Posts Tagged ‘Internet Retailing’
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the Thomson website for the September edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The full article can be read here: Thomson Website Eye Tracking Article.
We invited users to participate in booking a holiday on the Thomson website. They were asked to have a destination and booking party in mind and add on any specific requirements they would need. Eye tracking technology was used to observe how the users would navigate through the site during the holiday booking process.
Once on the Thomson homepage one user was immediately attracted by the ‘Late deals’ option. This took them to a landing page showing over 33,000 holiday deals which the user found overwhelming. The results were already arranged in lowest price order but this was not obvious to the user. Clicking on the column heading rearranged the date order of the results, but again we saw the user looking around the page because she had failed to realise that anything hand changed due to the listings looking so similar. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, thomson, tourism, travel, usability testing
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Monday, July 4th, 2011
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the Mr Porter website for the July edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The full article can be read here: Mr Porter Website Eye Tracking Article.
We invited users to participate in sessions to explore the Mr Porter website. Users were either asked to purchase a replacement item of clothing or to buy a gift for someone. By using eye tracking, we were able to observe users’ natural behaviour as they interacted with the website.
Upon entering the website, users were drawn to the large promotion image that took up three quarters of the screen. However, due to the home page offering editorials over products, the users immediately resorted to using the main navigation to either select the department they were after, or the ‘What’s new’ if they were just browsing.
Users responded favourably to the layout of the products when browsing. After accessing a department landing page, they were drawn to the large images and were content to scroll down a long list of results. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, clothing, ecommerce, mr porter
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
In an article from Internet Retailing Magazine, SimpleUsability explains why it pays to get emotional about your online brand.
When we talk about emotional engagement, we don’t mean ordering an ‘I heart [insert your brand logo here]‘ t-shirt and giving the CEO a bear hug, we’re referring to the scientific study of emotions and how they have the starring role in the purchase decisions made by your customers.
Have you ever asked yourself how your users feel while they are using your product or your website?
It makes intuitive sense that if your users have a positive emotional experience on your site they’re more likely to convert from browsers into buyers. Do you know exactly what on you site is converting using emotional equity, and what is failing?
We are irrational beings, and nowhere more so than when we are online and (believe it or not) when we are parting with cash. In fact neuroscientists argue that emotions drive between 90-99% of all decisions we ever make.We have evolved a highly sophisticated subconscious brain that effortlessly deals with the millions of inputs we perceive every second before delivering it to the attention of our conscious brains, via ‘gut’ emotions.Yet the most widely used methods in usability testing often involve asking a user’s conscious brain why it did something. The truth is it simply doesn’t know. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, Market Research, eeg, neuromarketing, neuroscience
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Monday, May 23rd, 2011
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of Waitrose for the May edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The full article can be read here: Waitrose Website Eye Tracking Article.
We invited users to participate in sessions to explore the new Waitrose.com website. These were people who shopped online and had different levels of experience regarding using grocery websites. By using eye tracking technology we were able to observe users shopping naturally for basic items that they would regularly need.
Users struggled to find the most basic of items. The simplified initial drop down menu for ‘Groceries’ was limited.In order to find bread, users had to learn to click on ‘Cupboard’>’Food’>’Bakery’ and then choose an additional category such as ‘Sliced bread’.
This was felt to be a long route to individual items. It was not obvious how these sections were ordered within the navigation area displayed at the top of the page,with some users commenting that they expected to see the most common sections first. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, Waitrose, ecommerce, grocery, usability testing
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Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of DIY.com for the March edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The full article can be read here: B&Q Website Eye Tracking Article.
Participants were taken to the B&Q home page and asked to find products that they could buy from B&Q that would reduce heating bills. Most users scanned over the various menus at the top of the page and then hovered over the black buttons and worked their way through the mega-dropdowns. Users were initially frustrated with the complexity of the menus and the way they changed if their mouse clipped a corner when going to click.Participants were unable to predict where a product would be within the menus as the structure seemed random to them.
Where would you expect to find ‘loft insulation’? Later on, some users were further annoyed with the huge mega-dropdown obscuring page content, if they moved their mouse to the top. (more…)
Tags: B&Q, DIY, Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing
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Saturday, February 19th, 2011
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of M&S multi-channel activity over the 2010 Christmas season for the January edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The abbreviated article can be read here: M&S Mobile Website Eye Tracking Article
We ran a range of tasks relevant to Christmas, either browsing for a last minute present or choosing an outfit for the festive season. The cross channel experience allows users to be more demanding about the vehicle that they use to shop, and the expectations that they bring with them to that experience. This is a huge challenge for companies when providing functionality across multiple routes, in this case website, mobile website, TV and in store. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, M&S, iPhone, multi-channel, usability testing
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Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new GAP website for the November edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Gap Eye Tracking Article
The participants who took part in the research for the new gap.eu website were asked to go shopping to replace their favourite pair of jeans.
