uTest Whitepaper Optimized E-Commerce

8/7/2019 uTest Whitepaper Optimized E-Commerce

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/utest-whitepaper-optimized-e-commerce 1/10

Optimized E-Commerce Six Strategies for Winning the E-Commerce War

WHITEPAPER: October, 2010



WHITEPAPER: Optimized E-Commerce 1

Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……….……………………….……………………….…….… 2Challenges of Today's E-Tailers …………………………….………………………………………………………….…..…………………….………………..……….. 2

The Ghosts of E-Tail Past………………………………….……………………………………….………………………………………………………..……….………………. 3

State of the Industry……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………..…….…………….. 3

Six Strategies For Optimizing E-Tail……………..……………………………………………………..………………………………..……………………..….……….. 4

1. Core Features Come First………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………………..……. 4

2. Know Your Random Users……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………………..……. 4

3. Prepare For The Worst ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………..……. 5

4. Make It Mobile…………………………………………………………………………………………...……………………………………………………………..…………………… 6

5. Protect the Purchaser ……………………………………………………………………...…………………………………..………………………………………………….. 7

6. When to Ditch Your Data ………………………………..…………………………………………………………………………….…….………………………….……. 8

About uTest……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9

"This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they

want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will

keep coming back.”

- John IllhanEntrepreneur




Introduction

The Challenges of Today’s E-Tailers

In 1985, sales gurus Albrecht and Zembre wrote that, “Bad news travels fast. A dissatisfied shopper tellsaround 10 other people about their bad experience.” Today, with the advent of social media, you’d be

lucky to have that same angry shopper “only” tell a thousand people about a poor shopping experience.

It’s safe to say that Albrecht and Zembre hadn’t planned on Tweets like this:

“Ok so I have been shopping online for HOURS now and have bought nothing. THIS SUCKS”

“As unbelievable as it may sound, I hate online shopping. Seriously.”

“I thought I hated shopping in stores, online shopping sucks!!”

“ I used to like shopping...but that was when I could actually find things to buy. Now I hate

it. Online too.”

But disgruntled Tweets are far from the only concern of today’s online retailers. Do these problems

sound familiar?

Constantly changing design and usability standards

Mountains of useless data

User security and fraud protection

Rolling out new features & functionality

Website performance (handling the peak periods)

Developing a mobile presence

Challenging as they may be, it is important to remember that these problems are within your control!

There’s little you can do about the hundreds of new competitors that seem to be sprouting up

everywhere you look, or the increasingly sluggish consumer economy. Why then do so many e-tailers

lose sleep over these issues? Better to focus on what you and your team have the power to change.

And that is the subject of this short whitepaper. In the pages that follow, we’ll show how today’s e-

tailers can do themselves a huge favor by revisiting the fundamentals of what makes for a quality

software application – and unlocking the secrets of what keeps users coming back.

To do so, we’ll lay out six essential strategies for optimizing your e-tail application – covering everything

from user loyalty to user fraud, mobile apps to metrics, data to downtime and other important topics.

Before proceeding, let’s take a quick look back at the evolution of online retail….

“If the user can't use it, it

doesn't work.”

- Susan Dray

Usability Consultant




The Ghosts of E-Tail Past

The year was 1995. A promising young startup named Amazon had just been launched, eBay was known

as AuctionWeb, Michael Jordan was playing minor league baseball and there were virtually NOstandards when it came to online commerce. In fact, a “good” user experience was predicated on the

page loading within five minutes. Yep, those were the days.

Within five years, protocols like DSL and HTTP had been

implemented to ensure a speedier and more secure online

shopping experience. E-checkouts, shopping carts and search

features were also coming into their own. Old people were

even beginning to buy stuff online. Things were looking up!

And you knew it couldn’t last for long. When the bubble burst in 2000, it brought down many players in

the space (although Pets.com became the poster boy) but fortunately not all was lost. The major playersthat had survived quietly continued to improve the online shopping experience, and before you knew it,

the industry was once again back on top.

State of the Industry

Look around you. Is it fair to say that just about everyone you see has purchased something online in

past year? If you’re at work, they might even be doing it right now . More than likely, the answer to that

question is a resounding yes – and there’s a ton of data to back it up. Exhibit A:

As great as these numbers may seem, it’s no guarantee of future success. As noted earlier, today’s E-

Tailers must fight for every inch when it comes revenue, marketshare and media attention.

So let’s now take a look at how to gain the upper hand.

“To open a shop is easy,

to keep it open is an art.”

