I have some design recommendations for dealsea.com. I suggest creating more of a branded website. Currently the site is just a basic colorless site that only really presents sales from other sites and that's it on the basic level. It could use a branded color and logo scheme that draws the eyes into the sales area. Secondly it would benefit to make the site more of a user experience. By making their blog and product reviews more interactive and creative the company would grow their value for the customer. On an interactive point, the site could allow customers to hunt and post good deals. If the posting is approved they could gain a credit towards future purchases of items found on the site. They might also, and finally, track the user experience prior to changes and after so that they may be able to see areas that were strengthened after the changes. Although dealsea recieves a high mark on websitegrader.com, these changes would allow for the company to gain more value for their customers.
Your observations support this point: a website could indeed grade high and still be a sucky site. Just because a site gets a 99 does not mean the site is optimized for the user! My company's site has a big graphic on prime real estate on the home page. Search engine bots hate this feature, but in our studies, people go to our site after they review our literature or by referral from one of our members. General search is not as important, since we have a narrow target market and highly specialized service. People come to our site to verify or determine our credibility, so we designed our site to achieve this, and NOT worry too much about search results. (www.sourceonealliance.com)
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