Ecommerce optimisation tips part 2: Designing for desirability and how to avoid feature creep
This is the second of a series of six posts where I’m uncovering fundamental UX principles for designing great ecommerce user experiences.
Last week we discussed the importance of making the most of the web: Why you shouldn’t treat your users like flies.
This week we focus on designing for desirability and how to avoid feature creep.
Make it desirable
Often we decide to buy long before we know much about a particular product. We see something we want and then Google it, to seek to reaffirm why it would be such a great thing to own.
Recently in the office we were discussing the phenomenon of being willing to invest time learning how to use something that we would never invest in an undesirable object.
A great example of this is the iphone. Would people invest time and effort in learning it’s new forms of interaction if they didn’t love the object? I think where the iphone triumphs is that it doesn’t force the user to suffer to be beautiful, as it makes previously difficult tasks (like sending emails from a phone) simple and easy.
In Bristol we have noticed the amount of fixed wheel bicycles on the roads, and have questioned the logic of this in such a hilly city. Clearly this is a triumph of function following form but for such a beautiful object how much would you be willing to struggle up those hills?
As designers we must design for desirability. We have seen many times during our research how positively large images are received by users. Users want a clear indication of what it will be like to own an object, and images give them a clear point of reference to help them imagine this happening.
We fall in love with products that we have to have, regardless of the practicalities that may stop us from doing so. Websites that do this well sell us a vision of how our lives will change for the better if we were to own this product.
Designing the buying experience
A mate of mine owns a Morgan. A Morgan is a sports car with a 7 year waiting list. During the 7 year wait you get to visit the factory, and customize every aspect of the car.
Morgan do a great job of keeping you warm until the delivery date. Buying a Morgan is a significant part of owning one.
Morgan have acknowledged that the experience of buying a product can be as designed as the experience of owning one. From a users point of view they just want the product, but if we can design an enjoyable experience of acquiring that product we can add to the experience of owning it.
Focus on what you need to do, not on what you can do
Feature creep often kills web projects. Often it’s a result of the funky stuff that wins new accounts for digital agencies. As a result new sites sell themselves based on what they do differently as opposed to what they do well.
Typically, there is a lack of early user involvement within web projects, that results in stakeholder wishlists of features. They all seem like great ideas, but often add nothing to support key user tasks.
Gaining knowledge of user tasks can be difficult, particularly with small research budgets. We find that a great technique is to run some quick user tests to get an understanding of what people are trying to do. This then gives a focus for decision making further on in the project. Would the people we met make use of this feature?
Every idea for a new feature must be questioned and be seen as having an opportunity cost associated with it for doing something else.
Using the knowledge you have gained from your users you are then able to evaluate new feature ideas by asking these questions:
- Is this useful for our users?
- What advantage is this feature giving us?
- How else could we do this?
- How is this making things better?
- What would be a better way of doing this?
These are hard questions to answer, and are the topic of many a lengthy project review meeting. But by using user research to help to answer these questions, you are effectively removing the politics and redirecting the decision to those that can give you the right answers. Your users become your decision makers.
Keep an eye out for my next post where I look at how analytics can be combined with user testing to see what is really happening on your site.
About the author
James is a Principal User Experience consultant at cxpartners. He’s got over 10 years of experience working with brands like MTV, Orange and Expedia. He loves photography and is very proud of his garden shed. Email James, or call +44 (0)117 946 3930
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