Transcript HCI Slide 11 - E-Commerce Site Design.ppt

Human Computer Interaction
Week 11
E-Commerce Site Design
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Lecture aims
After this lecture you should:
 Understand the importance of customer
experience.
 Know the essential components in an ecommerce storefront.
 Understand good practice in storefront
design.
 Have seen some store examples and
identified good and bad practice.
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Before you start designing…
You have:
 a business plan likely to succeed
 defined the purpose of your site
 made a project plan
 thought about content / features /
functionality
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What is a customer?
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Your most important resource
Have specific requirements / wants
Not dependent on you
Not an interruption
Not somebody we are doing a favour for
Different from each other
Not you!
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Customer or User?
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A customer is a user, but more…
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Usability is important…
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Sees, touches, feels, interacts with….
Remove frustration
But customers are also interested in:
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They have the element of CHOICE
Business goals, merchandising, messaging, features,
flow of core processes
You need to influence, motivate and encourage
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Customer centric practice
“If you're trying to persuade people to do something,
or buy something, it seems to me you should use their
language, the language in which they think.”
-David Ogilvy
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Customers care most about
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Security
Navigation
Selection
price
Customer experience
How do I find “____”?
What features does “____” have?
How do I order?
How do I pay?
How/when do I get “____”?
How do I return things?
How do I claim on the warrantee?
Can I speak to somebody?
Is this site safe?
What will you do with my details?
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Bad customer experience
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62%* of Internet shoppers have given up at
least once while looking for products.
42%* on one or more instances have fled the
Web for more traditional channels to make
their purchases.
$3 billion* in lost sales annually.
Is this acceptable? Imagine if this occurred elsewhere; 62% of people leave
a supermarket because they cannot find the item on the shelf easily…
* Zona Research’s Online Shopping Report, 1999
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Bad customer experience…
Error 404 - page not found
Is this acceptable? Imagine if this happened to 42% of shopping trolleys at
a supermarket…
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Bad customer experience…
“source: Close Encounters with E-Commerce”, Industry Standard
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Impact of bad customer
experience
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Lower conversion rate.
Customers may abandon your site
completely; customers have choice;
plenty of competitors out there.
When customers have a bad experience
on a website, they tell an average of 10
people.*
* Forrester Research, inc
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Impact of good customer
experience
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Increased conversion rate $$$
Viral Marketing; customers recommend
your site to others e.g. epinions.com
Increased customer loyalty
Strong equity in your brand
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Impact of increased
conversion rate
2,000,000 visits/month, average sale = $25
Conversion % Revenue/month
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.05
$500,000
$750,000
$1,000,000
$2,500,000
customer experience – conversion rate – bottom line $
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Improving customer
experience
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Make customer experience central
Shift strategy to:
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Achieving simplicity
Solving customer problems
Improving conversion rate
Ensure customers find it easy to find and buy
what they want from your site
Monitor the Customer Experience Gap
Make funds available to improve CEG
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Customer Experience Gap
Customer
Website
Simplicity
Complexity
Service
Technology
Accomplish a goal
Compelling features
Customer Experience Gap: The difference between what
customers want and what they get
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Rules for good customer
experience
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Keep it simple:
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Do not clutter with features, use clear and
concise wording.
Provide a good “feel”
Do not waste customers time
Provide an appropriate search mechanism
Good navigation, should be intuitive
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E-commerce storefront
components
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Basic functions:
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A catalogue display
Shopping cart
Transaction processing
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Shopping Cart
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Online forms were first used for online shopping.
Shopping carts are dynamic, interactive and
efficient.
Often implemented by the website programmer,
but sometimes an “off-the-shelf” product.
SalesCart is one company that makes this type of
shopping cart software.
Shopping carts are an ideal place for product
placement
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Customer interaction with
store
Browse
products
Search
catalogue
purchase
Enter details
Add products
to cart
Proceed through
checkout
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Catalogue
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A static catalog is a simple list written in
HTML that appears on a Web page or series
of Web pages.
A dynamic catalog stores the information
about items in a database.
This technology is implemented on the server
side.
Besides a catalog, many sites provide a
search engine that allows customers to enter
descriptions to quickly find an item.
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Catalogue
Browse
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Shopping Cart
Product placement
Item title
Product placement
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Implementing a shopping cart
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Can be implemented using server side
technology or client side technology
The Web is a stateless system unable to
remember anything from one transmission
or session to another.
It must distinguish one shopper from
another.
One way to uniquely identify users and to
store information about their choices is to
create and store cookies.
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Transaction processing
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Transaction processing occurs when the shopper
proceeds to the virtual checkout counter.
Transaction processing is the trickiest part of the
electronic sale.
Security issues, failed transactions etc…
Payment processing involves the website
communicating externally (e.g. to a payment
service provider)
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Home page
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Consider the message that the site is
conveying
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Does it match your branding?
Does it move customers towards a purchase?
Do not hide your shop front
Needs to convey what a person can do
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Customer registration
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Do not intimidate your customers!
Bad policy to enforce registration
Do not take information of customers
that you do not need.
Provide a valid incentive for them to
register
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e.g. save time on return visit
Promotion / discounts
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Merchandising
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Display and promote your products
Use space wisely: Homepage is
expensive real estate.
Encourage impulse buying
Product placement
Featured products
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Navigation
If customers get lost or bored they will leave your
site
Considerations:
 Where am I?
 Where can I go?
 What can I do here?
 How do I get to where I want to go?
 Have I been here before?
 How can I get back to where I was?
 Where is the checkout?
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Labelling
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Use consistent and explicit page labels
for all pages in the site. (House Style)
Do not make customers work to match
product names with images
Use appropriate labelling e.g.
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Use context to help explain size
Allow customers to compare similar
products
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Search
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Understand the shoppers perspective
Taylor searches to a person or situation
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People shop differently
Provide several (suitable) ways to find a
product
(e.g. text search, category, search by
genre, search by age, search by availability
etc…)
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Shopping cart
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Allow customers to navigate to it, from
wherever they are
Make it easy to add, remove, update items
Show total charge, and all other charges:
delivery, tax etc…
Do not let customers add items that are out
of stock
Allow customers to review their items
Make the checkout button prominent
Use contents to focus product placement
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Checkout and fulfilment
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Checkout must be quick and easy – frustrated
customers will abandon carts
Provide information about:
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Order number
Delivery
Returns policy
Tracking (if available)
Customer service
Fulfilment is the last but crucial part
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Adding value
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Useful extra features
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store locator
instructions and advice / how-to guides
wish lists / bookmarks
single click buy
selection wizard’s
customer reviews
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Conclusions
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A customer is more complicated than a user
Failing to address the complete customer
experience has a dramatic impact on the
bottom line ($$$)
Successful e-commerce sites make customer
experience a high priority and constantly
monitor customer experience.
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References
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Improving customer experience case studies:
http://www.creativegood.com/
Links to articles discussing user experience:
http://www.goodexperience.com/
Electronic Commerce, Gary P. Schneider ch.9
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