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

WK 3: Customer Satisfaction

Everyone knows gathering requirements should be meet customer needs. However, how can we get requirements completely so that customer satisfy us.

According to ISO 9000 standard , Principle 1 Customer focus:
Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.

If exceed customer expectations, he/she will more satisfy us. For example, we consider to extend web page easily and load the first page fast.

Principle 6 Continual improvement
Continual improvement of the organization's overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization. Applying the principle of continual improvement typically leads to:
- Providing people with training in the methods and tools of continual improvement.
- Making continual improvement of products, processes and systems an objective for every individual in the organization.
- Establishing goals to guide, and measures to track, continual improvement.
- Recognizing and acknowledging improvements

The tool to measures customer satifaction is Customer Satisfaction Survey, it should be designed to make it easy forcustomers to fill out and easy for you to quickly analyzeyour customer comments.

Myths: A lack of customer complaints means that you have satisfied customers.
Fact: It reflects no customer complaint but does not means "Satisfied".

Reference Links:
ISO Customer Focus and Continous improvement: http://www.iso.org/iso/en/iso9000-14000/understand/qmp.html
ISO Customer Satisfaction Survey: http://www.dnvcert.com/DNV/Certification1/News/NewsLetter/ISOFactxVolume4Issue2/Volume4Issue2/Volume%204%20Issue%202.PDF

WK 2: Better Accessibility

To make Web has better accessibility, most web site provides larger fonts, indexed / categorized information. However, most web sites are designed for PC users but not designed for Mobile Phones /PDA. Common PC screens needs square-look design while PDA or Mobile phone needs narrow design.

Acturally, more and more people use mobiles to online. For example, the number of Internet users in Japan accessing from cell phones exceeded those using it from personal computers in 2005. At the end of the year, 70 million people using the Internet from mobile devices, compared to 66 million conventional PC users. The total mobile Internet commerce market was worth 24 billion .

Finally, if you want to attack more visitors from Japan, you should also design a Web Page for PDA/Mobile Devices. On the other hand, I don't suggest to setup webpage for WAP unless your target customers use WAP to access Internet.

Reference Link:
For PC: www.hko.gov.hk
For PDA/Mobile: http://pda.hko.gov.hk/maine.htm
For WAP: wap.hko.gov.hk
For Japanese Internet visiting habit: http://www.cw.com.hk/computerworldhk/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=353677

What is good Web Design

Let's see and compare HK Government Website:
1. www.info.gov.hk
2. www.esdlife.gov.hk
3. www.gov.hk/tc/residents (The Latest WebPage)


The first webpage shows department information and electronic forms.
The second webpage provide shopping and Electronic public services.
The latest third webpage combines two webpages functions: department information, electronic forms and Electronic public services. This webpage will replace the first two.

The third webpage is required, information is centralized so visitors do not need to select appropriate web sites. The new page used tags to catagorized pages and indexed departments, evrything is clear and tidy.

On the other hand, the first two pages are bad. The info.gov.hk provided too many similar links to select while the ESDLife provided too many information and links.

Now, you may know principles on good webs.