Creating Usable E-Commerce Sites

Creating Usable

E-Commerce Sites

Janice Anne Rohn

SIEBELSYSTEMS, INC.

■

lectronic commerce, or e-commerce, is changing the way the world shops. Elec-tronic commerce is defined here as brows-er-based sites created for the purpose of selling goods and services over the Inter-net, regardless of whether the actual sale takes place on the Internet or via fax, phone, or another means provided by the website. The electronic commerce market is exploding at a remarkable rate. In May 1997, global e-commerce generated $750 million in sales; in May 1998 that figure had grown to $2.3 billion, a 205% increase [IDC 1998]. IDC, ActiveMedia, and For-rester Research all estimate that global commerce revenues will exceed one tril-lion dollars by 2003. A key to achieving these num-bers is usability. In order to leverage this new mar-keting strategy, companies must understand how to create usable e-commerce sites based on their target markets. In a recent survey, 8% of those surveyed said they don’t shop online simply because the sites are too hard to use [Herschlag 1998].

Electronic shopping has some key differences from physical shopping. First, it is easy to go from one site to another for purposes of price comparison, product selection, and ease of finding the product. There is minimal overhead for changing sites, unlike getting back in the car and driving a distance to a similar store, so sites that offer a range of products that are easy to find on the site and priced competitively will do well.

Companies spend substantial amounts of money on physical store design and on creating a positive envi-ronment and experience for the shopper. Since e-commerce sites are more limited (the shopper’s gen-eral environment doesn’t change), companies must try harder to create a pleasant experience. The factors that are known to affect customer behavior—product perception, shopping experience, and customer ser-vice—must be given consideration when designing the site. (For more information on this see Jarvenpaa and Todd [1997].) E-commerce sites are not just web sites—they should reflect the same value-to-price trade-offs that the company has built its business on. A company also has to give serious thought to how much they will support international sales. Will such sales be in US dollars only, or in multiple currencies?

E

How will shipping be handled ? Will the site be in English only, or in multiple languages? Most e-com-merce comes from US-based companies that are tar-geting US and Canadian customers. Many sites do not sell outside the US, even though Internet usage is growing faster outside the US [Herschlag 1998].

Larger companies spend millions of dollars every year on branding, with the goal of associating a prod-uct or logo with a positive emotional experience, creating customer demand and loyalty. Unlike passive forms of communication such as print and television advertising, positive branding experiences with web sites are dependent on the web site being usable. When someone has a negative experience with a web site— being unable to find a product or navigate through the site—they associate that negative experi-ence with the brand [Spool 98]. First-hand experiexperi-ence is much more powerful in determining whether a customer will purchase or remain loyal to a brand, and no amount of marketing can overcome a negative experience such as being unable to use or find infor-mation on a web site.

What defines a successful e-commerce site? A suc-cessful site does at least one of the following:

● attracts additional customers;

● reduces the workload of the sales force by

provid-ing much or all of the information that they would have had to provide.

Usability is once again key to achieving these goals. Most of the processes, recommendations, heuristics, and standards that have been created and docu-mented for the usability of products also apply to e-commerce. In order to produce a highly usable and successful e-commerce site, the same principles apply: (1) utilize usability engineering methods, prepared by experienced usability engineers, throughout the design and development of the site;

(2) understand what the goals are;

(3) decide who the target customer population is; (4) research and profile the target customer

popula-tion and update your assessment, including at-tributes, context of use, goals, tasks, and priori-ties;

(5) create a specification based on functionality and

FIGURE ONE

design requirements derived from customer re-search; and

(6) perform iterative design and usability evaluations to drive functionality and design decisions

Usability Standards

Several standards already exist for usability, and these are directly applicable to e-commerce usability. The most pertinent standards include two ISO standards, and work that is currently under way to create an industry standard report format for sharing usability results between a vendor company and a purchasing company under non-disclosure agreement.

ISO Standard 9241-11—Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs)— Guidance on usability

Despite its title, this standard is an excellent descrip-tion of the principles for performing usability studies for any product, not just VDTs. It discusses the frame-work for specifying usability (in other words, what needs to be considered). This includes context of use (user, task, equipment, environment) and usability measures (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction). This standard includes very helpful tables for both of these: context of use in Annex A, and examples of usability measures in Annex B. ISO standards can be ordered from the ANSI web site: www.ansi.org.

ISO Standard 13407—Human-centered design processes for interactive systems

This standard reviews the principles of human-cen-tered design, including the active involvement of us-ers and a clear undus-erstanding of user and task re-quirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; and multi-disciplinary design.

