What can we learn from disgruntled customers?
What do such opinions show?
“To avoid with a wide arch. They're putting out goods in the store they don't have. Buyed, paid and after two days of mailing that some mistake in the system, I don't know if it's to extort personal data. Some of it's missing, some of it's missing. They'll send it back within a week. Joke.’
is
“I took up equipment cheaper by 30 PLN than in the store where I always bought. It cost me a day's delay in delivery, which was very important to me. Despite the information on the website that “the equipment will be received tomorrow if I place an order within 7,5 hours” (I placed immediately) the package was only sent a day later. I asked customer service why they said they would send a certain day, if they didn't, but I didn't get an answer.”
These opinions were published on the forum on one store selling electronic equipment. Despite their emotional nature, they contain concrete information about what did not work during the purchasing process. A certain pattern can already be observed with several of them – a number of similar errors that relate directly to the website's operation or information contained there.
Do you want to follow the path or go down the path?
The user's path is such a model for the purpose to be designed for the purposes of the online store. As on the path, it has its beginning and its end. The beginning is the entry into the service, the end of the purchase approval. That's how you define the basic purpose of the person who enters the store. Thanks to this goal, it fulfills its need for our service or product. This is very important because user path imposes a certain way of pushing the customer from step to stepto make it comfortable and successfully through the purchasing process.
The described store provides information about the availability of the product and sold it and information about the time of reaching the customer. The consequence of errors or incorrect information on the site is the customer's discontent with failing to fulfill the promise. . With a large scale of sales and a large number of disappointed people, this causes significant loss of customers. It is highly likely that dissatisfied users will not re-purchase and share their negative opinion on the Internet. Therefore, any information (promise) becomes information not only yielding profits but also losses.
Are online purchases predictable?
Purchase Path depending on the industry quite complicated due to the multiplicity of factors affecting the completion of the task by the client. . It is affected by the situation in which he purchases, other professional or domestic activities, the state of finances, the decision-making process, the source of the redirection to the website of the online store, advertising, social impact on the customer, the tool where he purchases and operates the online store together with the interface and payment process. It is important that we have no influence on most of the factors, and that many of them are as designed as possible.
The owners of online shops will certainly add a type of industry as a strong influence on purchasing behaviour. In the fashion industry, it is certainly important that the purchase process is as simple as possible to carry it out on the phone, and in the electronic industry, it will be important to have the security and the ability to take equipment in installments. In the food industry, the most important will be the architecture of the information in the store, to find from the main menu without unnecessary searching of the entire mass of products only those that interest us. In many industries, purchasing paths go beyond the website – they are based on trust, business contacts. But you always have to consider the first contact with our potential client and how he manages navigation in the store.
What could happen on the purchasing path?
I will now consider examples of errors in the purchasing paths. These directly or indirectly affect the interest in the offer and, subsequently, the sales results of the shops.
Shop A sells shoes for many target groups. . Since entering the website, the user has to break through, that is, scroll the entire list of results to see some interesting pairs of shoes. The list of results on the page seems to have no order by gender, price, season. Many resign and do not dig further apart from scrobbling the front page. It's a loss to the store because visitors came here from external paid online campaigns. The store therefore does not fully acquire customers and does not exploit potential. Meanwhile, users do not want to waste time looking inefficiently.
Shop B is a tourist office offering the sale of weekend trips in Poland. The offer on the first page lacks three binding information that will allow the user to conclude that the offer is for him. Namely missing: price, term and name suggesting destination. There's just a name. This information does not encourage you to go further and forces you to click on the offer every time, which is a lot of effort today. The lack of linking important information does not direct it in effect to any. As a result, he may give up further involvement. An unknown user with an offer is a lost client for a travel agency.
Shop C sells women's and men's gallantry. . There's a lot of sales on the site, which is what the entrepreneur wants to attract attention from customers. The user therefore gets acquainted with the sale offer, watches the products on the product card and considers “how much he saves on the purchase in question”. This is also a decisive moment, because it is largely guided by a price that is very attractive to it. However, there is no other key information here, namely: delivery prices. After this information must go down to the bottom of the page and exit “from its product” to the subpage. This procedure interrupts his mind and makes you doubt. This definitely prolongs his decision-making process. So he suspends looking at the offer, thinking he might still come back here.
Shop D sells cosmetics online. . Unfortunately, it did not ensure the readability of labels, that is, all product categories and names. Labels did not contain any boldness and blended with white background. You should have kept your eyesight tight to read the product name on your phone screen. Other elements such as price or availability were marked by a clear background color. In the case of cosmetics, their distinction in qualitative aspects: fragrance, skin type, texture is crucial when choosing their favorite cosmetic. Therefore, it is also very easy to discourage further purchases by not being able to read labels.
