12.09.2008

Site Critique: Metamorphoses Temps de Fille

http://www.metamorphose.gr.jp/english/

Ignoring any poorly translated text, many Asian sites have a distinct visual style. They tend to be crowded with content and use much brighter colors in unforgiving quantities. Metamorphose: Temps de Fille can only be described as "pink," similar to Hello Kitty. It is another clothing site I found while researching subculture fashion. Lolita is a style which originated in Japan and, for many youth, become a way of life. All will tell you very quickly it has nothing to do with the book. It lauds innocence and femininity found in Victorian sensibilities and elegance. The clothing trademark is bell-shaped dresses, buckled shoes, knee socks, and bows. It is filled with black (kurololi), white (shirololi), and pink. There are many subcategories like the playfulpunkloli, the dark gothloli, and the kimono-wearing waloli. This review focuses on the English site.

The home page captivates viewers immediately with a slideshow of the latest designs. The main menu lies to its right, but not all the labels make sense. "New Items" is self-explanatory, but “Go! Go! Lolita-chan!” could be anything. Annoyingly, “Contact Us” opens the default mail client. Upon entering the second level, the menu system moves to the left of the content. Subtle but annoying, the width of the main content pane changes from page to page, so the menu moves horizontally as users travel between sections. Luckily, the site map is a constant fixture on the menu but would be rendered unnecessary with better information architecture. The current site is shallow mainly because pages are incredibly long and require incessant scrolling. While most users do not mind this, much eye-catching content will get caught below the fold when the makers could have just created subcategories. The site map revealed something I had missed on my first exploration. The menu options had subsections. “New Items” could open up into “Winter Collection.” On the Winter Collection page, I saw what I had missed before. A submenu extends to the right of the content menu, but it is near invisible against the background.



All this navigation disappears on the “Online Shop” page, which thankfully adpts a similar layout to other online stores. The user is taken to another site with a new left menu, categorized by clothing type. Sale items conveniently have their own section, and items are searchable. However, the font choice differs, and there is no return to the home page, neither buttons nor logos.

Every aspect of this site is pink on pink. The background is their pink Victorian-inspired logo, which is repeated in pink at the head of the page. Their menu has pink buttons, which, when rolled over or selected, turn a different shade of pink. The headers are pink, Old-English-inspired, text. Other colors, sometimes used for buttons, thus look arbitrary. Copy is black, but the thin, sans-serif font can get lost against the detailed background. Images are often used in place of text for titles. This would be interesting, but the images are uncomfortably large, lack uniformity, and scream “cheap gradient.” Therefore, they automatically become the center of attention, taking the user’s eye off of the product.


Online, detail is a difficult to execute. Metamorphoses: Temps de Fille is another victim of trying too hard. Navigation is unintuitive, and if they want to sell, they must better integrate the shop page. Pink is a sensible color for this business, representing the “Sweet Lolita” style of clothing being sold. However, another color like a dark brown would make everything easier to read. Subtle touches are good, but an onslaught of varied fonts, curly lines and bright colors is not, especially when trying to highlight a product.

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