Juta takes successful e-commerce step

Juta Booksellers has earned the reputation of being a wellspring of resources for secondary and tertiary textbooks, legal and professional publications and business titles. All these products are included on the company`s (relatively) new e-commerce enabled Web site. In addition, one can browse through stationery, a selection of leisure titles and CD-ROMs.

The site is clean and well laid out, and as a result of the spartan, graphic-free design, most pages are quite quick to load.

Although it is apparent that the owners of this Web site place more stock in content value than elegant Web design, the site works well regardless.

Various options allow you to browse the bookshelves by category, search for specific titles or authors (even if you have very little to go on), and place an order for delivery by post, or to be picked up at your nearest Juta bookshop, details of which can be found elsewhere on the site. You can also check the status of your last order.

This site appears to be well designed for its target audience - the scholars, academics and researchers who need content at the touch of a button, assisted by ever-present navigation bars, but unhindered by graphic-heavy pages.

Unfortunately, once you`re in a category, and searching through sub-categories, it becomes harder to find your way back to the previous page, unless you make use of your "back" browser button.

As can be found with the brick-and-mortar equivalent, Juta stores are well stocked with titles spanning the education, legal, professional and business fields. The "leisure" categories are somewhat sparsely populated, but in all fairness, leisure reading is not the main thrust of this business.

A colleague of mine tried out the online offering in December last year. He placed his order for a copy of "Analysis and Interpretation of Financial Statements", by M Koen, JGI Oberholster and HA Van Der Laan, on 17 December, and received a fax the following day confirming the order, and informing him of a possible delay in delivery, since the book would have to be specially ordered.

In the space of a week, the book had found its way to the relevant post box, despite the usual Christmas bottleneck in the postal service. All in all, my colleague agrees, a pleasurable and hassle-free online shopping experience.