Ecommerce is alive, usability problems still rampant

Clearly ecommerce is far from dead - it leads growth in retail even during this global economic downtown. Yet usability problems, which negatively affect sales, are rampant. Why has this problem remained with us since ecommerce first began?

In August of 2001, the dot-crash was roaring, about to be amplified by the events of 9/11. Early obits for the Web were popular. So it was that usability eminence Jakob Nielson asked, "Did poor usability kill ecommerce?" At the time, Nielsen conducted usability testing of 496 users on 20 US-based sites; failure rates were 56%. Nielsen also estimated that 79% of the sites could increase sales by improving usability. What has changed? Well, ecommerce is no longer an experiment. From Internet Retailer: "Sales of the Top 500 online retailers grew 11.7% to $115.85 billion in 2008 from $103.69 billion in 2007 while Internet Retailer estimates the total retail sales market grew 1.4%."

So ecommerce usability problems have gone away, right? Wrong. In many of our usability tests (2000 - 2009), we've observed all kinds of users attempting to purchase online, and we've watched them abandon transactions for the same old reasons:

• Clunky or incomprehensible checkout process
• Brand inconsistency between the parent site and the ecommerce application
• No evident privacy policy
• Confusion returning to shopping after placing a purchase in the shopping cart
• Failure of shopping carts to retain user choices
• Asking users to complete extensive forms prior to checkout

These are user task path problems, with a dose of emotional intelligence in design sorely missing; look at ecommerce interfaces for a myriad of more straightforward (and unacceptable) UI problems that undermine users and impact sales.

There is no replacement for information architecture, user interface design, and user-centric task sequence design as processes required for usable ecommerce platforms. Companies that took the time to stabilize their ecom platform before adding a plethora of products are the winners.

If your business model relies on online sales, plan to increase those sales by conducting usability testing and investing in solid information design. Time to stop guessing.