A recent report from the Royal Mail reports that 82% of online shoppers said that free delivery would encourage their use of a website.

This makes sense, but before you rush out and start advertising ‘Free Delivery’ all over your website, it is important to look at how best to promote this.

When usability testing eCommerce websites we often observe users completely ignoring large ‘Free Delivery’ banner adverts, and still getting confused when they are looking for delivery information. This is due to banner blindness, where users discount anything that looks like an advert in the corner of their eye. So how do eRetailers combat this?

First, look at the user journeys to understand where in the process they will need information about free delivery. There are often multiple points in a process where your customer will ask themselves about delivery charges. This may differ on a variety of websites but typically this will include:

• Pricing – include ‘Free Delivery’ where ever you quote a price. This will remove the need for users to ask how much delivery will be
• Product detail page – explain that delivery is free when users are reading about a product and considering their purchase
• Delivery page – for users who are specifically looking for delivery information, ensure there is a dedicated page to reiterate that delivery is free

www.play.com provides ‘Free Delivery’ message with all pricing

The above tips will provide a starting point to encouraging your users to buy from you. However, observing your users interacting with your website continues to be the best way to establish where in the user journey the Free Delivery should be mentioned, and to establish what other barriers are a cause of cart abandonment for your users.

How well are you promoting Free Delivery, and do your users see it?

 

Related services: e-commerce usability & usability testing

Your website can attract a wide variety of visitors. Trying to appeal to them all can be troublesome and the results can leave you with more unhappy customers than happy ones.

When user profiling, there are two very distinct ways to go; methodical and thorough with a reasoned and structured analysis, which is our typical user profiling project, or ‘quick and dirty’.

In the agile, nimble world of the modern Web, we appreciate you don’t always have the time to do things perfectly so here are three steps to help you with the quick and dirty approach.

 

Step 1. Decide on who your customers are

Break down your users into five groups, based on what they need from your site. One way to do this is with an ad hoc meeting with your team. In the meeting explain what you want, without explaining why until the end, this way you get original thinking and not prepared, canned answers.

We challenged our client Bob Barbour at the MS Society to do this. He set up a ‘flash’ meeting – putting it out as a desperate appeal for help at very short notice. He got great results as the attendees had no time to ‘over think’ the exercise and so didn’t try to serve their own objective by pushing one user group over another.

Don’t underestimate the challenge of only coming up with five user groups, it will be hard, but it is important to set a limit to help you focus. If you come up with too many groups, look at how you can merge some together.

 

Step 2. Come up with questions for each group

Now come up with questions for each group that they are likely to ask when looking at your website. Make sure the questions are actionable, i.e. “Is this company reputable?” Then, focus on what are the most important questions for that user group.

Choose the top three priority questions for each user group, and focus on these. For example, if we did this for our website, it might look something like this:

Group 1 – Asked to investigate usability suppliers by their boss
1.    Do they appear trustworthy and competent?
2.    What is different about their approach?
3.    How much will it cost?

Group 2 – Understand more about usability testing
1.     What is usability testing?
2.    What else should I consider?
3.    Can I do it myself?

 

Step 3. Focus on the high priority users

From your five groups, select the two most important, as a primary and secondary group. These should be your number one business priority to serve, i.e. the users that will lead to you reaching your business goals for the site.

 

Next Steps

After completing your quick and dirty approach to user profiling, you will have a better idea of who your essential customers are, what they need and where to focus your efforts on your website to help your users.

We will discuss how to use the profiles that you have created in a future article, but for the time being you can use your new user profiles to focus your website planning on addressing user needs instead of internal guesses.

What methods have you used to get a better picture of your users?

Related service:  User Journey Design

Most website owners are never happy with their sites. It could be doubts from a design or content perspective, or merely not seeing the metric results that were anticipated. Whatever the issue, site stress is becoming a common ailment among the Web fraternity.

Our research has shown that many site owners are actually some six months behind where they want it to be. Some react by throwing time and effort at the site without considering the underlying causes, leading to wasted effort and yet more stress.

Others look for new ideas and features to add, which can just over-complicate the site and further exacerbate the problem. If any of this sounds familiar, there are some easy ways to fix your site. They are not instant solutions, but can make for a quick turn around and a lot less stress.

