It’s important not to forget that ecommerce is still a relatively new concept, and it’s taken many months to persuade consumers that shopping online can be as easy (if not easier!) and as engaging as shopping in store. By making visually appealing, flash focused websites some brands are forgetting the usability aspect of online shopping, and making the online customer experience a lot harder and frustrating than shopping in store.

What makes a good ecommerce website?

There needs to be a compromise between attractive, eye catching design and simple, easy to use functionality. It’s important that while retailers are implementing new technologies and merchandising innovations they don’t lose sight of the overall goal of an ecommerce website; to convert customers.

In addition, the advancement of mobile browsing and m-commerce has put an even greater emphasis on usability. Smaller display areas and touch screen technology is forcing retailers to think more about how to enable consumers to purchase in the least amount of clicks possible. Mobile websites will be covered in another post at a later date but for now the focus is on fashion vs. usability.

Eye-Catching Design

Whistles

This very unique new website from Whistles was launched earlier this year, and sparked controversy among critics. Yes it is different, yes it is innovative and eye catching, but have the designers got a bit too carried away? The style of the site means that users are engaged right though the browsing process, with model imagery used from the homepage, through the category listings right to product details. They also integrate well with social media, offering links to share via email, facebook and twitter. The imagery on the site is good, and there are plenty of alternate images and zoom utilised on everything.

However, it’s the small things that Whistles have forgotten, such as a search box, or refine feature, making it very difficult to find something specific, or within a certain budget for example. Also, there are no sub-categories in the top navigation bar; rather they are displayed on the main page, mixed in with the model imagery. This makes it very easy to get lost in the middle of the screen and not be able to find the category that you want.

Fashionable but Usable

River Island

I thought it was fitting to use River Island as my example in this category as this site used to be another culprit of ‘Flash overkill’. However River Island has recently revamped their site to make it more usable. And in my opinion they’ve done a pretty good job! They’ve managed to retain some individuality by allowing refinements according to swatches of colour, pattern descriptions and even ‘occasion’. They’ve also spruced up their product listings by inserting a top product into a larger box at the top left of each page, similar to a profile picture layout. Not only does this act as a merchandising tool but serves to differentiate River Island product listings from those on their competitor’s websites.

They’ve also added a quick look or closer look feature, which allows you to either view the product in a pop up box while still on the category listing page, or to go right into the product details page for a closer look. Although this is a nice feature, there isn’t much difference between the information given in the two options, aside from a few ‘get the look’ items on the product details page. By adding more in depth product information to the details page River Island could have added value to the feature and given consumers a more compelling reason to visit the product details page if they were interested in the product, thus increasing the chance of up and cross-selling more items.

Finding a Compromise

For many companies, both new to ecommerce and old hats that are looking to revamp their offering, it is important that the basics of usability and good customer experience don’t get lost in a web of flash and unnecessary gadgets. There are some new technologies that will genuinely enhance your customers experience online, but there are some that will detract from it. In all elements of ecommerce, especially web design, usability should be a key consideration, because if your customers can’t use it they won’t buy from it.

The main point of the article is that the trend towards becoming more accessible is actually going in the wrong direction with these top sites actually receiving overall a worse accessibility score than the previous year. The difference in this year’s score and the previous year’s score is little but it raises a number of questions with the main one being why these websites are not having the necessary work done to them to make them accessible.

Web accessibility measures websites on a whole range of criteria and essentially promotes an ease of use to the population, particularly those who suffer from some form of disability. Although it is much more than that, generally accessibility guidelines cover overall good practice for building websites. Abiding to these guidelines helps usability of the website and should ultimately lead to a better conversion for all users. So what are the guidelines?

What are the accessibility guidelines?

The guidelines vary depending on which organisation the company needs or wants to be compliant with. The most comprehensive is WCAG2 which gives detailed technical information to the developer and designer and ensures the website is accessible, user friendly, updatable, future proof and much more.

The criteria webcredible used in their report is a bit more basic and outlines 20 factors that the website should be doing. These are as follows:

1. Text is resizable and remains legible when resized

2. Descriptive page titles used

3. Information images have useful ALT text

4. Decorative images have null ALT text & aren’t links by themselves

5. Text isn’t embedded within images

6. Headings are correctly labelled as headings

7. All sections of the page have their own heading

8. Headings stand out from regular text

9. Link text makes sense out of context and is front-loaded

10. A focus state is provided for links

11. Links use a high contrast colour

12. Links employs the widest possible area

13. All lists labelled as lists

14. Skip to main content link provided

15. Decorative items not inserted through HTML code

16. CSS used for layout

17. Form label present and correctly positioned

18. Labels assigned to form items

19. Form items don’t cause auto-refresh

20. Forms effectively designed

These guidelines vary from being very easy to implement to others that require more thinking when designing a website (and for a website that already exists a potential overhaul of how it works).

Why are these companies not rushing to make their sites compliant?

The work and therefore costs involved with making the websites compliant in itself can be the main hindrance to getting them done but there are other problems. Some of the latest technology and code is not supported by the accessibility guidelines. More advanced features on websites often break the accessibility guidelines and despite being an attractive feature for a lot of people, can cause major usability issues for others.

Finally the most common problem is the trade off for having a funky designed website and the limitations that are imposed by accessibility. Whilst it is often beneficial to have the brand and website accessed by as many people as possible, the styling of the website must also represent the brand correctly.

So will we see an improvement next year towards better accessibility? The question is hard to answer because yes it should, given the economic recession and the necessity to become open to a wider market (17% more people according to e-consultancy). But this may require compromise on brand portrayal or an expensive overhaul that companies do not want to spend the money on currently. I predict we will see a rise in the compliancy of these sites but not to the levels the accessibility gurus would like to see quite yet.