Is Elitism the Source of Poor Usability

Most digital commerce channels are still achieving single digit conversion rates even though customer intent-to-purchase rates are 20% or higher in most cases. Customers are continuing to run into obstacles to the purchase process that need to be eliminated. The good news is that during this time of limited capital investments, retailers can use low cost means to find and eliminate as many obstacles to purchase as possible.

The first step is to get into the right mindset and remove what I feel is the biggest disconnect with the customers that many retailers have:

We’re way more comfortable and experienced with our own sites than our customers are.

We use our sites every day, and we know exactly how they’re supposed to work. However, our customers are generally nowhere near as familiar with our sites as we are.

I was once had a chance to attend a fantastic session by then GSI Senior Director of Usability, Michael Summers. Michael got the audience’s attention pretty quickly by calling us all elitists…and he had a good point. He asked us how many of us fit the demographic for today’s main users and quickly made the point that we were higher educated, higher paid and more digtial savvy — by a long shot — than the average site user in the marketplace. If that wasn’t enough, he showed some video of average Americans shopping online who had trouble with some of what we in the industry would consider among the most basic aspects of websites.

To solve this disconnect we need to see our sites through our customers’ eyes. There are a number of ways to do this that I’ve found to be effective.

1. Use statistically significant customer satisfaction surveys to get trendable data that will  point to the biggest problem areas of the site.
   The two key phrases here are “statistically significant” and “trendable.” Continuous measurement is important to avoid random outliers and uncover the underlying truth. When done correctly, customer satisfaction surveys can be extremely reliable, accurate, and predictive and can tell you not only which areas of a site customers complain about most, but also which areas of the site will actually have the biggest impact on purchase intent and loyalty. This is critical information to provide some some direction on where to focus your usability efforts.

2. Ask open-ended questions to add color to the quantitative information.
   Quantitative analysis is extremely useful, but numbers alone aren’t nearly enough. Numbers will certainly tell you the problem areas of the site, but to really get your arms around what the numbers are saying requires adding some color to them with some qualitative information. Asking more open-ended questions like “If you could make one improvement to our site, what would it be?” are good starters to bring some of the numbers to life. If the numbers tell you that customers in general are having problems with navigation and you see that multiple customers say in open-ended comments they just want to see all the blue dresses in stock, you might start to consider adding color choice to your navigation. Or maybe you already have an option to navigate by color, but the customers aren’t seeing it and you’ll need to find a way to make it more apparent.

3. Watch your customers use your site.
   The absolute best way to add color to the data is to actually watch customers use the site. In the past, I’ve seen great discoveries come from going into a store and asking real customers to shop on the site while I or someone on my team watched silently. In these situations, it’s very important not to be too prescriptive in the tasks the customer is asked to do. Ask them to “find and buy a new pair of dress shoes” rather than “go to the men’s tab, then select dress shoes and find a pair of black, size 9 shoes.” It never fails to amaze me in this situation how many different avenues customers will take to accomplish the task, and they’ll frequently run into trouble. These trouble spots are the areas to find and eliminate. Some of the smallest fixes can often significantly improve conversion and customer satisfaction.

4. Have an expert conduct a usability audit.
   Even after discovering where customers are having trouble, it’s sometimes still very difficult to determine exactly what you should be doing differently to make the experience easier and more intuitive for your customers. In those cases, expert advice via a third party usability audit is an excellent solution. I’ve used trained usability experts in the past to identify specific improvements that led to tremendous business results. Third party usability auditors bring to the table both fresh and trained eyes that have likely seen problems similar to those on your site before and have come up with solutions for those problems or seen how other sites have solved those problems.

Regardless of the mechanisms you choose to use, the key to better usability, better customer satisfaction and the resulting better conversion and sales, is finding ways to see your site through your customers’ eyes.