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Does Usability Matter for E-commerce Web Sites?

Introduction

11/21/05

R. Gray

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Agenda

• Usability Question• Position and Argument Summary• Argument Detail• Conclusion• Resources

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For the money spent, does usability matter for e-commerce Web sites?Pro: Each day, e-commerce as a whole attracts casual, novice, or skeptical users. A carefully-crafted, usable e-commerce site promotes customer loyalty among perennial users, attracts new users, and expands the customer base.

Con: Crafting a site that suits novice, casual, and perennial e-commerce requires enlisting designers and Human Computer Interaction specialists and adds dependencies that impede the aggressive schedule to go live with new features before rivals, and at best produces advantages that are hard to see and often difficult to measure.

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Site usability is key to merchant image and customer confidence. It sets the stage for the finalized sale, repeat customers, and long term e-commerce success

• To be profitable, e-commerce sites need to promote customer loyalty.

• Web technologies enable "a direct line from advertisement to sale" --the toughest part is completing the transaction.

• End-users unconsciously avoid e-commerce sites with interfaces that frustrate them.

• Hard to use e-commerce sites lead end-users to make poor decisions that culminate in a poor shopping experience.

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To be profitable, e-commerce sites must promote customer

loyalty.

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Sustainability

• Research reveals typical e-commerce sites do not see profits for at least a year (entertainment electronics, books, groceries, and clothing).

--Lange, Carola, The Role of Trust in the Development of Web-based Customer Relationships, p.5.

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Gaining Trust

• A sale is a sale, but the end goal for every e-retailer must be to win the customer’s commitment.

• Amazon.com exemplifies that to succeed e-commerce must have a long-term profitable relationship with its customers.

The Stages of Buying (Lange, p.4)

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Don’t Change that Channel!

• Dissatisfied customers are only a 'mouse click' away from a rival e-commerce site.

There is no face-to-face meeting between buyer and seller on the Internet. We can’t afford to deploy a user interface the customer finds unusable and discouraging.

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Web technologies enable "a direct line from advertisement

to sale" --the toughest part is the

transaction

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First Impressions…

• A reliable and sound e-commerce site at the application level conveys a competent and reliable image.1

• Lack of face-to-face contact between buyers and merchant means that the e-commerce site conveys the company image. 2

1 Hearst, Marti A., Modern Information Retrieval, User Interfaces and Visualization. ACM Press, New York.2 Lange, Carola, The Role of Trust in the Development of Web-based Customer Relationships, p.5.

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Grace Under Pressure

• The first impression made by the Look & Feel of the e-commerce site must be stellar.

Under heavy network traffic our site must be responsive and legible. Pages that read, “Sorry our site is experiencing heavy traffic” do not inspire confidence.

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Don’t Make Me Think!

• The end user needs to be able to gather at a glance the purpose of the e-commerce site (retail sales)

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What Does an E-commerce Site Look Like?

“E-commerce sites have a dual mission to motivate casual users to spend time in the site and become customers as well as to provide fast access to products and information to experienced users.”

Site Design Themes (http://www.webstyleguide.com/site/themes.html)

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End-users unconsciously avoid e-commerce sites with

interfaces that frustrate them.

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Customer Dread

• Research shows user-hostile systems evoke negative emotional behavior and subsequent avoidance behavior.

--Paul Muter, User-Hostile Systems and Patterns of Psychophysiological Activity. p.1.

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Usability vs. Hostility

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------User Friendly User Hostile----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Menu Driven Command DrivenNo Memory Burden Memory BurdenSelf Paced Time PressureNo Arbitrary Codes Arbitrary CodesNo Use of Punctuation Use of PunctuationNo Infinite Loops Infinite LoopsSystem Always Responsive Unresponsive PeriodsClear Error Messages Unhelpful Error MessagesInstant Response Time Slow, Variable ResponseImmediate Feedback Incomplete, Delayed Feedback

Contrasting Features of the Interfaces in the Two Computer Conditions (Mutter et al., 1993)

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Why is My Skin is Jumping?

• Tests on subjects detect galvanic skin response and other responses indicated a 'fight or flight' response to the user-hostile interface.

• Users either become aggressive or seek to avoid the situation entirely.

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Bad Energy

• Without knowing it consciously, users participate in a learned behavior of avoidance.

• Frustrated end users will disregard certain features of the e-commerce site or perhaps the avoid the site entirely.

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Hard to use e-commerce sites lead end-users to make poor decisions and culminate in a poor shopping

experience.

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The Better Alternative…

• Give the customer only the information he needs to make a good, well-informed purchase --free the e-commerce site from irrelevant ‘noise’.

• When grouping items, sites must conform to the limits of short-term memory: seven, plus or minus two.

--George A. Miller, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.

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Which Do You Prefer?

• The customer will not use the site as intended if it presents too much 'memory burden'.

Noisy, overlapping menus, and lists with greater than seven items equals memory burden.

Minimalist, flat, inviting and readable.

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Another Cost Worth Considering…

• Research shows the 'cost' of information access leads end-users to opt for efficiency at the price of effectiveness.

--Wayne Gray, Strategy Constancy Amidst Implementation Differences: Interaction-Intensive Versus Memory-Intensive Adaptations To Information Access In Decision-Making.

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The Right Choice

What to expect?• When information is hard to aggregate, the end-user

makes a less-informed decision.• Poor choices can lead to dissatisfaction with the

purchase, returned merchandise, and failure to win the customer's loyalty.

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Conclusion

The dawning of e-commerce has not changed the age-old axiom "treat the customer right". Usability matters in e-commerce sites because a well-defined interface enables the end-user to explore options, make an informed choice, and reach his goal pleasurably. E-commerce depends on perennial customers that resist the urge to 'click' and run to the competitor's retail site. With the price of gas the way it is, it's a good bet he won't be driving there.

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Sources

• Carola Lange, The Role of Trust in the Development of Web-based Customer Relationships. University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

• D.L Hoffman, Harvard Business Review, May 2000.• Marti Hearst, Modern Information Retrieval, Chapter 10:

User Interfaces and Visualization. ACM Press, New York.• Paul Muter, User-Hostile Systems and Patterns of

Psychophysiological Activity. 1993, Computers in Human Behavior.

• George A. Miller, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.