ISO 13407 refers to other ISO standards, and pro-vides a good, high-level approach to recommending the usability activities that should be incorporated into the development cycle.

NIST USABILITY TESTING RESULTS WORKING GROUP

Currently there are over 25 usability representatives from most of the major technology companies, along with usability consultants, working to produce a stan-dard usability report format that can be used to pro-vide summary usability testing results to companies under a non-disclosure agreement [Blanchard 1998]. This work stems from the desire of some companies to utilize usability results from vendor companies as part of the decision-making process for procurement. The idea is to define a minimal standard testing pro-cess and a standard report format, and to define and create a pilot study to assess the cost-benefit of such an activity. The workshops are being held at NIST. This work is currently in progress, and an update will appear in the SIGCHI Bulletin.

E-Commerce Usability

E-commerce does have its own set of considerations in addition to these general principles. Important questions to e-commerce that should influence design decisions include:

What is the purpose of the site? Is it to provide

information on products and services? Is it to gain new customers? Alleviate the work of the sales force? Create a direct sales channel ?

Who is the audience? Current customers? New

cus-tomers? Local or global cuscus-tomers? If global, how global (predominantly English-speaking, focussing on several countries or geographies, or potentially anywhere)? Who is the target market? What back-grounds and job roles do they have? How Internet-savvy are they ?

If the audience is global, does the product line support this, both with respect to the products sold and the amount charged for shipping? (You can’t charge expensive shipping for inexpensive, com-monly found products.)

● Is the site meant to be self-sufficient, or is it meant

to reduce demands on the staff?

● Is the site only an e-commerce site, or is it part of a

larger company site that conveys more information?

E-Commerce Usability Heuristics

What follows is a list of heuristics to help produce better e-commerce sites. These heuristics are a com-bination of the results of many usability evaluations of e-commerce sites, and include advice from other pub-lications (when noted).

INTRODUCTION TO THE SITE

Do not require a login and password unless neces-sary. Customers are in the difficult situation of not wanting to use the same password everywhere, yet having too many passwords for different purposes to remember them all.

If a login is required, make the process simple. The reason for the required login should be made clear.

If a password is required, provide a way for the customer to recover quickly and easily if he has for-gotten his password. Don’t ask for social security number, mother’s maiden name, or other passwords that should be reserved for personal financial secure transactions.

Any type of login or registration must be almost instantaneous.

Only require registration if you’ll actually need the data. Allow customers to register later in the process if registration isn’t necessary when entering the site. Don’t lose customers by unnecessarily making regis-tration a barrier.

Provide benefits for registering so that customers know the advantages of taking the time to enter ac-curate information. If customers don’t know this, they’ll sometimes enter arbitrary data each time they enter the site, creating a database of useless informa-tion for the company.

If personal information is required, have a written privacy policy. More users are expecting an explicit policy statement of uses and limitations on sharing of their personal information. For example, state that the information will not be sold or used for mailing lists. Only ask for what is absolutely required—if the data doesn’t serve a purpose, don’t ask for it. If customers don’t see the need for the requested information, they often enter false data if a field is required. More information on this can be found at [TRUSTe 1998] and [Privacy Alliance 1998].

If the site is not solely an e-commerce site (which is true of most large companies), do not have the e-com-merce site deeply buried— have it obvious and acces-sible from the company main page.

Make it obvious that the customer is entering a store. Some sites do not look like stores, and users are confused. Increasing the number of “store entrances” has been shown to increase visits and sales [Lohse and Spiller 1998a]

CONTENT

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is in allowing organizational divisions to bleed through to the web site. The site should not consist of an amal-gamation of each department’s output. It should be coordinated, designed, and implemented by a single group that obtains input from the various depart-ments.

Do not include marketing hype. Customers are turned off by this; they want to see straightforward information and specs. Instead, entice customers with straightforward information, give-aways, and dis-counts.

Have zero or minimal animation. Animation typi-cally does not help, and often hinders information processing [Nielsen 1996].

Writing should be concise, easy to scan, and objec-tive [Morkes and Nielsen 1998].

NAVIGATION

Page names should match the link name. Try to create obvious names so that pages can be found easily.

If providing a search engine, make sure that it has a similar behavior to commonly used search engines. Include not only Boolean keyword searches, but also category pick lists, and radio buttons that help to focus searches [Lohse and Spiller 1998b]. Too many site-specific search mechanisms don’t work.