- Chinese Proverb

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/to_open_a_shop_is_easy-to_keep_it_open_is_an/194611.html




http://thinkexist.com/quotes/chinese_proverbs/

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/chinese_proverbs/






Six Strategies for Optimizing E-Tail

1. Core Features Come First

Few sites are revamped, redesigned and reworked more frequently than that of e-tail – and there’s

nothing inherently wrong about this process. As companies begin to better understand the space (and

their customers) such changes are inevitable. The danger lies in over-prioritizing new features while

neglecting the core ones.

It’s therefore extremely important to determine how

each new feature will affect your core product before

any plans are put into motion. These core features

primarily include:

The online shopping cart The checkout process

Registration

Search

Login

The best place to maintain this line of thought is within the testing phase. Not only is this true when

introducing new features, but it also applies to changes outside your arena - namely, with new operating

systems and browsers. In other words, do your core features hold up under the latest versions of

Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer? What about Windows 7, Linux or Mac OS X Leopard?

Even if you suspect that everything is up to par, you would be well-served to spend at least weekperforming some type of regression test on the core features of your site. It also wouldn’t hurt to add

firewalls, anti-virus and anti-malware programs to that list, as these can cause major problems in online

transactions if left untreated.

In doing this, you’ll be surprised at the number of broken links, mis-matched search results, missing

images and a host of other overlooked problems that cost e-tail sites a small fortune in revenue.

2. Know Your Random Users

Analyzing user data is one of the e-tailers’ favorite pastimes. In an attempt to learn everything about

their current and prospective users, they spend endless amounts of time and money breaking down

their demographics by age group, gender, location, language, income bracket and a host of othercriteria. They watch live usability surveys and pour over customer feedback to determine where users

fall off, how they react to certain calls-to-action and other types of user behavior.

For obvious reasons, this type of data mining is extremely important to determine the who, what,

where, why and how of user disengagement:

“Imagine if your cell phone

changed the location of its

keys every 6 months.”

- Joshua Garity

Brand Strategist




“ When this happens, online businesses not just lose this sale, but also potential repeated sales.

To add salt to the wound, an average online shopper spent an average of $1,200 annually and

any shopper lost is equivalent a direct revenue drop in your annual report. At a macro level, it

costs businesses more than $44 billion in total.” – Willis Wee, www.penn-olsen.com

Despite their exhaustive efforts to study this behavior, much their user base remains a mystery – but

this should be embraced! Often times the best form of feedback comes not from your customers or

prospects, but rather from objective users with NO previous connection to your site.

Because of this, it is suggested that e-tailers run a series of usability tests with a focus group that is less

precise in terms of demographics, but still meets certain conditions. To start, assemble a group of no

more than a dozen participants and create a series of user tasks for them to complete. A timeframe of 1-

2 hours is reasonable. This could include actions pertaining to the core features listed earlier, such as

registration, login and search, but should also includethings like:

Price and product comparison

User reviews and ratings

Live chat and customer support

Promo codes and purchases

At the end of this session, have them complete a short survey that asks them to indentify your site’s

strengths and weaknesses. It’s best in this instance to leave room for suggestions they might have for

improvements to the site. You’ll be surprised of the knowledge of the random web user.

The bottom line: Your users are changing every day, so don’t limit your usability studies to a static focus

group. Mix it up a little.

3. Prepare For the Worst

Downtime – aka the 404 error page of death – is every e-tailer’s worst nightmare. It’s therefore no

surprise that the industry directs so much of its attention to handling peak user periods (for most, this

refers to the holiday season). If you’re like 90% of companies in this space, you begin to take the

necessary precautions roughly six months in advance. Yet despite this attention to detail, there are likely

several aspects of this process that can be greatly improved.

For instance, most e-tailers run some type of performance testing prior to peak season. These “load

testing” procedures require complex software programs to determine how much stress your site can

handle before its performance begins to degrade. This helps them indentify how many users it can

support; the bottlenecks in your servers and databases; your average time per transaction, bounce

rates, page load speed and other important information. It’s a gold mine for data geeks.

“Consumers are statistics.

Customers are people. ”

- Stanley Marcus

http://www.penn-olsen.com/







But here’s the problem: This activity relies 100% on automated software – there is virtually no human

component. This is leaves a lot of room for error. For obvious reasons, you should never trust software

to verify your site’s performance. After all, software doesn’t

want to buy your products – people do!

It is then highly advisable that you have real users examining

your site while these performance tests are taking place. In

other words, while the software automatically tests the

backend of your site, someone should be examining things

like page load speeds, graphics and the functionality of your

core features.

4. Make It Mobile

There’s no getting around the fact that more and more users are making purchases on their tablets,

smartphones and other mobile devices. Unless you’re in the camp that mobile is a passing fad (unlikely)you’ve likely build a native application or mobile website to complement your online presence. The

problem with this mindset is that it leads some to see mobile as a second cousin to the web – a

monumental mistake!

