How to improve the purchasing process

I’m lucky. During the recent years I had the opportunity to work in the design and implementation of some of the most important Italian e-commerce websites.

It is interesting and instructive to work for an e-commerce website, because it’s not an end in itself, but it’s a support to the sale process and must not only work, but should work well, very well.

For those working in the field of user experience, an e-commerce website presents unique opportunities to propose and implement improvements to the site and check the result immediately.

Among the different areas of an e-commerce site I like to get to work on the checkout process because it represents a real challenge where each text, label, button must be filed and polished. The checkout process is composed by features that perform the dual purpose of proposing to the customer precise information about what it is supposed to do and to receive information on how she prefers to complete the purchase.

I think that performing multivariate testing sessions on a checkout process is an experience that every user experience specialist should have the possibility to try.

I planned several times to write about the checkout process with regards of user experience, but the topic is complex and an article of few paragraphs (or a chapter in a book) are likely to trivialize or don’t allow to appreciate the details and strategies that need to be addressed in designing a checkout process that works in all its aspects.

Even writing one or more checklists as a reference (I love checklists) makes little sense if they are not accompanied with a detailed document.

That’s why I prefer to present two interesting reports that analyze in detail the checkout process.

The first is E-Commerce Usability Checkout, written by Jamie Appleseed and Christian Holst of the Baymard Institute. It is based on sessions of usability tests that involved 10 users browsing 15 e-commerce sites: 1-800-Flowers, AllPosters, American Apparel, Amnesty Shop, Apple, HobbyTron, Levi’s, Newegg, Nordstrom, Oakley, Perfume.com, PetSmart, Thomann, Walmart and Zappos.

The result are 63 guidelines grouped into 6 categories (data input, copywriting, layout, navigation, flow, focus) that in 140 pages deal with a wealth of examples, both positive and negative, regarding the checkout process. Some guidelines are definitely known to those involved in user experience (such as the design of forms, a topic dealt with detail by Luke Wroblewski in Web Forms Design), others are perhaps less obvious.

It’s a pity that only few of the many examples are devoted to the cart page, since it is closely and logically related to the checkout process and so it’s perhaps the most important of the whole process.

Interesting it’s the inclusion in the appendix of a 4-page checklist ready to print.

The report costs $ 78.

The second study that I want to present is E-Commerce User Experience, vol. 4: Shopping Cart, Checkout and Registration written by Amy Schade and Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group. The file is one of a series of 13 other e-commerce reports, but it is sold individually for $ 98.

And it’s money spent well, because the authors do not skimp guidelines and examples, so that the report covers more than 300 pages full of screenshots, tables, in-depth analysis and best practices.

In this case the report is based on a previous version made in 2000 that has been updated with the results of user and eye tracking testing based in several European, American and Asian cities.

Compared to the report of the Institute Baymard, that of the Nielsen Norman Group is more thorough and therefore certainly requires some effort to be studied in all its parts. Often the most interesting indications are not so much in the guideline itself, but in the details presented in the text.

The report can’t however be defined boring to read, since the authors often quote the expressions used by the users during the test (just to give you an example: “That’s really a pain in the ass”).

Which one of the two reports buy? If it does not scare you to study more than 300 pages, the report of the Nielsen Norman Group is certainly thorough and detailed, but if you are interested in a briefer report, but still rich in examples, and a with a handy checklist ready to print and apply, the report of the Institute Baymard represents an excellent alternative, which also allows you to save a few bucks.

Web Form Design review

When I read on the Rosenfeld Media site that they published a book devoted just to web forms, I thought they exaggerated. I’ve always given form an important role in web design, but is it possible to write a whole book filled with patterns and suggestions without the risk of being repetitive and boring?

Luke Wroblewski succeeded in this task. You understand he succeeded because when you finish reading this book you’ll look at every form, designed by you or not, from another perspective.

The book covers every aspect of form design such as form organization, labels naming and alignment, input fields usage and my favorite, help text.

The approach of Web Form Design is very practical and you’ll find plenty of examples for different scenarios. Another good aspect of this book is that Wroblewski doesn’t present magic recipes.

How can we design good forms? Unfortunately, the right answer is a bit unsatisfying: It depends.

It depends on the business goals, user needs, and context of your forms. It may also depend on the issues or opportunities your usability testing, live site metrics, or other data sources illuminate. In other words, there isn’t just one right answer.

Fortunately, there is a way to go from the quintessential design answer of “it depends” to actionable solutions and ideas. We can do this by understanding the design considerations of the problem we are trying to solve. Design considerations are a combination of principles and patterns that provide a framework for finding appropriate solutions.

If you want to improve the way users communicate with you, this is the book to have. For more on form design you can take a look at this specific tag on my delicious library where you’ll find about 30 resources, some by Luke Wroblewski.

All the book’s illustrations are available free at Flickr and you if you buy the book fromt the publisher’s site, you can use the code FUCIWFD for 10% off.