Archive for Internet Retailing
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Apple website for the February edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Apple Eye Tracking Article
We told users to think of somebody they’d gift an iPod to and then asked them to buy one directly from Apple online. Most users Googled ‘apple’ and accessed the UK home page from the natural listings. The rest just went directly into www.apple.com.
All users quickly clicked into the iPod + iTunes section and their eyes were instantly attracted to the different iPods from the top strip. The colourful iPod photography instantly drew the users’ eyes. All of the content about the various devices attracted different levels of attention, showing how users are easily drawn towards appropriate content. Amazingly, once the users had chosen an iPod, they struggled to move on and buy it due to the separation of online shop and content.
Users were expecting some form of buy button or a strong call to action. They checked the top and bottom of the pages and missed the secondary navigation that had a blue ‘buy now’ button tagged on the end. Users really had to read the pages. Some tried clicking on prices and then they eventually found the links to the Apple online store.
For those users who had gone directly to apple.com by typing the url into the address bar, we noticed they were distracted by the pricing in dollars and then struggled to find a way into the UK store. Clicking on the USA lozenge at the bottom of the page eventually sent users to the UK home page, which looked just like the original USA page.
Once in the UK store most users struggled to choose from the iPod nano range since they initially failed to realise that they needed to select a model from the matrix of ‘select’ buttons. Users looked up and down the page trying to find traditional buy functionality. All users figured it out, but the journey from home to buy seemed to be more difficult than we expected it to be from Apple.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Asos website for the December edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Asos Eye Tracking Article
Participants looking at the ASOS website for an outfit immediately accessed the mega drop down menus from the top primary navigation titles. They generally accessed either the ‘Women’ or ‘Men’ sections. From the eye tracking data, we observed users accessing a drop down menu and their eyes continuing straight down. This meant that they would see the ‘Shop by products’ sub-categories very quickly but often miss the other options available to them such as ‘Shops’, ‘Inspire me’ and ‘What’s on trend’.
Users liked the filters available on the left hand side of the page when accessing a sub category section. The price slider was particularly popular because users could set a minimum price as well as a maximum price. Some users became confused when they could not reset filters by clicking on greyed out titles instead of clicking on the ‘clear’ link beside each filter title. After selecting a filter, the central page faded to grey and a timer appeared to let the user know that something was happening. We saw that the users noticed that this was happening and waited for the filters to finish loading. When filters do not acknowledge that the user has told the website to do something in an obvious way within the user’s field of view, then users try and click again and this leads to confusion. After this process happens, other filter titles become grey and are unavailable for the user to click on. Within a filter section such as ‘Brand’ users often missed that they could scroll past greyed out options to access more brand names that were available.
Users perceived the photographic product detail information to be of high quality. Although many users missed the option, users accessing the catwalk option found it extremely helpful.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new House of Fraser website for the August edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: House of Fraser Eye Tracking Article
We asked participants to find a gift on the House of Fraser website. From the homepage, eye tracking showed us that users were attracted to the main rotating graphic. These panels were predominantly targeted at women, so the variety of products available was not immediately obvious to all users. Once into a section, users normally needed to scroll before viewing the second line of products. One user actually complained about the ‘excessive’ scrolling, as she worked her way through the screens of hand bags.
Users experienced particular difficulty when looking for a product that was contained within a section with multiple categories. One user was looking for some cufflinks and browsed from ‘Gifts for him’ to the ‘Cufflinks, belts and ties’ section. There were 302 products available in this section, but there was no way for users to narrow down their search to just cufflinks, so the user was forced to page through all the results. Filtering by the colour ‘silver’ helped bring up a few cufflinks, but the user could not be confident that they had seen all the products.
It became apparent from the unsettled eye movements that users became confused when unexpected items appeared within categories. The only two products in the women’s gloves section were actually belts and the clearance gift vouchers and cards section only contained flip flops. This made participants question whether they were in the correct place and quickly eroded confidence in the navigation.
Some users hunted for the search box, as it was not immediately obvious because it was pre-filled in with text and a grey fill. Users who failed when browsing for a product often resorted to the search to find a product. When a user searched for ‘cufflinks’, they got 308 results, with the first two products listed being belts – which added to the confusion.
When accessing the product information page for a particular product, we observed that users were quickly drawn to, and distracted by, the related items and the ‘more from this brand’ tab for the actual product. This often distracted users away from their original purchase. This type of page sometimes included a device that contained a scroll bar. Users found it very difficult to scan the supporting text for the product because of this.
Overall, users loved the high quality, zooming photography and the overall feel of the site, but were then annoyed by the unnecessary scrolling and common errors in merchandising.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Argos website for the March edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Argos Eye Tracking Article
Users were asked to choose a barbeque for themselves on the Argos website and reserve it for collection. Participants confidently browsed the site’s navigation and easily found the empty search box. Once into the BBQ section, the guided navigation worked well for those users who didn’t use search. However, users that searched for barbeques off the home page were distracted by the two recommended products on the results page and ignored the search results found below the page-fold.
Eye tracking showed us that users made their shortlists primarily based on product images and product names; then used price for final selection. During the selection process some users sorted the items in price order.
It was quite apparent that users struggled to reserve products, muddling their way through to completion. Users failed to understand the difference between checking whether an item was available for collection and then having to repeat the process to actually reserve the item at their chosen store. We could see users’ eyes bouncing between the information in the trolley saying the item was available for collection and then cautiously reading the options below it for choosing collection, home delivery and signing up for an Argos credit card.
