Research Methods and Usability Guidelines for Ecommerce Web Sites

1. Research Methods and Usability Guidelines for Ecommerce Web Sites Mary Czerwinski Microsoft Research Note: Many of these slides came from a Keynote address by Kirsten Risden at Web99

2. Key ecommerce ingredients • Most sources agreed that • navigation • clear content organization • product information availability • trust • Extras: • personalized services and/or • providing updated content or activities.

3. Building trust • Building Trust: What It Takes • A clearly stated return policy • A clearly stated security/encryption policy and seals of approval from authoritative organizations • The ability to back out of a transaction • Fast and easy navigation • Source: eCommerce Trust Study, Cheskin Research and Studio Archetype/Sapient, January 1999

4. From browsers to buyers…. • Seth Gordon recommends: • Make Buyers Feel Comfortable: good content and a personality • Get Users to the Goods: make the products easy to find and educate along the way • Make It Easy to Complete a Purchase: no roadblocks in your checkout tunnel • Build Buyer Loyalty: deliver on your promise and give reasons to return • From Builder.com Design section, January 25, 2000.

5. Serco ecommerce guidelines • Make it easy for users to enter the store • Use a meaningful store layout and product categories • Ensure descriptive terms or pictures are used • Allow users to find and use search facilities

6. Serco ecommerce guidelines • Provide meaningful and relevant search results • Make it clear whether items are available in the on-line store • Allow users to see what's in their shopping basket • Provide sufficient product information and explain technical terms • Clearly flag the financial security features of the site

7. How do we get there? Information Structure • Site organization should reflect user’s conceptual categorization of content • Can be very different from designer’s categorization of content • Derived empirically • Card Sort • Need < ~200 distinct information types • Find Task (a.k.a. reverse card sort) • If > ~200 distinct information types

8. Card Sort Study Cluster Analysis

9. Find Study (a.k.a. Reverse Cart Sort) • If more than 200 items, make initial design prototype….(s) • Record user paths through browse hierarchy of ecommerce site • Map out “confusability” • Determine where problems are and why

10. Find Study

11. “Reckless redundancy” reduces learnability

12. Information structure take-aways • For ease in finding information, ecommerce site organization must • fit user’s conceptual categorization • be easy to learn

13. Presentation • Support and guide “scan and focus” visual processing through design • Layout and graphical design • Labels • Text

14. Layout and Graphical Design • Use mostly text and avoid pictures • Provide landmarks • Use simple configurations • Use “blocking” appropriately • Don’t break configurations up • Make high contrast choices • Avoid animations

15. Use Text and Avoid Pictures

16. At least . . .keep navigation elements away from graphics

17. Use clean, simple configurations

18. Use “blocking” appropriately

19. Use High Contrast Colors Click Here Avoid animations….

20. Labels • Use distinctive, differentiating terms • Concrete terms are more “attractive” than abstract terms • Put supporting detail in tool tips or “look ahead” text • Asking users to generate labels is highly instructive

21. Use tool tips or “look ahead” text

22. User generated labels • For groupings in card sort • For content • For subordinate categories

23. Delivery • Performance • First page download should be < 10 seconds on 28.8. • Secondary pages can be somewhat slower to download. • Resolution • 60% of Media Metrix sample using 6X4 • Number is changing slowly.

24. Key Take-aways • Match user’s conception of how ecommerce domain is organized. • Remember that you are supporting a scan and focus approach to visual information processing. • Words can be worth thousands of pictures. • There is a high bar with little room to error when it comes to performance.