Make navigation clear. Design with the three “where’s” in mind: Where am I? Where can I go? Where have I been?

Make sure all links are active.

Make navigation among sections of the site obvi-ous—there should be clear ways to move to and from all the areas, including the product catalog, the shop-ping cart, more detailed descriptions of the products, the shipping information, and the purchasing area.

Limit the entire site to the minimum number of levels possible, ideally, three. Humans think in fairly flat hierarchies.

PRODUCT SELECTION

Make products easy to find. Use hierarchical naviga-tion bars and include sufficient descripnaviga-tions to differ-entiate products.

Arrange product lists by frequency or importance, not alphabetically. Alphabetical order can be used within certain types of categories, but often is not the best way to order categories. For example, although a computer company sells computers, books, consult-ing, and other products and services, the customer is probably looking for computers. If books are more prominently featured because they turn up alphabet-ically before computers, this may not be the best design. Improving product lists has been shown to have a tremendous effect on sales [Lohse and Spiller 1998a].

Link the highest-level description of the product (including picture, name, brief description of usage, and price) to a spec sheet if available.

Don’t assume people know the exact name of a product. Make it easy to find by feature or category. Don’t list part numbers first. Part numbers may need to be searchable for certain types of products, but shouldn’t be the sole index.

If you have a well-known product line (from phys-ical stores), make it available from the online store, so people aren’t disappointed by the selection. Make these products easy to find (provide good searching and navigation) [Lohse and Spiller 1998b].

Since people cannot interact with the products, provide more sources of information (links to more detailed descriptions and reviews).

Provide a table comparing product features and price to help customers choose among products within or across product families.

Provide usage scenarios to assist with product se-lection, including the context of use, who would use the product, and for what purposes.

If system packages are provided, allow customiza-tions from a base configuration of these packages, providing a list of compatible choices or a compati-bility checker.

If you offer system components, offer a compatibil-ity checker to help the customer determine which components go together and what companion com-ponents might be needed for any given selection.

Provide links to related or necessary accessories (cables, batteries, etc.).

If you have product families, first provide guidance for which product family a customer should look at (this product family is good for this type of use, whereas this other product family is good for this other range of uses). This prevents people from going down the wrong branch in the product family tree. For example, products could be divided by segments, such as Home, Business, Education, Government; or a sports store could have Basketball, Tennis, Baseball, Cycling, Hiking, etc.

● Show all the choices.

● Have pictures for as many items as possible.

If you have more than one model/choice, help the customer choose by providing a relative rating (Good, Better, Best).

If your products are priced competitively, provide price/feature comparisons, which encourages cus-tomers to stay at your site.

SHOPPING CART

Provide a shopping cart so that customers can see everything they have selected to purchase, and allow them to access the contents of the cart at any time.

Indicate when items are in the shopping cart (by, for example, changing the icon) so customers don’t forget about them before changing sites.

Allow customers to add and remove individual items from the shopping cart at any time. You shouldn’t force a customer to go back to a particular place to add an item to the cart. For example, if you are reading the spec sheet for a product, you should be able to add the product to your cart at that point. Provide an easy way to indicate quantity for each item selected.

Keep a running total of all the items in the shopping cart. Consider keeping this total viewable at all times so that as choices are made, the total can be viewed. (The customer shouldn’t have to select and then scroll to see the changing total.) If the site can’t update automatically, provide an obvious “Update Total” but-ton.

Provide a way to print out shopping cart contents, and prices, with the total.

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

If your site is global, figure out if and how you will present various currencies and languages. One option is to ask the customer to specify the country of choice when entering the site, and to localize for that country (at least the currency, and preferably the language as well).

Determine how currency will be handled: will only one currency be accepted, such as US dollars, or will multiple currencies be accepted? If the latter, at what point is the customer asked which currency will be used?

Ensure that address fields accommodate interna-tional codes and phone numbers. Also label the fields with the variety of terms used, such as “State/Prov-ince” rather than just “State.”

ORDERING

Provide navigation to Open a New Account that is accessible at any time.

Provide navigation to Review Order.

Enable the customer to complete the purchase on-line, by fax, or by phone. Most purchases still are not finalized online, mainly due to security concerns.

Don’t use the word “Buy” on a button or link unless that action commits the customer to a final on-the-web purchase. People are afraid to select something

that says “Buy.” Instead, use words such as “Store” or “Window Shop” or “Browse” or “Research” or “Shop.” Re-use information; never make people type the same information more than once. A site can be very irritating if people have to type in name, address, and other information multiple times. Many people just give up.

