User behavior analysis: What to look for before shopping

What people look at before they go shopping: teach you how to use eye-catching content to decorate your online shopping page

In the fourth quarter of 2008, British shoppers spent 13.16 billion euros on online shopping, according to estimates from the interactive media retail Group and the Capgemini consulting firm. This is up 15% over the same period in 2007.

On the other hand, data from the September 2007 market research and consultancy Cupid Research Company (Jupiter study) showed that 42% of the 1179 online shoppers surveyed withdrew from the site without buying a product because their questions about the product were not answered.

What we want to do, why we do it

I've done a series of research on the Cxpartners website about what's going to attract customers, looking at what customers like to see when they browse the shopping page, and what factors they consider when choosing a product. I also want to find out the best shopping web design for customers: (1) make them more interested in the items they are going to buy, and (2) help them find the goods they need more easily.

Factors to be considered in this study include: the content of the page (description of the product, delivery method), the design of the page (typesetting, font, color), special columns (promotion, customer evaluation) and layout (two lines of three columns, note: The original two versus three columns, Please advise the versus what is the meaning of here.

What are the shopping pages we are studying?

We chose the 2008 UK online retailer's top 10 6 sites as subjects: Amazon, Argues (Argos), Tesco Direct, Play.com (translator cannot find the official Chinese translation of the site), Martha's Department Store (Marks & Spencer) and John Louis (John Lewis). All of the respondents were familiar with the sites and bought goods at at least 3 of them.

How did we do the investigation?

We randomly selected 3 sites (home pages) for each of the participants, and ensured that the sites were distributed evenly among all the participants (consult the order of the sites is counterbalanced over the group of participants. What the order of the sites means. They want to search for products they decide to buy or buy on their websites.

The focus of this blog is on the findings from the study of the shopping page. We listened to the participants ' opinions about online shopping, observed their movements, and analyzed their eye movements.

Our findings:

Guide 1―― "Purchase Guidelines" (call to action) must be clear

The "Buy guidelines" for shopping pages is a link to a shopping basket. So it has to be visually compelling, and it's best to look like a button. On the Tesco site, they said, they were not sure where to click to buy goods because the "add to basket" on the site was not a conspicuous button. For the gray buttons on the John Louis Web site, the test participants also had similar reviews. The gray button is the same color as the rest of the Web site.

On the other hand, the tester thinks it's easy to add items to the shopping basket on the website of Martha's department store, which makes them more appealing to the customer's eyeballs (as shown in the following picture).

Guide 2―― good at using bullets to provide useful product introductions

What the tester wants is to be able to provide information about the product to help them make a decision about it. In addition, they would like to see "good" words to stimulate their purchase, rather than the dull and cold words on Tesco's website.

The participants also preferred the introduction of bulleted products, like Argues's web site, to facilitate their quick browsing. Segmenting the product not only makes the page messy, but also makes it very laborious for the customer to find the details they are interested in. "It's hard and boring to read," They said in a review of Tesco's website. ”

They like to have all the details displayed on one page (like John Louis and Amazon, for example) rather than too many links (like Argues and Tesco) and need to click to see the information needed.

Guide 3―― to use quality product pictures

Generally, product images are the first thing a tester sees when they enter a page, regardless of where they are on the page (refer to the eye-catching picture below). Most websites will put the product picture on the top left corner of the page. Argues is the exception, he put the picture in the upper right corner.

Unlike shopping in stores, the product picture is the only factor that customers consider when deciding whether a product fits their needs or tastes. This is a powerful way to showcase your product. Therefore, the provision of simple vivid and high-quality product pictures is very important, can play to attract public attention, improve product visibility role. (Here the translator guesses more ingredients, the original is easy graphic manipulation functions for zooming, panning and rotations. Please kindly advise the master).

There are a lot of articles about how top retailers show their product pictures, like the articles on Get elastic.

In addition, it is also effective to display products from multiple angles, especially the one that best reflects the importance of the product. You have to be clear about what the first factors are for customers to think about, and they want to know what the product is about--for example, for mountaineering trainers, they only care about the grip of the shoe. Also, if possible, show the size and relevance of the product (for example, a picture of a handbag filled with a beer can help the customer estimate the size of the handbag).

Guide 4―― to use simple layout design

Most of the participants tended to browse the product images on the left side of the page and browse the product descriptions on the right (like Martha's Department store). When the detailed description of the product is located in the fold line (original: When product details are above the fold. What do you mean, fold here? , the user will most likely scroll down the page directly.

John Louis's layout is very beautiful, with only the necessary information. The participants browsed almost all the information on the page and were not limited by the type of product they wanted, clothing, household items or digital products.

