Nielsen Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: February 6, 2006
Websites Visited During a B2B User Session
Sidebar to Jakob Nielsen 's column Users Interleave Sites and Genres .
The following table is a play-by-play listing of the sites our user visited during a 44-minute session. Her goal was to research the purchase of a portable computer projector for use during presentations.
For each site visit, the table shows the total time and the number of pageviews.
The sites are color-coded according to their role:
- Blue : Search
- Green : E-commerce (retailer)
- Orange : Product manufacturer (vendor)
- Yellow : Content (mainly reviews)
- Gray : Visited by mistake (the site was irrelevant to the task, and the user backed out right away)
|
1)
Google
Search engine
32 seconds
|
Search:
lcd projector portable
The user clicked the #3 organic link. |
|
2)
LCDprojectoronline.com
Retailer/e-commerce
177 seconds
|
On the landing page, the user looked over the list of projectors and noted the brands represented. (She used some of this info later, going directly to some of the vendors' sites.)
She clicked the first product in the list and spent significant time examining its specifications to get an idea of important parameters to consider when buying a projector. The visit to this e-commerce site was purely educational; she never considered buying this early in the process. |
|
3)
CNet
Content/reviews
257 seconds
|
Next, the user wanted to read product reviews, so she typed in the URL of a site she already knew of that featured reviews of computer products. On this site, she read reviews of several top-rated products and noted their brands, model names, prices, and specifications. |
|
4)
Google
Search engine
24 seconds
|
Having seen that Dell projectors got good reviews, she next went to Google to find these products.
Search: dell projectors She clicked the #1 sponsored result in the top blue area, which was Dell's own site. |
|
5)
Dell
Vendor
423 seconds
|
Despite having searched for projectors, the landing page was a general homepage, which is typically a usability mistake. In this case, however, the user navigated (with relative ease) to the accessories page, then on to the projectors page, and finally to the portable projectors page. She then looked at product pages and specifications for two promising projectors. |
|
6)
Google
Search engine
31 seconds
|
Referring to her written notes from the CNet visit (step 3), the user next decided to find out more about a promising Mitsubishi projector. To do this, she returned to Google.
Search: mitsubishi XD50U She noticed that the top sponsored link was a site that sold the product. However, at this stage, she decided to read more about the product and clicked the #4 organic link, which was a more detailed review at CNet. |
|
7)
CNet
Content/reviews
204 seconds
|
Here, she read about the Mitsubishi projector. She then wanted to read about a third-party product she'd found on Dell's site.
Search: epson powerlite 760c On CNet's SERP, she clicked the "best bet" link that was featured at the top of the page. This led her to more information about the product, including its specs, but no real review. |
|
8)
Google
Search engine
71 seconds
|
Disappointed by the lack of reviews, the user went to Google, to
"plug it in to see how many people write awful things about it."
Search: epson powerlite 760c She didn't find any reviews on the first SERP, only promotions for sites selling the product. She modified her query and conduced another search. Search: epson powerlite 760c review On the SERP, she clicked the #9 organic listing; all the rest looked like vendor or retailer sites. |
|
9)
Smalldog.com
Retailer/e-commerce
18 seconds
|
Even though the search listing looked like it might be informative, the site turned out to be a standard e-commerce retailer with no additional information about the projector. The user checked the price on the product page and determined that it was about the same as that offered by vendors listed on CNet. She bounced out of the site. |
|
10)
Google
Search engine
25 seconds
|
After clicking the
Back
button to return to the Google SERP, the user went to the second SERP for the query she'd entered in step 8.
She clicked the #18 organic listing. |
|
11)
Projectorreviews.com
Content/reviews
45 seconds
|
On this site, she was disappointed to see that the "review" of the Epson was simply a listing of its specs. She clicked a navigation link for advice and info, which resulted in a list of articles that she didn't read. The user abandoned this site. |
|
12)
Google
Search engine
51 seconds
|
The user arrived at the search engine after clicking the Back button from the previous site. She didn't conduct any searches during this visit to Google, but pondered things she might search for in order to identify more review sites. She gave up on this and instead typed in the URL for a vendor she remembered from the list of brands in step 1. |
|
13)
Proxima
Vendor
149 seconds
|
Going directly to this vendor site, she fairly easily navigated to a category page listing the projectors. She scanned it, picked out a promising projector (Proxima C180), and went to its product page and specifications. She was frustrated by the fact that no price was listed. |
|
14)
Google
(Froogle)
Search engine
55 seconds
|
To find the price of the projector she'd identified in the previous step, the user typed in the URL for Froogle (the shopping search feature on Google).