How do I check the quality of the purchasing path?
These examples are examples care for the quality of the purchasing path, which contains a number of elements such as the readability used on the font page, has understood and available delivery information. If you get a feeling in a regular customer browsing many services a day, it is also easy to conclude that when there are obstacles on the site, it will simply give up looking at the offer of a given store and go to another.
The most common and most effective way of identifying errors is by performance of utility tests. . Invited (potential customers) are conducted by the test moderator, which is in practice testing the purchase path from the choice of products or services to the conclusion of the transaction (this is when we test the purchase path). Thanks to the protocol of loud thinking, we learn about their doubts, opinions, especially how they go through subsequent stages of purchase (if we are investigating the purchase path). As objective observers, many seemingly innocent traps can be detected. This method already works with 5-6 respondents. It is possible that their opinions will be repeated, which will allow with great probability to identify the most important errors in the interface.
What are the other possible user paths?
Not only is the purchase path analysed in detail. If the store also wants to control the full purchase process, then there should also be a easily accessible complaint channel (with returns), or a complaint path. If the store sells subscriptions (subscription services), the user should have a clear registration path and then the ability to log in to his own account. Currently, some industries also post other purchasing content such as advice, vlogs, blogs – they should also be well managed, while advertising content – be consistent with the main navigation on the site.
I've often met with a vicious wheel that illustrates Inconsistency of navigation from advertising content. . What is it? When placing a clickable box (advertise banners) it goes to the so-called landing page, from which no path leads any further. Landings are separate subpages, i.e. blind streets, from which return only one way, because to the main page. Sometimes I also met with such a diverse service name (although the same names were sold only under different names) that I had a sad news dissonance. Meanwhile, I needed a consistent and reliable service data package. This way of presenting offers does not lead to effective sales, especially when buying sensitive products such as banking or medical products.
Do you have to build everything up again?
Changes can be made globally or by small steps. It is known that radical change is costly and time-consuming, while such introduced gradually can bring about equally good results. . Thanks to utility tests and the UX audit, changes can be ranked to those that are necessary and to those that can be subsequently introduced. This priority is served by the MoscoW method: Must, Should, Should, Won’t. In the first two, we give recommendations that have to be made – these can be broken down temporarily into the nearest and subsequent terms. The other two belong to the desired but not necessary.
How do you know what's more important and what's less important? Experienced UX expert bases his recommendations on good practice, i.e. models operating and benefiting both parties (not only financial). He watches the mechanics of other services and performs tests with users. He knows that the most sensitive elements of the interface include search engines, filters, menus, logistics data, security data. Also the elements related to navigation, finding themselves in the service, e.g. distinguishing labels on the category tree belong to the more crucial ones. The latter are of great importance in the efficient search for products and therefore have a high priority. These elements will therefore be recommended to change first – of course if they do not work well or cause problems for users.
But can we be surprised?
But we certainly cannot have a solid and established knowledge of the models of good solutions, because The habits and expectations of the recipients are changing. . On one social media channel, the habit of scrolling will be desirable, but many shortcuts should be designed in the online store. In the online store, account creation is not welcome, but in banking products it is a guarantee of security. So we're going to see different expectations for digital products. Monitoring of interactions is therefore the best way to deal with changes. It is not possible to replace expert knowledge with what user observation can offer. This observation is alive and gives a large dose of practical knowledge about our project in a short time. The users may unexpectedly not understand the category names given on the site or may not find information about the available sizes. These are real barriers to a potential client.
Users not aware they will quickly get used to purchasing facilities, facilitating the relief of their memory and the effort to focus on one activity. They are very annoyed by their services, in which they cannot find something or quickly move from one subpage to another. They already have carbons in their head from other services where such problems do not occur or if they occur, they are in a minority. So it's not a designer's invention. Those who offer such conveniences in the store are one step ahead of their competition. This translates into sales and good reviews of the store. Liquid customer paths, which in his opinion are a convenient way of making purchases, include proven methods that are known in the world of designing digital products.
When I write words about unexpected changes or conditions affecting human perception, the whole world is currently in quarantine in the fight against coronavirus. Business and education are shifted to remote work. A lot of decision-making processes are being held back. How will the purchasing processes of ordinary people change in this reality? Will the user paths therefore undergo changes during and after quarantine? If so, what is it? What solutions will need to be implemented to services selling products and services? What will be the absolute must have in the service?