Communicate if items are available or back-or-dered, and communicate when items will be available if back-ordered.

Let customers know shipping times and when they should expect to receive the order.

Clearly display the order, the prices for each item, shipping and handling, and the total.

Allow and clearly indicate how to print the order. Follow up the order with an online web or e-mail confirmation to reassure the customer that the order was received. Include: items ordered; totals for order, shipping and handling, and taxes; and shipping ad-dress(es). Do not include the password.

Include a phone number (ideally a toll-free num-ber) in the order confirmation for questions.

Be specific about the level of security you have for credit card orders over the Internet, and explain how customers can check their side of the security. If you want people to order directly, you need to demon-strate security. There is existing strong recognition of the gold key symbol in the lower left corner of the browser, in conjunction with the solid blue line at the top of the browser window, to indicate security.

Make service staff easily contacted and available, and post availability times.

Calculate tax based on shipping address.

Provide a way to add or select multiple shipping addresses.

If possible, include such things as shipping tracking numbers and a link to the shipping company’s site.

Do not allow the loss of data. Save data when a person moves among pages. Let the customer know which data will be saved and which won’t. For exam-ple, credit card information sometimes isn’t saved due to security reasons. Let the customer know that if they leave the page they will need to re-enter credit card information.

If the site only contains downloadable products, be aware of the terminology used.

Clearly identify which fields are mandatory to fill out and which are optional (such as explicitly labeling the optional fields).

DOWNLOADS

Provide platform-specific instructions for download-ing.

FEEDBACK AND ERRORS

Include status indicators to indicate activity and wait times.

Change the cursor control to indicate what can be selected.

Whenever data is entered, if a customer selects something that would lose the data (for example, they

think of something related and select the “Back” but-ton to another site), provide a warning dialog so that data isn’t accidentally lost. Make the ramifications clear, such as: “If you leave this site before submitting your order, all the data entered for this order will be lost.”

Make error warnings and important status easily visible.

Write error messages in a clear manner, with spe-cific information and instructions on how to correct this situation.

HELP

Create informative online help that changes according to the current page and context.

Provide a Frequently Asked Questions area. Provide a phone number for additional help and customer service.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Reward people for returning to the site. Offer cus-tomizations, discounts, or other benefits for being a regular online customer. Ask customers if they’d like to receive e-mail, and provide a list from which they can select what they’d like to be notified of (sales, particular products, etc.).

By utilizing good usability engineering methods (as covered above) with the guidance of usability engi-neers, many design mistakes that lead to the loss of customers can be avoided. E-commerce is a cost-effective means to greatly increasing customer base

and revenues in a highly scalable manner, and usabil-ity is the key to creating a satisfied and loyal customer. E-commerce is the commodity or standard at this point, and usability is a key differentiator.SV

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their observations and input: Michael Arent, Eric Bergman, Jim Berney, Robin Jeffries, Erika Kindlund, and Rich-ard Mander.

Bibliography

BLANCHARD, H.E. Standards for usability testing. SigCHI Bull.

30, 3 (July 1998), 16 –17.

Direct Marketing Association 1995–96 Statistical Fact Book.

Direct Marketing Association, New York, NY, 1997.

HERSCHLAG, M. Shopping the Net. Time Magazine (July 1998).

IDC 1998. IDC Internet Market Commerce Model, The Industry

Standard.

JARVENPAA, S.L.ANDTODD, P.A. Consumer reactions to elec-tronic shopping on the World Wide Web. Int. J. Electron. Comm. 1, 2 (Winter 1996 –97), 59 – 88.

LOHSE, G.L.ANDSPILLER, P. 1998a. Quantifying the effect of user interface design features on cyberstore traffic and sales. CHI

’98 Conference Proceedings (April 18 –23, 1998), 211–218.

LOHSE, G.L. AND SPILLER, P. 1998b. Electronic shopping.

Commun. ACM, 41, 7 (July 1998), 81– 87.

MORKES, J.ANDNIELSEN, J. Applying writing guidelines to Web pages. Jan 6, 1998; www.useit.com.

NIELSEN, J. Top ten mistakes in Web design. May 1996; www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html.

PRIVACYALLIANCE. http://www.privacyalliance.org/ 1998. SPOOL, J. Designing for branding. UIEtips. User Interface En-gineering (www.uie.com). Aug. 23, 1998.

TRUSTe. http://www.truste.org/ 1998.