hallmark.co.uk

A few months ago, I wrote a review on a card site called moonpig. When I went to order another card from moonpig however for my sister’s birthday, I found myself looking around a little bit more. I had always stayed away from Hallmark, due to the fact that in my mind, I thought the fact that they were such a well known name, meant that I thought that they would have a very big price tag. How wrong I was? The price tag is even better than it’s competitors and it’s such a fantastic site to use.

For the moonpig review I did a while ago, I found that I wrote a lot of unnecessary information, which was very helpful, but wasn’t really needed. I will not include this within this review, everything I write about is important in my eyes and I won’t try and fill out the review with said unnecessary information.

Who is Hallmark?

Back in 1910, J.C. Hall moved to Kansas City with a vision, and then when he was based at the YMCA he started selling postcards via a mail order business. This small tiny business became probably the largest company for greeting cards in the world. The company currently sell greeting cards, gift wrappings and much much more, in not only English but 29 other languages as well in about 100 countries.

The UK version of the company did not happen until 1958 and it’s now one of the company’s biggest sellers of the cards. You will always know if you are getting a hallmark card, by the familiar crown on the back of the card with the Hallmark script. Everyone pretty much knows of Hallmark around the world now.

The Website

The website is generally kept very simple; I think the fact that they have only put a small about of information onto each page is very good. After being on websites like amazon.co.uk and even hallmark.co.uk’s competitor moonpig, I found this website to fall into what I had been taught when I learnt about website creation and that is keep it simple and you will get the audience involved a lot more. The website is kept very simple, you won’t find too much information about the site on the home page, you will have to go searching a little bit, but there’s no problems about that in my eyes.

One thing that I have noticed, was at the top left of the page, you will see the well known Hallmark logo. On most webpage’s if you click on the logo, it will take you back to the home page. This one doesn’t have a hyperlink on it at all, it just seems to be there for decoration. It was a bit shocking as I thought it was a general thing now, that websites used their logo as a hyperlink to get users back to the homepage.

The website only has five links at the top, here is my opinions on them:

Home

When you get to the home page, you will notice how simple the page is kept. They have only put as much information as they need and have kept it very, very simple and easy for people to see. Whereas most websites have a lot of links at the top or left hand side of the webpage, this one only has four main links and one My Account link.

The first thing your eye gets drawn to, to begin with when you enter the website, is the looping animation right in the middle of the page. It just shows you how to order a card from this website. It is a simple and easy to use animation, below the animation is a Find button, to the left of it, it allows you to search ‘what occasion the card is for?’ and ‘who is it for?’, it is a brilliant, easy section which allows you to search for what you want quickly.

Right at the bottom of the page you will see that they have listed only some of the card ranges that they have available. At the moment the four sections that they have Christmas, Birthday Cards, Popular Ranges and Other Occassions. They list about 6 different types of cards under these sections, it just makes it a lot easier for you to search for a specific thing. If you want to search for a Friends Card then you would scroll down to the bottom and it’s right there for you.

Cards and eCards

These links are actually two different ones but as I don’t have too much to say about either of them, I thought I’d include them in the same section. On the first page you will be able to find whatever card you want. It has a lot of types of cards listed, but if you want to search for a specific card for someone, then you can use the search section on the page which allows you to search for a specific occasion and who the card is actually for. I found this ‘search’ section to be very easy to use and I thought it was a great little addition to the website and made things go a lot smoother.

The E-cards section is brilliant, they are free, somewhere in the review I say I wasn’t sure, but I’m can’t find it at the moment. I would rather send an e-card now than a proper card, especially to my mates. Money is very tight for a lot of us now and some of these e-cards are fantastic. The selection of e-cards on this website is amazing, there are thousands and they seem to be there for any occasion. If you don’t want to spend any money on a friend, but want to let them know you’re thinking of them on a special occasion, then why not send an e-card from hallmark.co.uk.

My Account

If you want to create an account on the site and you really need to, to buy anything from the site, then you will have to enter the usual details. It’s very easy to do, it should take you 5 minutes tops to enter all of your details, get the confirmation email through and then you should be able to buy all you want from the site. If you are already a customer, then you will just need to either sign in before buying your cards, or it will ask you when you are in the process of buying cards. It’s very easy to do and will only take you a few minutes to sign up.

Different Types of Cards Available

You might hear me compare this site to moonpig quite a bit throughout this review, it I think will add a lot more depth and I think it will make the review a little bit better. Underneath the animation, you have four boxes. You will see these types of things on the moonpig website, but they do seem to work. These boxes show different kind of cards, more specialised cards to what we’re used to. You have the first box, which is Personalized Christmas Cards. These sound like a good idea, I have just had a quick glance over them and they really do look beautiful. I would love to send something like this out at Christmas, but we have such a large family that it would cost us a bomb to send everyone a personalized one.

When you get onto this section, you will find a huge range of Christmas cards which allow you to add the name of someone and I believe the ones with the camera next to ‘Select’ allow you to upload a picture to the card. I loved this little feature with moonpig and at the time I thought it was the only one, but apparently not. These cards are really lovely and I am thinking of sending some to immediate family members.

The next link is a load of cards dedicated to OK! This section allows you to create your own OK! Card, I myself don’t see the point, but I’m sure a lot of people would love this and think it’s a great idea. I think it looks a bit tacky myself and wouldn’t send something to do with OK! to my family members and friends. If you want to send one to some little kids, then you should click on the Disney link. Most of this is my personal hell, but you can create cards with Forever Friends on it, or even Pirates of the Caribbean. The rest of the cards are things like Toy Story, Power Rangers and Disney Princess and of course the obvious annoying singing Disney shows.

