Research Methods and Usability Guidelines for Ecommerce Web Sites

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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How do we get there? Information Structure

• Site organization should reflect users
  conceptual categorization of content
• Can be very different from designers
  categorization of content
• Derived empirically
• Card Sort
• Need lt 200 distinct information types
• Find Task (a.k.a. reverse card sort)
• If gt 200 distinct information types

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Card Sort Study
Cluster Analysis
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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

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Find Study
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Reckless redundancy reduces learnability
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Information structure take-aways

• For ease in finding information, ecommerce site
  organization must
• fit users conceptual categorization
• be easy to learn

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Presentation

• Support and guide scan and focus visual
  processing through design
• Layout and graphical design
• Labels
• Text

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Layout and Graphical Design

• Use mostly text and avoid pictures
• Provide landmarks
• Use simple configurations
• Use blocking appropriately
• Dont break configurations up
• Make high contrast choices
• Avoid animations

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Use Text and Avoid Pictures
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At least . . .keep navigation elements away from
graphics
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Use clean, simple configurations
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Use blocking appropriately
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Use High Contrast Colors

• Click Here

Avoid animations.
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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

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Use tool tips or look ahead text
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User generated labels

• For groupings in card sort
• For content
• For subordinate categories

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Delivery

• Performance
• First page download should be lt 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.

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Key Take-aways

• Match users 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.