1. Opinions are like tummy buttons, everybody has one, but they’re full of fluff!
Many sites draw influence from a range of sources. This may be from rival sites, well known ones, input from designers, design agencies, even colleagues and peers. Designing a site based on opinion is a recipe for disaster, the design for your site should be pure, simple and achieve the tasks behind your business plan. If you have a live site that came to life through opinions without speaking to users, it is critical to validate them with research rather than assuming everything is fine. More on how to deal with opinions about your website

2. His vital stats are dropping, get the crash cart!
Following the metrics religiously in the early stages of a site’s life is a sure way to get a headache. Consider the first few months as the creation of a baseline which you will compare against in the future. As your site finds its feet, you might get a spike of interest that will tail off, or you might see cyclical peaks and troughs (beyond the usual weekly rhythm). Use this data to gradually better your site and not induce a panic attack.

3. You don’t need a crash test dummy, but a crash test smarty
Using website testing is the best way to find out what is wrong with a site that is not performing as expected. Usability testing can methodically go through the site and point out where real users will have trouble, find a problem or get frustrated. Fixing those problems found in testing is the only way to ensure that your users get the best experience and keep them coming back.

4. Innovation can save the day
If you start to worry that your site is stagnating then throwing bells and whistles at the problem will not solve it. Instead get creative with what you offer your customers or clients. Make your content more valuable, insightful or add unique elements. Reward loyalty from repeat customers and create offers that add value for customers rather than just slashing prices which will only serve to reduce your own income.

5. Check what’s going on around you
Watching competitors is always a good plan. The trick is not to just blindly follow what they do (we’re staggered at the number of designers who are asked to build a clone of a successful site from people who think that’s all that is needed). Do what they do better, or with your own unique twist, or just do something that makes you look different to build up your own customer base. If you’re always following your competitors lead, you’ll always be one step behind.

Keeping it together
When your site is struggling, the first thing is step outside the problem(s) and look at your site as a whole. Often, getting an independent voice is the best solution and this is where usability testing can play the most beneficial role.

Have you had website anxiety? how have you dealt with it?

Related services: Usability testing

Asking people what they think about your website can be a big mistake. Initially the opinions from the people you respect or from your customers appear to be really useful until you start to see that few people agree and most opinions contradict each other.

It is important to remember that getting people’s opinions do not reflect reality. Ultimately what people say they do, what they say they like or dislike, or what they say will influence them may not be true when they’re actually sat in front of a website using it to solve a problem. In our research with users, we’ve seen many people tell us they only use websites in a certain way, only to see them completely contradict themselves when they come to use a websites to complete a task. Often what influences us is not processed at a conscious level, so as humans we can be quite unreliable when predicting future behaviour or explaining our previous behaviour.

If you want to know how to improve your website there is no substitute for seeing real customers using your site. And when it comes to improving your website, focus on the logical factors rather than the emotive opinions.

There are of course times when you don’t ask for opinions but you receive feedback from friends, colleagues, customers, and peers. When you receive an opinion or comment about your site try not to engage with it emotionally, instead look at whether it is positive or negative and whether the opinion has valid reasons or justifications.

To help, use our categories below to determine what to do with any feedback you receive about your website:

Positive comment with no justification – This is the type of opinion you get from your Mum. They are saying nice things but it’s not anything meaningful to help you improve your website

Positive comment with good justification – This is useful. Think of what actions you have taken on the site to lead to this opinion and consider how you can maintain and transfer it to other areas of the site

Negative comment with good justification – This is useful. Think of what the likely causes are for this comment and investigate it further. If you receive similar comments over time start looking at your site analytics for possible trends and tell the person responsible for user experience to include this in the next usability test.

Negative comment with no justification – This is the type of comment you might get from someone who wants a reaction out of you. Typically this comes from a negative frame of mind and is unhelpful.

Opinions about your website are rarely helpful in helping you make improvements. When you do receive comments take time to strip them of their emotion and consider if they have real validity. Only when you have a number of comments highlighting a theme should you consider investigating further.

How do you deal with opinions about your website?