Don’t Forget About the Main Goals

In the United States, today is known as “Cyber Monday,” the Monday after Thanksgiving that is one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Motivated by this special Christmas shopping day, I wanted to talk about the usability of some ecommerce rich internet applications (RIA) and illustrate how important it is to keep the main goals of your application or website in mind.

When developing an application, make sure the controls you develop for your website do not get in the way of the primary goals of your business and your users. The primary business goal for the majority of ecommerce websites is to sell goods. Businesses want to sell as many goods as possible to their customers through their website. Customers want to efficiently find and buy these goods. Other goals may also be important (reaching customer service, finding about the status of an order, locating a physical store, etc.), but selling products is usually the main goal.

Nordstrom is a high-end department store in the United States that recently launched a redesign of their website. On their current home page, five images of current promotions are animated in a carousel control. On the day I looked at their website, a shoe brand called Ugg was prominently displayed. How does a customer purchase one of the boots shown? In this example, you might assume a user could just click on one of the boot images and be taken to a page for that product. However, this is not the case. Users have to click on one of the links in the area at the top of the photo and then search for the boot they wanted to check out. This RIA control on Nordstrom’s home page gets in the way of the primary goal of the website, selling products.

Etsy is a website that allows crafters to sell their goods online to customers who value buying handmade items. They employ RIA in the “Ways to Shop” section, which is secondary to the main browse, search, and purchase functionality. In this area, people are invited to browse products in various ways: such as color, area, and connections (shown below). The interaction of these areas is quite fun and makes shopping on the site feel more like being at a craft fair, but at no time is a user slowed down from buying an item. This website supports the main goal of selling products very well, because a user can always get to the product page of an item shown by clicking on an image. In the example below, a customer can find a product that interests them via the Connections tool and click on a thumbnail image to get to the product page. On the product page, they can find more information about the product and purchase the item.

 

So what are the primary goals of your application? Think about what these goals are and take a look at your application. Make sure that your applications indeed support the primary goals of both your users and your business.