I believe this section is free, I can’t see a price for it at all anywhere, but it is the ‘ecard’ page that I am talking about. I have always preferred the idea of e-cards to normal cards, it means that you don’t waste any paper, and they are a lot more funnier than normal cards. The site allows you to send e-cards and it looks very easy to do.

My Experience

I have used this site twice now to order cards, I have to say I do prefer moonpig overall. The first time I ordered from this site, I ordered a card for my sister’s birthday. I did order a bit late due to forgetting about getting a card, but the site said it would get there for the 29th (sisters birthday was on the 1st). Her birthday was a Saturday and it still hadn’t turned up. It came on the Monday which was quite annoying; it made me look quite bad. My sister didn’t really care to be honest, so I didn’t complain about it to the site.

For my friend’s birthday at the end of August I decided to try them out again, this time they arrived right on time. It was perfect and my mate loved them. I think the price of postage for the card is fantastic at just 49p, it’s a little bit more than moonpig’s price which was 44p, but to be honest, if you like the card then 5p is no difference at all really.

I found the site incredibly easy to use, it was very easy to upload a picture when I wanted it, and very easy to enter all of my details and all of the information that I wanted. I found it to be one of the easiest sites I have used and I have to say in comparison, I found hallmark.co.uk to be a lot quicker and a lot easier than moonpig ever was.

Uploading pictures to the site couldn’t be easier; it takes what 10 seconds at most for a normal sized picture. Anyone with basic computer knowledge should be able to upload a picture with the help of this amazing website, it does put a smile on your love ones faces when they see a picture of you and them or something special to them on the card. It does make it very personalized in my eyes, to add a picture to a card. The first card I sent using this was to my mum and she loved it, it was a very new idea and she loved it.

Comparisons With Moonpig

For those of you who have taken the time to read this review, you will know I have compared the site to moonpig a lot. The reason for this was because they are very similar and I have used both of them in the past. Here is the comparisons to Moonpig and my opinion on which one I would recommend over the other.

The first thing we should really look at is the price.

Standard Card Price

Moonpig: £2.99 + £0.44p
Hallmark: £2.90 + £0.49 p&p

Large Card Price

Moonpig: £5.99 + £1.05
Hallmark: £5.80 + £0.75

As you can see, for the standard card price, Moonpig would charge you £3.43 and Hallmark would charge you only £3.39 for just one normal sized card. Hallmark are the cheapest, however it is only 4p. For the large card, it is pretty obvious that Hallmark is the cheapest at only £6.55 for a very large card, whereas Moonpig are a staggering 51p more. It’s not too much, but for what you get, I think Hallmark turns out to be the better site when it comes to prices.

The next thing we should look at is the website.

Both websites are very easy to use, I think however moonpig is a lot more exciting to use, but I think the site that compensates for all different types of users is Hallmark. It is a lot simpler than moonpig is and I felt it was a lot more sophisticated and it just overall came out as the better created website. I think a lot of people will find it a lot easier to use than they would if they used moonpig.

The last thing I will look at is the delivery.

I have only used moonpig once and it arrived the next day pretty much, a very good service and at the time I thought it was very cheap to use. Hallmark the first time I used it, came very late, and it actually missed my sister’s birthday. It wasn’t too much of a problem and I still used them the next time I needed a card, they arrived the next day and haven’t had a problem. All in all, I can’t really comment on the delivery too much. I did have a problem with Hallmark’s delivery the first time, but I think it had something to do with the post rather than them. I think either site delivers the cards very fast, which is what you want.

Final Opinion on the Comparison

I think that Hallmark is the better site overall, they are a lot cheaper when it comes to ordering large cards, however they don’t offer things like flowers unlike moopig does. (Sorry if this is wrong). I think that price wise you are getting a lot more from Hallmark, but for some reason, weirdly, I do prefer moonpig. It just has a better atmosphere and I think Hallmark comes off across as quite snobby in my opinion. I don’t know why, but this is my opinion. If you’re not too good with computers, then I would recommend checking out Hallmark, if you prefer a more sophisticated site I would recommend using Hallmark, if you want to save a few pennies then I recommend using Hallmark, however if you don’t really care about 4p or 50p and everything else I talked about here, then I would push forward moonpig rather than Hallmark. I just prefer them for some reason.

Final Opinion

It is a very good site and it is very easy to use. Like I said in the previous section, I myself do prefer Moonpig, but Hallmark is still a fantastic site to use. It is technically cheaper than Moonpig is and a lot simpler, but I think Moonpig has a better atmosphere and I found myself having a lot of fun choosing the different cards on that site, a lot more than I had on Hallmark.

All I can say is try both of them out and make up your own opinion, I would recommend trying to send out at least one personalized card in your lifetime, I know you can probably make them yourself, but for £3 or so, I would rather get someone else to do it for me. I was very shocked that Hallmark.co.uk was cheaper than Moonpig, I seriously thought the first time that I used Hallmark that it would have a really large price tag, however obviously it doesn’t.

If you are like my mum, you do prefer to send out cards the ‘old fashioned’ way, only joking, then this site might not be for you, but I would recommend using either Hallmark or Moonpig and attempting to upload a picture and sending out a personalized card to someone, it is new and different and I promise you it will bring a smile to people’s faces.

A great site, I hope this review helped.

2009 (C) Kirsty

Sorry about the title, I'm really not very good at this anymore. Hopefully my title muse will come back soon. Please comment if you have the time. Thank you. Kirsty