Everyone knows who HMV are, they have a store in most major cities and everyone knows their logo is the cute little dog and a grammar phone. I am not writing a review about the stores that I have been to but on their online store, www.hmv.co.uk. In the past this site has been viewed as a cheap add on to try and boost their sales a little. The website was slow and very hard to navigate through and searching, well good luck! But recently their website has had a major overhaul, which has improved it no end! This is a review about their new website.
Home Page
The first thing that hits you when you get to the homepage is that they have followed the format that the most successful webites, like Amazon, BOL etc…, have used. This is the major item that they sell are accessible via their categories. At the HMV website these categories are: Music Albums, Music Singles, Classical, Video, Games, DVD and Gifts. You can also access your area of the website, if you are a registered user, this gives you access to your order details etc… When you click on the individual sections you get a review of the latest releases in that particular section.
Searching
The search facility at the HMV website is quite good and it allows you to search on the following criteria: Artist, Title and Song. If you go to the different section like video you will get different criteria such as Title and Keywords to search on. You can also browse for the record that you are looking for by genre, such as Rock and Poop (Intentional!), Soul and Dance, Soundtracks etc… or browse videos (these are also broken down into smaller genres).
When you perform a search the results that you get are quite detailed, in that the information about the artist or the CD is quite good. The sort of information that you can get are things like the formats the album comes in, maybe a video or audio clip is available, track listing, notes or even reviews. The results are displayed in a very clear way at 20 a page, if there is a picture to be displayed then this is also displayed.
Content
The content as far as I can see is very good, okay some of the lesser known bands are not available but we can forgive them for that, or not? They have all of the new releases or the about to be released available so you could pre-order if you wish.
Ordering & Delivery
To be able to order anything from the HMV website you have to be registered with them, like most sites these days. The things that you have to give in order to register are as follows, name, address, your e-mail address (used as your username) and a password. You can redeem gift vouchers on the website, all you need to do is log into your account and type in the voucher number, and this then gives you how ever much credit.
When you are actually selecting the items, which you want to purchase, this is shown in the top right corner as number of items in your basket. When you click on this you get an overview of your order, so far, to complete the order click on the proceed to checkout button. The only thing about this website is that you have to pay for delivery, this comes at £1 for first class, £4.20 for special delivery and £5 for special courier. I have only ordered here using the first class mail and the orders appeared in just under a week, which I thought wasn’t too bad.
Prices
On the whole the HMV website is cheaper than the HMV stores but you then have to pay for delivery. This is not the cheapest place to purchase CDs or Videos and combined with a delivery charge is quite expensive compared to other websites. Reputation and selection is what you pay for.