Writes Helen Leggatt of BizReport.com:

“ Mobile users expect their mobile Internet experience to be every bit as fast and easy to use as

on their PC. In fact, 17% of mobile users will wait no longer than 5 seconds before giving up and

37% said they would be unlikely to return to a mobile sit e if frustrated by slow loading.”

This is especially true of e-tail sites. So why do so many mobile sites seem lacking in functionality, design

and performance? Simple: Because ensuring a quality mobile site is at least 2X times more complicated

than the web. With your website, for instance, you’re basically dealing with browsers and operating

systems as variables. With mobile, however, you’re up against that in addition to hundreds of carriers

and devices. It’s definitely a much faster game, and as a result, quality suffers.

While developing for mobile is a job for a small team, testing for mobile is not. Rather, it is a task best

suited for crowdsourcing – defined by author Jeff Howe as “the act of taking a job tradition job

traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to a large group

of people in the form of an open call.”

With a crowdsourced community, e-tailers can verify the functionality and usability of their application

across virtually any type of criteria – language, location, browser, carrier, operating system and others.

To learn more about crowdsourced testing, click here.

“The great strength of computers isthat they can reliably manipulate

vast amounts of data very quickly.

Their great weakness is that they

don’ t have a clue as to what any of

that data actually means.”

- Stephen Cass, 2004

http://www.utest.com/landing-interior/eight-essentials-of-crowdsourcing







5. Protect the Purchaser

The cost of protecting your users (and your business) has skyrocketed in recent years, and the trends for

fraud show no signs of ceasing any time soon:

Writes The Federal Circle:

“It's no wonder that retailers are prime targets of cyber crime. The high cost of complying with

the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards, which requires that all sensitive data

be encrypted and secured, left many companies skimping on security . In 2007, the National

Retail Federation cried foul, calling for an end to the requirement that shops and online stores

archive credit card data themselves.”

This is especially true for e-tailers that accept mobile payments, which today, is nearly all of them.Although Reuters reports that user fraud has a disproportionate impact on large merchants (i.e. those

earning more than $50 million in revenue) this is a problem every e-tailer must deal with. No exceptions.

While e-tailers go to great lengths to ensure a safe shopping experience, they frequently overlook the

little things that can make a huge difference. To point you in the right direction, here are a few

questions to consider as you deal with the security of your application:

Can a user easily get an app to cough up the private data of another user? For example, if

they see “user_id=232” in the URL, what happens if they change it to “user_id=231” ? Do

they get to see someone else’s personal data?

Are you sharing personally identifiable information about your users with third-parties like

Salesforce.com or Google Analytics? What about the company that’s hosting your app?

What happens if your website is cached when it shouldn’t be? Does it share the wrong data

with people? What happens if you actually want caching? Is it sending out the right things

to be cached? Are end users actually seeing a benefit?

Is your site vulnerable to common security exploits like XSS, injection flaws, broken

authentication, flawed session management, invalidated redirects and forwards?




Is your web app behaving the way your privacy policy claims it does?

In light of the time constraints that plague many development teams, it can be helpful to outsource

some of this activity to a reliable, third party vendor. In doing so, you’ll be surprised at what a freshpair of eyes will pick up.

6. When to Ditch Your Data

Sorting through mountains of data – in an attempt to extract something meaningful – can seem like a

baffling ordeal, though this need not be the case. The real problem for today’s e -tailers is not the data

necessarily, but the source of the data. Software guru and data expert Michael Bolton explains why

common metrics can be misleading:

“Businesses could learn a ton of useful information from their own customer service and

technical support reps, and they could learn plenty about the project by listening to their programmers and their testers. Product and project knowledge gets mediated by middle

managers and numbers; it turns from information into data. When your car is about to go off a

cliff, it’s a weird time to be thinking about gas mileage and drag coefficients; better to take

the right control action—look out the window and steer or use the brake until you’re back on

course. Once you’re back to being productive, then you can start thinking about optimizing.”

The point is that data can only help you make decisions – it can’t make them for you, as it requires both

knowledge and intuition. This “human factor” tends to frighten the data-driven types, who see every

problem as technical in nature. Unfortunately, e-tailers operate in an uncertain, continuously changing

world, where numbers only tell part of the story. They cannot provide with the answers to these

questions:

Are your customers satisfied?

Is the site intuitive and user-friendly?

Is the site providing a safe user experience?

Is it consistent across both web and mobile platforms?

So when you feel swamped by piles of data in front of you, step back and ask yourself how closely the

numbers pertain to the questions above.



Documents

uTest Whitepaper Optimized E-Commerce