Borders Offers Inspiration, But Still a Beta Experience

Recently, I had a chance to dig around the beta version of Borders Stores' new site and I was pretty intrigued. A huge improvement over the current site with lots of  relevant, engaging content  loaded with goodies like Borders Media, Borders Book Club, playlists, and Rewards and Perks. The design is clean and fresh. And, many of the experiential aspects of the site were well done, but a few of core interactions need some fine-tuning.

On the homepage, there is a fun feature zone called Magic Shelf. (I wonder if that was one of those internal, placeholder names that accidentally made it to the site. What do you think?) The Magic Shelf consists of many shelves for things like New Books, New Music, and a personalized area for more timely items, like the "Remembering Pavarotti" shelf. Cool idea.

Unfortunately, the Magic Shelf is unintuitive to navigate (the browsing cues don't show up until you sniff them out with your mouse, and what I realized later was a navigational chart isn't clearly defined or explained). While I appreciate the bookshelf metaphor, it doesn't give you any help reading (like enlarging) the titles, so it's much like standing in front of the bookshelf in the store, except I'm standing 10 feet away.

I also like the Guest Shortlists--lists of book, music or movie recommendations from famous people. Celebs like Stephen King, Anna Quindlen, Barack Obama, Beck, and Art Buchwald explain why they like each title. Apparently this is a feature they've had on the existing Borders Stores' site, and after a few clicks I found myself back on it. I hope this will be fixed, because right now it leads you into a different, not-so-nice place and leaves you there.

For me, once I was inspired, I wanted the immediate gratification of purchase. Not just the ability to reserve in store (which is cool but not my preferred method of shopping for books and music). Yes, this is a beta, I know. In transition from the Amazon platform to a new one. So, my need for instant gratification wasn't met...but sounds like it will be soon!