Evaluating ecommerce sites (session 2)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 6, 2005 [3656 views]

To help us understand some of the issues in ecommerce it is worth looking hard at some existing and well-known sites. During this session we will compare several sites and then in the follow-up activity you will evaluate two different sites that I will give you.

Good things to look for

1. Fast. Does the site feel responsive and fast to load?
2. Easy to navigate. Can you find your way around? Imagine you are a customer who knows nothing about the company or its products? Imagine you know them well and want to find a product quickly? Can I navigate without having to use the browser’s back button?
3. Information. Is there enough information on the site about the products they sell? Did you have a clear idea of what the site was selling as soon as you arrived at the home page?
4. Opportunities for customer feedback, complaints, enquiries
5. Internal search. Does the search deal with common synonyms, provide sensible suggestions when no exact match is found?
6. Decision support. Can I compare products or understand how they compare with their competitors?
7. Optimised for search engines. Is the site easy to find if you know of the company? What if you know the product but not the company?
8. Sense of personality. Can you “see” the people behind the site? Do you feel you will be well supported as a customer?
9. Tempo. Does the site change regularly to reflect seasons, trends and holidays?
10. Personalisation. Does the site respond to my interests and needs? Does it recognise me as a repeat customer?
11. Recommendations. Does the site make suggestions of related items that I might be interested in?
12. Frequently asked questions. Does the site answer common fears about security, delivery, gift wrapping etc?
13. Integrated into the business. Do you get the sense that the stock availability is accurate? Can I pre-order or split shipping to multiple addresses?
14. Accessible. Is the site compliant with the 1995 Disabilities Discrimination Act which states that all sites must be usable by the blind and partially sighted.

Bad things to look for

1. Barriers. Does the site make me register before I can search or buy products? Is there a pointless introductory movie to skip before I get to the store?
2. Faults. Did everything work or did things go wrong when you were using the site? Real people make mistakes and sites should cope with common errors.
3. Poor internal search. When no results are found the site displays a “sorry, there were no results” message instead of helping you find what you want?
4. Difficult to find. Site is invisible to the search engines?
5. Hidden charges. Customers hate to discover that shipping, gift wrapping or express delivery will be extra.
6. Poorly implemented payment integration. Are you taken to a different site to pay the bill? This can make customers feel insecure.
7. Lack of customer reassurance. Customers come with all sorts of worries: will it fit, what if it doesn’t work, does it work with X? Many sites ignore these worries.
8. Poor branding. Companies sometimes spend thousands on their offline brand and then put up very poor sites. Does the site live up to the offline branding?
9. Mystery menus. Customers hate mystery interfaces where it is impossible to work out where products are. This includes dynamic dropdown menus that are often hard to use.
10. Poor classification of products. The company knows its products but the customer does not! Many sites put items in only one category and expect customers to understand their internal classification systems.

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