One user gave up searching for a store that had their chosen BBQ in stock as he had to exhaustively check each store with no help from the system with regard to stock levels or how far away the store was. For the users that made it through to the page where they started to confirm a reservation, they incorrectly keyed in both postcode and town name and then looked at the ‘OR’ and realised they only needed to provide one.
Users were distracted by the “*must be completed” on the final page of the reservation process, completely missing the “get a copy of your reservation details” title and then going to the text box for providing their email address, without understanding what this was for.
There are clear opportunities for improving the user journey when reserving an item for collection. We didn’t expect to see a user get so frustrated and abort an order with such a mature retail website.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Mydeco website for the April edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Mydeco Eye Tracking Article
Users who participated in our research for mydeco.com were asked to think about a room that they wanted to revamp where they normally relax. They were then asked to find a lighting item that they would like to buy from the website.
Users were immediately drawn to the large panel in the central section of the homepage. Some used this area as general navigation and missed the primary navigation at the top of the page. The effect of this was that these users missed some of the lighting products that were available to them, because this graphic was targeted to a certain type of product.
There was a mix of how users chose to navigate from the home page. There was a split between users clicking on to the main graphic, the primary navigation and the search box. When conducting a general search from the site search box, one user started typing in the search term ‘lights’. A drop down list of search suggestions appear in the search box but they were rather abstract for this particular user who chose ‘lights fantastic’ and was confused by the wording displayed to him.
Users did not play with the filters on the left hand side of the page. For lighting, users were more interested in the style of the item and were drawn to each product photograph to make their decision. Users looked at the brand names underneath the photographs and spent more time looking at the brands that they failed to recognise.
Once a user had found a product that they wanted to purchase they were re-directed to the retailer’s website. This was very slow for some users and they abandoned their journey. Users were shown a re-direction page that contained information regarding why they should shop with mydeco.com. Users stared at one bullet point that said ‘shop in your jimjams’. The actual word and the tone of the sentence was so different from what they were expecting to see that it caused users to look at it for longer than they might otherwise have done.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Amazon website for the February edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Amazon Eye Tracking Article
The participants of our research showed that when using Amazon.co.uk they had to use different navigation strategies depending on what they were looking for. Amazon’s diversified product range has resulted in a more complicated structure with users having to adapt to understand the categories in order to successfully find a product. Overall the site performed well, apart from some serious frustrations with the menu structure.
Our testers were asked to find a book as a gift for a child that they knew and also to buy a replacement kettle for their home. Users were allowed to naturally carry out the tasks and eye tracking data was collected using a non-invasive eye tracking monitor.
Users were very quickly drawn to the left hand navigation or to the top search box with an even split between these two staring points. Users alternated between the two depending on the product that they were looking for.
‘Books’ is the top category on the left hand side, so users often looked to this title in the left hand navigation. Many users clicked on ‘Books’, expecting to be taken to the book section, eye tracking showed us that many failed to notice the sub-menu which had appeared to the right of this title, which required the user to click on another title called ‘Books’.
When using the left hand navigation to find a replacement kettle, some users clicked ‘Home and Garden’ then ‘Appliances’, and others clicked into ‘Kitchen and Dining’ or ‘Electronics’. Many users searched for the word ‘kettle’ from the top search box, but only a few noticed the suggested terms that appeared below the search box as they typed. The top blank search box was a visually strong device, attracting a lot of attention from users.
When looking for a suitable book, users were quickly drawn to the book titles and if a lot were displayed on a page, the user relied on the left hand navigation to filter the selection by age group. In contrast, when looking for a kettle, users scanned the page using the thumbnail photographs to make initial selections. Sorting by type of kettle was not always available to the user because it was dependent on the route they had taken to their current page.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Marks and Spencer website for the December edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Marks and Spencer Eye Tracking Article
M&S seems to have some issues with a key roll-over menu that’s hidden to some users and secondary navigation/filters that could be made more efficient. The site performed reasonably well and is commonly quoted by our research participants as a benchmark ecommerce site for ease of use.
Our user group was made up of 50:50 split of male to female with 40% having previously ordered online from Marks and Spencer. For this eye tracking analysis, users were asked to buy an outfit for a black tie event.
People who hadn’t bought from M&S used the inpage links on the home page instead of the main menu. Eye tracking confirmed that they had all looked at the navigation early on, but unfamiliar users failed to realise that most areas of the shop were accessed through the drop down menu. One user needed help to find this menu. We would recommend making the ‘Shop all Departments, Your M&S, My Account’ items look more like navigation devices, since much of the site seems dependent on users realising this.
Once into the different clothing sections of the site, the left hand navigation was heavily relied upon and took much reading. We can see that, for this task, there is scope for making it more efficient. The categorisation in the male suits section failed to include an in-page link to eveningwear, which forced one user to exhaustively scan the page and still not find what he needed, even though eveningwear was listed in the left hand navigation. Section home pages should ideally give people multiple routes into content, either in-page links and through secondary navigation.
Overall, users showed a high level of confidence in the site, using photography as the main reference for making decisions, supported by the descriptive labels and then occasionally price. Users did notice the promotional flashes for offers and were sometimes distracted by the ‘perfect’ range labelling.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.