From the new homepage we were able to observe that users were drawn to the strong colours on the right hand side of the page (graphic outlined by union jack). Users ignored the main photographic element with the ‘New and now’ messaging, and decided to go straight to the top navigation options. From here there were no drop-down menus available so users could not quickly get into the category that they were looking for. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, GAP, Internet Retailing, ecommerce
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Friday, October 8th, 2010
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Sainsbury’s website for the September edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Sainsbury’s Eye Tracking Article
We invited a few current online Sainsbury’s shoppers to carry out their weekly shop in our eye tracking studio. Shoppers started at one end of the grocery primary navigation shopping first in the Fresh section, moving on to Bakery etc. Although they had logged into their accounts, “none of the participants used the ‘My usuals’ or ‘shopping list’ features as they were concerned about missing offers” – isn’t this interesting? Customers always amaze!
Once into a product category, images were incredibly important to the shoppers. Participants scanned down the list of photos looking for familiar products, scanning across to the name and price afterwards. Most shoppers had an idea in their head of what something should cost, and hence used price as a sense check to confirm they were buying the right size or correct product. (more…)
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, Sainsbury's, ecommerce
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Saturday, July 31st, 2010
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Selfridges website for the July edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Selfridges Eye Tracking Article
With Father’s Day approaching users were asked to shop for a gift for a man on the Selfridges’ website.
From the homepage users hesitated to get started because the page was filled with one large graphic that advertised the sale. Users were forced to interact with the primary navigation drop down menus. Some users found this quite difficult, because when accessing the ‘Menswear’ drop down menu the ‘Categories’ section started with three unexpected titles ‘SALE’, ‘NEW IN’ and ‘ONLY AT SELFRIDGES’ which were displayed in upper case. This made the category list very hard to scan and choose an area to start browsing from.
When accessing a category, eg ‘Shirts’ from ‘Menswear’, users were shown a page that had a low number of products as its default. We observed that users were looking around the page to access more products. It was not always obvious that the user could change the number of items displayed from the ‘View by’ section in the top right hand corner of the screen. This display was quite different to other clothing retail websites that users were familiar with, and some users were looking for links to subsequent pages from the bottom right hand corner of the page. Users had choices on the right hand side of the page to narrow down the products displayed.
Users had already selected a category eg ‘Shirt’. The title ‘Category’ title was repeated on the right hand side, but expanded underneath it was types of shirt, eg ‘Check’, ‘Plain’, etc. This small inconsistency did not help with the browsing confidence of the user. The top filter was expanded but the others were not so users often missed these filters and did not understand how to interact with the titles.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, Selfridges, ecommerce
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Monday, May 10th, 2010
Our team conducted an eye tracking review of the new Boden website for the April edition of Internet Retailing Magazine. The article can be read here: Boden Eye Tracking Article
Users were asked to buy a new summer outfit for themselves and one of their teenage children or a younger relative. Users were quickly drawn to the main graphic on the homepage. The women looked around the homepage to get started rather than use the primary navigation because it looked to them that the ‘Women’ tab was already selected.
Users reacted positively to the photography used on the website, and each section or category had a large banner. Users often looked longer and tried to hover the mouse over these products, but could not find out which products were being featured in the photography. Within the ‘Occasionwear shop’ users became confused because the main graphic looked like it contained navigation items e.g. ‘Summer wedding’. The users looked to the left hand navigation, but the titles were not available and the user had to scroll to find this section.
We observed that the women’s drop down menu was slightly harder for users to scan due to some of the titles wrapping over onto two lines.
When accessing product information, users saw the ‘Outfit maker’ icon when their eyes moved downwards from the title to the size selection. This was a help to users who would normally struggle to put an outfit together, and their eyes were drawn to immediately choose a category. Users were really looking for suggested products against the one item that they had chosen at this point, so they often clicked on the ‘Outfit ideas’ category which didn’t give them what they expected. Some users became frustrated when paging through the products within the ‘Outfit maker’ from the bottom of the page. They had to be careful to select ‘Next’ because clicking on the arrow icon made all the products disappear.
When looking for items for a teenager, users were unaware that the ‘Johnnie B’ primary navigation section was relevant to them. It was only when the user hovered over that tab and saw the ‘Teen boys’ and ‘Teen girls’ titles that they knew where to go. The navigation item of ‘Johnnie B’ disappeared if users were within the ‘Outfit maker’.
When users had decided on which product they wished to buy they clicked on a size and the green tick appeared. Users then looked up to the shopping bag in the right hand corner of the screen and didn’t always realise that they had to click on ‘Add to bag’ to move forward with their purchase.
SimpleUsability have been providing expert eye tracking advice for the readers of Internet Retailing Magazine since 2009.
Tags: Eye Tracking, Internet Retailing, boden, ecommerce
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