UStrendy – an unfulfilling experience

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Black Sea, Linty Fresh, T-Shirt Designers, UStrendy.com, criticism, design, retail, t-shirt fulfilment, t-shirt showcase, t-shirt store, web design

So, we’ll start with a fashion site called UStrendy.com – Steve C. a fan of our blog asked us or the heads up on this site – here’s what Steve said to us…

“You guys have really pointed me in the right direction on some of your past reviews of t-shirt fulfilment sites but I can’t make heads or tails of this one.
Thanks, Steve C.“

Well our first criticism is that UST aren’t purely a t-shirt fulfilment site although thinking about it there are plenty of those out there already! What would make the site a far more attractive prospect for designers of all kinds is a clearly laid out categorised theme, some way for both producers and consumers to track down what they want without having to sift through heaps of handbags and shoes and beaded necklaces to find it.

I’m convinced the whole site is actually based on a WordPress blog, I even recognise the theme which funnily enough seems to disappear the moment you hit their store. Looking a little more closely I’d say they’d forgotten to add a background colour or a .png there, I can just about recognise the logo faintly through the glare of an expanse of white, and all in all I’m starting to suspect that the whole site is the work of a desperately underfunded amateur with ambitions beyond their budget. The store seems to be filled with lots of products entitled “Coming Soon” and priced at $0, if they maintain those prices I’m sure there will be a lot of demand :/

Anyway, next to their voting section at this incredibly disorientating fashion blog meets store which you can find here – if you check the correct boxes you’ll be able to miss out everything but the tees and focus purely on what matters – t-shirts! Well that’s the theory anyway, in practice they also bolt on a section for models (wearing t-shirts) which doesn’t really make much sense, I mean sure if you’re attractive enough and can’t think of anything better to do, go and wear clothes for a living, but to actually focus everyone’s attention on models rather than products seems rather ridiculous.

What’s more the images themselves automatically change every few seconds, and the transition effects are also extremely ditracting, i.e they scroll up and down, disappear and are replaced by a new set. I’ve actually had to stop this review to get myself a headache pill, not the most auspicious of returns for a t-shirt blogger I know, but there’s only so much bad website layout and design I can take in one session.

When you see a t-shirt you like click it quickly or you’ll miss it, set yourself into “bad arcade game” mode and you’ll get the hang of it. If you like what you see you can vote or click for more items by the designer. So finally I found some t-shirts and as it turns out they’re not too bad! Here’s a few for your perusal…

Tora‘s portfolio is available at http://ustrendy.com/tora/portfolio/2541/tora/ – she creates rather cute t-shirt designs, a little bit girlie for most people’s tastes (even girls) but Chris badgered me to include these so take a look at her funky alien design. UStrendy have included a mini-blog for each designer which makes this overly-graphic fulfilment site a little more user-friendly, still take a look at these.

What’s most annoying about some of the designer galleries is that they insist on folding the t-shirts in half, so you can’t really get a good look at what’s on offer. Furthermore if there are no close-up images of each design it’s even more irritating. Still a very cute design from Tora.

Now things get even more confusing, I spotted a few extremely recognisable designs and at first thought – hey someone out there is ripping off Linty Fresh! Then I realised that the designer Gameyy IS Linty Fresh! So What’s going on here, is this simply a showcase site for other designers, if so then why is there a store? UStrendy needs to get their act together and decide what they want to be. Besides the confusing layout, the overbearing graphic-laden layout and the miserably small product detail images, UST have to narrow down their ambitions. If you want to be a model join a modelling site or even a “hot or not” blog will give you some idea. It’s bad enough that the mainstream corporate fulfilment sites offer printed mugs and mousemats and large scale printed artwork without UST adding to the confusion. Anyway here’s Gamey’s portfolio – http://ustrendy.com/gameyy/portfolio/3780/linty-fresh-tshirts/

This whole site needs a rethink or at least an alternative low-res layout, how about a nice simple list of all the designers for a start? Perhaps an option to avoid the graphics effects and simply lay out what you want when you want it. I would usually sign up with most sites I review to test out every aspect of their functionailty and service but this migraine is killing my will to get any more involved than I have to so onto another designer.

Black Sea has some very cool designs on offer, they’re real t-shirt store is at http://www.blackseaapparel.com but as the dutiful reviewer I am I will stay focused on the conceptual monstrosity that is UStrendy – perhaps the least user-friendly fulfilment site in history. Anyway here’s some of Black Sea’s fantastic designs at their UST portfolio – http://ustrendy.com/black-sea/portfolio/898/black-sea/

If I ran UStrendy I’d have a major rethink about what I want the site to do, if there’s a store then why isn’t it filled with rated tees and other fashion items? If not then why have it at all? I’ve found at least a few t-shirt designers who already have their own store so I’m guessing that UST’s main objective is more concerned with raising the profile of undiscovered designers, and if that’s the case what’s with all the models? Do they really need to clutter up every page with everything they can get their hands on? Even the search function has its faults, if I search for men’s t-shirts, why am I presented with Mens and Womens tees and models? This whole experience as welcome as a hole in the head. There are some good designers if you can find them and don’t mind wading through a sea of extraneous graphics. It could be worth promoting your t-shirts here, but only if you have your own store because as far as I can tell UST are either still in the early stages of development or never intend to join up all the dots and essentially offer a real fulfilment service.

I can understand Steve’s confusion now, UST appears at first glance to be a fulfilment site, bolted on to a fashion community, with its own store ready and waiting to sell items rated by the public. But once you struggle to wade through the site for a while you realise the whole thing lies disconnected and for the most part for the sake of appearances only. Let’s hope they clean up the design, remove the graphics, standardise the layouts, offer real fulfilment services for every designer and weed out each section to its own subdomain. How about Tshirts.Ustrendy.com? That would work rather well I think.

If you still want to you can sign up with the site as a fan, fashion designer, model or artist?

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