Archive for the 'eCommerce' Tag

I’m working on an e-commerce project, and we’re trying to streamline how people buy items. There are a few difficult points that we’re dealing with on the site, but one interesting aspects of going through the process that most user experience architects would completely gloss over during their analysis.

We live in a world where it’s great we’re concerned with the user, but more importantly, there’s a business there that has real needs for customer conversion. This puts user experience at odds with business goals: how do you guarantee that people will checkout?

When you walk into a supermarket, you pick up what you need, walk over to the counter, and pay. More often than not, there’s someone behind you, and — you can’t leave. You have to buy that milk and cookies, and if you don’t, you have to return them, interrupting the flow of the purchase process with the person behind you.

In the virtual world, there is no-one behind you, but because of the anonymity of using the web, it’s okay to leave the milk and cookies right there. You never ever see that in the real world.

Buttons during the checkout process give users exits, some of which allow you to leave the milk and cookies right there.

It’s great that they can return to their bag, but by the time they get to the checkout process, they know either what they want to buy, or they’re looking for a shipping price (which is an indication of a user experience that needs review).

I usually remove buttons, and limit their interaction with other parts of the checkout process. Most users will select the back button if they are looking to return to other parts of the checkout process, and that is usually evident in the reports the web analysis tools display. More importantly, you’re reinforcing that they’re in a checkout line, and they should move along. I think we coddle users too much, trying to give them every opportunity to move around, especially if the site we have is based on a business.

That’s one way I resolve business goals that are more important the profitability of a site. What do you do?

I just purchased an iPhone a month ago and after a month, I understand why they’re calling it the crackPhone: it’s addictive, much too easy to spend too much time with it. It’s really easy to use, and after a few modifications find it a device that I’m using in the way some people use personal organizers.

The best of it is buying the applications. No matter where you’re at — in an airport, in Canada, on the road — you can go through the purchase process for applications with the greatest of ease.

This is a screen shot from the iTunes store (because I’m too lazy to get it from the phone). All they ask for is the password, using a credit card that you have stored on file. For the purposes of limiting fraud, Apple actually errors on the side of not working about charge backs because the purchases are so small, and I imagine they have some kind of limits in place if you go past a certain number of purchases or a certain amount.

For the purposes of purchases, you can actually argue there’s probably more security in place here than at the supermarket, because there is a password involved.

The phone is even easier: all they ask is for your password.

If you have an application or website that has a significant ecommerce component, look at how often the user has to make a purchase; if it’s repetitive, consider this approach because six form entry fields is much more troublesome than one, and all it takes is security on your server.

Make it easy, and watch revenues go up!

Proof positive if you build a better, more engaging product, it will lead to more sales — Apple has passed Wal-Mart as the leading U.S. retailer for music (and the only leader retailer in just about any category that’s online only).

More amazing is that Apple holds 19 percent of the space, and the only other on-line retailer is Rhapsody, at one percent. I repeat, one percent.