly around the ages 45-54. As a US based brand, their reach for customers is within the country with only a small percentage abroad. The website is accessible for international customers, as you can turn the website in a mode for your country in the top right-hand corner, symbolised by a flag. This helps to convert their prices into the local currency.

The pop-up appears as soon as you enter the page. The incentive helps to attract potential buyers as the offer to get ‘£10 off your first purchase’ is emphasised in bold. In smaller copy, the condition is stated, making it less likely to be acknowledged or considered. The user may feel urgency to get this reward due to it being communicated through a temporary pop-up. 

Unlike eBay and Amazon which sell a variety of different brands and products, solo stove is a brand. This causes the webpage to be more promotional towards bestsellers. This is demonstrated in the call-to-action ‘Shop fire pits.’ The page is catered towards their market, unlike the eBay logo which symbolises an endless variety of products, the solo stove font is simpler but illustrated with an orange fire. The house style consists orange throughout the page, especially for emphasising elements, to tie the focus of the fire from both the main image and the logo together. The main image shows a couple, presumably in a hiking/camping location using their fire pit to keep them warm. 

On an e-commerce webpage, the search bars are prominent and conventionally can be found in the right-hand corner. The shopping basket is a necessary feature for e-commerce as it allows the user to check out the items they may have added to purchase, due to this it’s a vital feature to be easily found. 

The webpage utilises multimedia elements consistently throughout the page. The video is effective as it offers the customers a further insight to how useful the oven is and allows them to visualise the product in a real-life scenario. 

Different forms of interactive elements are used in all the different pages of the website. When advancing onto a selection of the shopping catalogue, an image of the compartments of the product is shown on an empty background. This helps to show all the elements of the product and communicate clearly what you can expect once purchasing. As the user hovers over this image, it switches to a secondary image of the product in action, creating a stronger visual and differentiating the products purposes from one another. 

   

The website uses a large amount of white space. The products are displayed in a grid of four a row. This allows the images to be more prominent and enlarged on the page. However, except for the title of the product and the price, there’s no copy. This avoids an overcluttered design and the information can be acquired through clicking the item. This leads users to look in the product further to find out more, instead of scrolling past because they’ve already been informed about the size, etc. Due to this, the customer will be focused on one item at a time if they look further.  

The navigation bar is consistently accessible near the top of the page. The overall categories of the different products they provide are listed in this bar, and once you hover over one a list of more specific types is laid out. This helps to narrow the search of the user and be more aware of what they are looking for. Instead of overwhelming the customer with all these different options, they've been organised under headings to create order and an even more simplistic search.