Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
NN/g has conducted extensive independent research (usability testing, eyetracking, and diary studies) to help organizations improve their ecommerce initiatives. Our latest e-commerce research series include 874 research guidelines based upon the study of over 200 e-commerce sites. Except for the diary studies, all studies were conducted as direct empirical observation of users' actual behavior as they engaged in online shopping. We sat next to users, one-on-one, and asked them to think out loud as they performed specific tasks (507 tasks in total). This research approach provides deep insights into why users behave the way they do and results in findings that are not available from other methods.
In our new research, we observed 507 e-commerce task attempts and measured a success rate of 72%.
Long listings might need pagination by default, but if users customize the display to View All list items, respect that preference.
Sites have improved, and we now know much more about e-tailing usability. Today, poor content is the main cause of user failure.
Finding addresses and location information on company websites has gotten dramatically easier, but users increasingly turn to search engines first for this task.
Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can.
Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.
Although gift features leverage the online medium and draw new users to a site, they also introduce many usability pitfalls. Among them are poorly designed email notifications, which many users simply ignore.
B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices.
Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than 4 weeks after users click on search engine ads.
Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.
Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take 6 other steps to maximize your site's holiday sales potential before it's too late.
Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products.
The best way for e-commerce sites to increase subsequent orders is to treat customers well after they place their initial order.
Even small holiday decorations can increase joy of use and make websites feel more current and more connected to users' lives and physical environment. The key is to commemorate without detracting from your users' main reasons for visiting the site.
User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving a site's usability can substantially increase both sales and a site's odds of survival.
When we asked users to find a nearby store, office, dealership, or other outlet based on information provided at a parent company's website, users succeeded only 63% of the time. On average, the 10 sites we studied complied with less than half of our 21 usability guidelines for locator design.
Instead of maximizing the profits from an individual visit it is better to encourage loyal users and establish non-monetary differentiation and frequent-user programs.
Much is known about Web user behavior, yet research findings are often ignored in actual projects. Examples: up-front customer registration doesn't work; frequency of use and effectiveness of Web marketing methods are negatively correlated.
A survey of 1,780 people who have bought something on the Web found that convenience and ease of use are the main reasons to shop on the Web. Non-buying visits (product research) are important to shoppers.