About us

Ootown's objective is to make online shopping fun and rewarding. It should not feel like a research project. We seek to provide the sense of walking at a speed of your choosing through a town containing many of the best UK online shops. But a magic town where the streets all join up and your feet don’t get sore.  An online shopping village.

 

 

Moving Around the Site

You can move around the streets by clicking the arrows at either end of the street as you see it on your screen, or by clicking on "walk right" or "walk left" just above the street.  You can change the street you are on either by clicking another street at one of the junctions you see on the street, or by choosing a street the menu above the line at the top of the page. As your mouse passes over each shop-front information about the shop will appear above the street.   Click on the shop-front to enter the shop.   When you click a link the shop opens in a new browser window, so when you have finished in that shop you can simply close that browswer window and return to the town.

 

"Post It?"

Where you see the words “post it” under the shops on the street, you can click this link.  The shop will go into your own favourite list of shops.  You can find your list by clicking on the little shopping bag which follows you along the street.  When you are in your list you will find a space against each shop for you to write notes (perhaps about the products that you like in the shop).  You can save your "post it" list by emailing it to yourself, and/or send it to friends or family. (Great for exchanging information about what you or other family members would like for Christmas or birthdays.)

 

The Shops

How do we decide which shops to include on the street? Simple. They must have some element of “Oo factor” – something special about them which sets them apart from the ordinary. We hope that in many cases you will be stopped in your tracks and say “Oo, I like that”. In most cases the reason we have included the shop will be obvious. In one or two cases it may not hit you immediately, but if you take a few moments to explore the shop you will hopefully see what it is that has attracted us to the shop.

We hope that you will agree at least with most of our choices of shop. But if you think we have included a shop which should not be included, for example because you are not well looked after by one of the shops you reach through us, let us know using the “contact us” link. We cannot get involved in disputes between you and shops but we will take your experience into account in our regular reviews as to which shops we should have in the town.

Equally, if you know of (or run) an online shop which we have not included but you think we should include, let us know.   We are steadily adding new shops and streets, and would be delighted to have your suggestions as to which shops and streets we should add.

We hope that if you like the town you will pass the word on to others so that it remains worthwhile for us to do it and make improvements to the site.   Thank you for coming.

If you have any suggestions how we might make online shopping even better for you, please tell us here.