New Vodafone Online Mobile Phone Shop Goes Live

Vodafone have just rolled out their new UK online mobile phone shop; shop.vodafone.co.uk. A simpler looking web site that gets rid of the intricate curves and diagional lines of the previous site. No doubt the intention is to reduce download times by removing unessessary graphics and streamline the shopping process.

The uncluttered home page points you where you want to go with space to promote some of there latest or best selling deals such as the new BlackBerry Storm and mobile broadband USB modem.

The search is a bit confusing and seems to search the entire site. A search for N96 returned no results. This could be a short coming of the database (some databases by default do not search words of three characters or less). A search for Nokia bought up a text link to the Nokia E90 and then a lot of legal/T & C/dissability pages. My expectation was to see a list of Nokia handsets with thumbnails - perhaps Vodafone need to break the search in to site search and shop search.

The best way to get around the site is to browse the handsets or tariffs and not via a search. Once you do this you can find the handset you are looking for and the rest of the process is pretty seamless.

I chose the Nokia N96 by browsing the Mobile Phones section. The product details page gives me a good all round overview of the phone with Image Gallery, Features and Specs. Some of the images in the gallery were off centre and trying to do some animation effect - perhaps it works properly in Firefox but not quite right in IE 7.

Next you select and view plans. They are presented in an easy to understand way giving you information on the monthly fee, minutes, texts, contract length and handset cost - everything you really need to know and keeping it simple.

Select the plan you want and you then get a list of add ons (of course - the upsell). Select one and it gets added to your package. At this point I got a bit confused, I think they need a checkout button - instead you need to click on 'View Basket' and only then you get a 'Checkout Button' - just one extra step you could do without. Also I found clicking the back button on my browser would sometimes reset the process so I didn't have a phone in my package.

After that you go through the checkout process. I didn't proceed any further at that point but presume you will be asked for all the usual credit check, account, personal and payment details. If you do place a real order on the site or want to share your views and experiences please post them in the comments below.

Visit the new Vodafone online mobile phone shop and tell us what you think...