Summary

Sales and marketing specialists, as well as site designers, can learn from this report. It reaches beyond classic usability concerns to discuss online selling issues such as pricing, selection, cross-selling, promotions, return policy, customer service, shipping and delivery. If your job involves marketing or sales, read this report to understand how certain policies and practices might cause you to lose customers. If your job involves site design, read this report to learn how best to support the sales and marketing strategies of your website.

The report contains a total of 47 design guidelines, based on usability testing of 20 big e-commerce sites with 64 users. When we analyzed 20 other large sites we found that the average site complied with 54% of these guidelines. In other words, the approach to selling on these sites violated 22 of the usability guidelines on average. Smaller sites typically have even more usability mistakes in their merchandising and selling design.

62 pages. Richly illustrated with 39 color screenshots from many different websites, showing usability problems we found in our testing as well as examples of designs that sell well.

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This document is a part of Nielsen Norman Group's series of design guidelines for e-commerce user experience.
 

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. A Model for Search
3. Sites We Tested
4. E-Commerce Essentials
   • A Note Regarding International Sales
   • Pricing
     • 2 design guidelines
   • Shipping and Tax
     • 5 design guidelines
   • Selection of Merchandise
     • 3 design guidelines
   • Availability
     • 4 design guidelines
   • Delivery Time
     • 4 design guidelines
   • Customer Satisfaction Policies
     • 3 design guidelines
   • Payment Options
     • 2 design guidelines
5. Supporting the Sales Process
   • Promoting Products
     • 5 design guidelines
   • Encouraging Additional Sales
     • 2 design guidelines
   • Providing Sales Assistance
     • 5 design guidelines
   • Supporting Gift Buying
     • 6 design guidelines
6. Hybrid Stores (Special Considerations for "Clicks & Mortar")
   • 6 design guidelines
7. Summary of Recommendations for Designers
8. References

Who Should Read This Report?

Running a similar usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites around the world would cost thousands more than the cost of these reports, not to mention months of effort by your team of experienced usability professionals.

62 pages PDF format: download your copy right now (from eSellerate) Single-user license: $45 Site license: $99 (allows you to place on your intranet and make unlimited copies within your company)