Search: proxima c180 She scanned the SERP and wrote down the predominant price from the listings, without visiting any of the retailers that came up in the search. |
|
15)
Sharp.com
Site visited by mistake
11 seconds
|
The user wanted the electronics vendor Sharp, because she knew from prior experience that they make projectors. To go there, she typed in the URL www.sharp.com. This gave her the site for a healthcare lender with the same name as the company she wanted. She abandoned this site. |
|
16)
Google
Search engine
19 seconds
|
The user typed in the URL for Google.
Search: sharp projectors On the SERP, she selected the #1 organic link. |
|
17)
SharpUSA.com
Vendor
72 seconds
|
The user easily navigated from the homepage to the category page for projectors to the subcategory page for mobile projectors. She selected the highest-end mobile projector, the XR-1X. After reviewing the product page for this product, she said, "It only has 1200 ANSI lumens. Forget it. That's the end of that." She abandoned the site. |
|
18)
InFocus.com
Vendor
170 seconds
|
The user knew from prior experience that InFocus makes projectors. She went directly to this vendor's site by typing the URL (which worked, in contrast to Sharp).
She tried to navigate the site, but was very annoyed with an animated overlay advertisement: "They have their own pop-up on their own website--why would you do that? Because it's blocking their own stuff. So they have a pop-up on their own website that I now have to close to find the products they are trying to sell me." (Actually, it was a floating overlay ad, not a pop-up, but both are among the most-hated advertising techniques , and there's no excuse for antagonizing users this way.) She navigated to a list of mobile projectors, but rejected them for having too few lumens. |
|
19)
Mitsubishi.com
Site visited by mistake
29 seconds
|
At several earlier steps, the user had noted good Mitsubishi projectors; she now decided to visit the vendor's site. Trying to guess the URL, she typed in www.mitsubishi.com. This gave her a page, written in Japanese and English, that seemed to be a portal page to numerous Mitsubishi sites. She thought it was the wrong site and abandoned it.
(In other words, Mitsubishi really needs to work on the usability of its portal -- but so do most other conglomerates.) |
|
20)
Google
Search engine
25 seconds
|
To find the site, she went to Google.
Search: mitsubishi projectors On the SERP, she selected the #1 organic listing, which was indeed the vendor's site (at the non-guessable domain name of mitsubishi-presentations.com). |
|
21)
Mitsubishi-Presentations.com
Vendor
269 seconds
|
On Mitsubishi's site, the user easily found the category page for projectors, and noticed that they make many portable models. She clicked the most promising one and read its product page and specifications page. There was no price, so she clicked a Buy online link, which provided a list of retailers. She selected the first one, and clicked its Buy now button. |
|
22)
AVpartner.com
Retailer/e-commerce
22 seconds
|
The
Buy now
link on Mitsubishi's product page goes directly to the etailer's correct product page (good).
The user noticed the price ($3,295) and said "that's a lot." She abandoned the site. |
|
23)
Google
(Froogle)
Search engine
129 seconds
|
The user said,
"let's see if we can get it cheaper"
and typed in the URL for Google's shopping search, Froogle.
Search: mitsubishi XD480U She noticed the offers on the first SERP, clicked to see a list of more prices, clicked Back to the first SERP, then continued to the second SERP. She finally concluded that it's possible to buy the projector for about $2,400, and that the total would be about $2,500 when adding costs. The user then typed in the URL for the main Google homepage, because she wanted to check the prices for replacement lamps. Search: lamp Mitsubishi XD480U She clicked the #1 sponsored link in the top blue area. |
|
24)
Projectorlampcenter.com
Retailer/e-commerce
157 seconds
|
On this specialized lamp retailer's site, the user easily identified the product pages for the recommended replacement lamps for each of the three projectors on her shortlist (Mitsubishi XD480U, Proxima C180, and Epson PowerLite 760c). |
|
25)
Buy.com
Retailer/e-commerce
202 seconds
|
The user typed in the URL to go directly to this site, which she knew was a retailer that often carried cheap computer equipment.
Search: projector The user complained that the SERP was just a bunch of projectors without any sorting options. She clicked the link for related searches, which resulted in a search for projectors (in plural). She also didn't like this SERP, saying "I don't feel I am in the projector department." Search: mitsubishi XD480U The user was taken directly to the product page and noticed that the price on this site was higher than what she had found previously. She abandoned the site. |
As discussed in the main article , at this point the user had a shortlist of three projectors and a recommended purchase that she would take to her boss.
Note: SERP = Search Engine Results Page.
This session transcript is part of a bigger study of the usability of B2B sites which resulted in 144 usability guidelines.