ShopSafe is a consumer guide for online shoppers that provides a directory of shops that they recommend as being safe, well designed and trustworthy.

Some of the categories too specific – there are seventeen different headings entitled ‘Gifts for…’ which are split by gender, age etc.  This would have worked better as a general gifts category with filters at the results page, so that the home page was kept clear.

You are not given a range of products to view through the categorized headings, just the names of shops to check out for yourselves.

We weren’t particularly impressed by the search box.  For some items it brought up a list of individual products whereas for others it just linked in to shops.

Our search for television (which incidentally isn’t included in the categories list) brought up completely inappropriate results. Bizarrely, these included health minerals and blankets.

As many of the results list just give you links to stores you don’t actually get to see a photo or product description of the item you are looking for.

Where individual items did appear, which seems to be from Shopsafe’s own merchants, there was a photo a description.