"I like that. Simple, stylish, not confusing. ”

However, all the participants ignored the "You have browsed" section at the bottom of the John Louis Web page. They scroll down the page and then scroll back up after the product content (refer to the picture below). The reason for this is that this part is completely isolated from the rest of the page, so it looks like the end of the page. Overall, the vertical layout will stimulate the customer to scroll down the page.

Guide 5 --Don't be a long page

Customers never, or rarely, read all the information on the page, especially if there is a lot of content on the page. Even if the layout is very good, a lengthy page will not achieve good results. Customers usually ignore the bottom bits, or simply skim through them, and never pay attention to each column. Also, even if they scroll down the page, they won't read it carefully, or look at everything at the bottom of the page.

"Even if I scroll to the bottom, I won't look at them. "[Amazon]

Play.com and Amazon pages are very long (Amazon Web pages are 8 times times the length of Tesco!). The researchers used the word "too difficult" when describing the page. The statements quoted below show that the test participants simply looked at the 2/3 content of the page and completely ignored the other 1/3.

"I just turned the page off," he said. (Is this the meaning of block them out here?) Don't know where to start and where to end. Need to concentrate on reading. "[Play.com]

"I tend to just look at the top of the page because I know they'll put some information on the line, especially in long pages," he said. So I ignored them. "[Amazon]

Guide 6―― to provide only the necessary information related to the product

Don't make customers feel overwhelmed. You only need to provide important information about the items to be sold.

It is not advisable to throw everything to the customer and let them choose the information they need for the relevant product. The best thing to do is to understand your product (for example, its uniqueness) and know what the customer might ask.

When there is too much information on a product page, it is easy for customers to overlook something that is very important to them. On Amazon's website, the tester did not go through the Customer Evaluation section below. Therefore, they did not see customer discussions, recommended products and "similar goods" content.

Directs 7―― to show important content (avoid "hide-and-seek" on the Web)

Unlike shopping in the real world, there is no sales person on the web that tells customers everything they want to know about the product. The customer must find the answer on a Web page filled with all kinds of information. If they can't find it, or lose patience in the process of finding them, they will leave the page in a flash and never see it again.

For example, technical details related to DVDs, such as years, screens, languages, subtitles, and regions, are information that customers care about. On Play.com's website, however, the tester said they had to scroll down the page to see the information after the "customer reviews" and "related products" (e.g., DVDs, smart designs, home Entertainment notes: Original DVDs, gadgets and games). Don't play "hide-and-seek" with your customers!

Guide 8―― if the product-related information is in a column, do not put important information in the left and right side of the columns

When customers browse the shopping page, their main task is to understand a product and buy it. They don't like to be distracted by some irrelevant information. As a result, all the participants completely ignore the information on the left and right columns of the Play.com Web page, especially if all the product introductions are concentrated in one column. However, if the shopping page is designed to be 3 columnar (where 2 of the columns are related to the product), the tester will be more concerned about the information on the left vertical bar (though this is not a serious trend). The pages of Martha's and John Louis's are designed like this (refer to the pictures below).

So, if you put the main information of the product in a vertical vertical bar, you should avoid putting important information on both sides of the column (for example, interactive sales [cross-selling] information).

Guide 9―― to provide enough space to avoid excessive color

Martha's website puts too much information next to the product picture on the right side of the page-commodity name, price, commodity code, ratings, reviews, product introductions and how to buy. Also, all fonts are the same size, and there is no blank space between the text. Such layouts are so overcrowded that the tester will choose to skip them, unless they can't find the information they want on other pages.

The colors on the Web page can also distract the learner. The Tesco website has more than 5 different colors---------------------price and scorecard. Is red, the product content is black, the "Add to Basket" button is green, the Label (tab label) is blue, and the other links are gray (refer to the picture below). Such a design would confuse the test-makers and cause visual confusion.

Guide 10―― to allow customers to read themselves and avoid too many clicks

If the pilot does not know what the linked page is, it will not be happy to click on the link or button. For example, clicking on a link on a Tesco website opens a new window with a choice of items. The tester refused to click on the link, fearing that it would leave the original shopping page after the click.

Summary

Provide the customer with the information they need as quickly as possible (for example, product picture, Brief introduction, Price and shipping method). Provide them with concise and clear (not colorful or lengthy) pages to avoid confusing customers. Show a good picture of the product (if you can show the use of the product at the same time it is best), the picture can reveal a lot of information about the product. Provide your customers with a pleasant shopping trip and make them happy, so they will come back again.