WK 4: Usability Impact to Online Store

Online Stores are very popular in Internet and attacts more Customer to purchase.
There are some researches and findings:
1. In a study of 8,600 Web-using households, Forrester Research found that 67% of users cited ease of use and 59% cited download speed as reasons for continuing to return to Web sites.
2. 27% of all Web transactions are abandoned at the payment screen while 75% of shoppers abandon their shopping cart without making a purchase.
3. 40% of people never return to a Web site after a negative user experience.

It reflects ease of use and download speed are the successful factors. However, of all the Web sites studied, 84% had pages that downloaded too slowly.

Let's compare some Online store of famous corporations, HP, PCCW, DELL.
HP and PCCW need longer time than DELL.
HP needs many clicks to reach Online store first page after found the product with difficult.
PCCW and DELL easy to make a Purchase. However, PCCW did not use attactive color for "Add to cart" and other related buttons.

What are the benefits if a Web site with good usability?
a) 31% decrease in rate of exit from the home page
b) 45% decrease in rate of exit from catalog pages
c) 67% increase in number of repeat customers

How to realize the full potential of your site:
- Surveying your customers and prospects to determine what they're coming to your site to find
- Putting the right links in the right places, and making them easily identifiable
- Clearly distinguishing your most important pieces of content
- Making pages readable
- Creating navigation that tells users where they are, how to get where they want to go, how to get back to where they came from
- Keeping contact information and the BUY button in front of users at all times
- Giving your site a consistent look and feel throughout, compatible with the image you want to project to your most valuable customers
- Reducing download time by one second per page to dropped abandonment rate from 30% to 8%.

Reference Link:
Usability Impact to Online Store: http://acroglobal.com/usability.htm?source=Yahoo
Poor HP Online Store: www.hp.com.hk
Better PCCW Online Store: www.pccw.com
Best DELL Online Store : www.dell.com.hk