Ecommerce User Experience Vol. 01: Ecommerce User Behavior and Executive Summary for the Series

This 108-page report summarizes the most-important findings, guidelines, and concepts from the entire e-commerce report series and provides essential information about how people shop online. Behavioral analysis, study metrics, and essential findings are combined to create a complete overview of shopping behavior and best practices. This is the report to read if you (and your boss) don’t have time to read the entire series.

Topics

• The changing landscape of ecommerce
• Evolving customer expectations for the quality of the customer experience
• The demand for omnichannel capabilities
• Instilling purchase confidence with killer content
• Robust reviews and social mechanisms
• Product discovery and inspiration
• The rise of mobile
• Designing for immediacy
• Opportunities for the future
• Designing for different types of shopping behaviors
  • The browsers
  • The researchers, detail-oriented
  • The bargain hunters, price conscience
  • Product-focused shoppers, task oriented
  • One-time shoppers
• Homepages and category pages
  • Welcoming Homepages
  • Presenting a clear structure
  • Promoting subcategories and exposing products
  • Providing product Information
• Product comparisons
  • Full product details
  • Smart suggestions for related products
  • Usable product reviews
  • Product availability and arrival
  • Adding items to the cart
• Shopping cart, checkout and registration
  • Minicart as feedback not cart replacement
  • Shopping cart as staging area
  • Clear checkout path
  • Optional registration
  • Money matters
  • Shipping options
• Search 
  • Search behavior
  • Search success
  • Search as feedback
  • Presenting search results
  • Narrowing the choices: faceted search
  • Scoped search and advanced search
• Customer service
  • Findability
  • Promoting policies and tools
  • Getting in touch
  • Clear, and customer friendly, policies
• Selling strategies
  • Clear pricing
  • When will it arrive
  • Free shipping
  • Welcome back
  • You might also like…
  • One shopping experience: Online & offline, desktop & mobile
  • Social shopping
• Wishlists, gift cards, and gift giving
  • Gift giving online
  • Wishlists as favorites: Not necessarily Wish Lists
  • Gift Cards
• Trust and credibility
  • Appearance is everything
  • Privacy and security
• International users
  • Language and currency
  • Localized forms and payment methods
  • Customer support for international shoppers
  • International usability testing
• Store finders and locators
  • Locator tools
  • People gravitate to search and mapping apps
  • Locator links
  • Interactive locator tool vs. location list
  • Location search
  • Dominance of external-mapping tools for getting directions
• Transactional emails and confirmation messages
  • Goals of transactional email
  • Transactional email content
  • Email and trust
  • Common problems with transactional email

Research Method

The information in this report is based on two separate rounds of ecommerce studies, including:

• One-on-one usability testing
• Diary-based longitudinal study
• Eyetracking

Representative users tested 255 ecommerce websites. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and China (Hong Kong).