Tower Records officialy launched a digital download store today. Coolfer spent a while browsing around. What impression did Tower's digital store make?

First off, there's a branding issue. The store doesn't even have a name. Its URL is www.tower.com/digital. The obvious need to use the Tower name conflicts with a need to make this digital store stand on its own. Calling it something obvious like Tower Digital would be better than not calling it anything at all. Even Engadget harped on the lack of a name. (It appears that the site is officially called Tower Records Digital, although the top of the page says only Tower Records.)

Next, the front page isn't impressive. There's not much above the fold, so seeing the highlighted albums requires scrolling. Just above the fold are links to genre pages. Since Tower is a record buyer's record store, the genre pages should reflect the company's incredible knowledge of music...but they don't. They look thin, and once again most of the important content is below the fold. Browsing titles in each genre and subgenre is an absolute disaster and is the complete opposite experience of browsing the bins in a Tower brick-and-mortar store. Tower's existing online store offers a much better browing experience than its new digital store.

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