Cardroom Supply – Poker accessories site review

I got an email yesterday from review me telling me a review had been bought from a Poker site. At first I was disappointed as I don't like advertising gambling, but once I had read the message and checked out the site I became happier. They were actually a poker table and accessories retailer wanting comments on their site design/ reviews of their products. Unless they send me a poker table I think I will have to stick to comments on the design of the site... which is something I quite enjoy doing.

So here we go - one review for the design of Cardroom Supply

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed when I visited is that currently the site is fairly generic looking. Maybe this is a good thing but I would be inclined to stylise things more giving a poker theme to proceedings. In my opinion a website should reflect what it's selling - Amazon being generic is fine since it sells so much but a site dedicated to poker should at least be green (to match the baize you see).

Navigation

Second thoughts were that the navigation was confused and messy - I would be inclined to simplify it considerably since I feel that too many links confuses more than it helps, especially when they are spread around the page as these are. The top tabs should be changed - the home tab could be removed and the logo made clickable (which it should be anyway), "about us" should be put somewhere less prominent, and info should be renamed to help/ FAQ since I don't think it's clear what it is for.

There are lots of products and product categories so I would change the links there so that there are just four product categories, with drop down links popping out of each (suckerfish dropdowns would be good here) detailing the subcategories. These sections should also have their own pages to give a category overview and some additional information about each individual category.

In terms of the actual content, the items being sold, I would be inclined to add more white space to separate/ differentiate them more.

On the homepage I would shift the welcome message to the bottom of the page and get the products higher up the page (they are what you are selling). I would also pick out a single product that could have more space devoted to it as a featured product (maybe changing each week).

Changes to the site

There is an articles section which has 1 poker article within. This article has been Dugg, and quite successfully by the looks of things, and it would be worth writing more of this sort of thing - maybe even going so far as adding a blog. The idea behind this sort of content would be to get people to spread the word about the site.

Summary

Having looked into Cardroom Supply in a reasonable amount of detail I can see that there is a lot of potential for a good site there (assuming you want poker stuff). It has lots of elements that work quite well wrapped up in what I think is a slightly shabby package. I certainly don't think a total redesign is required, but a simple re-align would go along to improving things.

Now tell me I've missed something. What's your take on the site?