When Google announced their new visual search website for designer fashion, Boutiques.com, I took a look at the complementary iPad app they also released.  As the Boutiques.com website is positioned as a direct competitor to the site ShopStyle, I thought it only fair to take a look at their iPad app as well.

ShopStyle iPad App Main Screen

Launched in 2006, ShopStyle aggregates fashion from a variety of online retailers, both department stores and boutiques.  The company was acquired by Sugar Inc and became part of the Sugar suite of media sites.  ShopStyle continues to attract users who can browse through clothing from a variety of stores, create their own style lookbooks, and follow the inspiration of others.  ShopStyle widgets promote products on bloggers’ websites and on the Glam network.  The experience is curated discovery mixed with directed browsing.

Browsing through the Clothing Category

The iPad app, which came out this summer, puts the browsing experience into users’ hands.  It’s a sleek interface that quickly takes you into different categories for clothing, footwear, accessories, and more.

Browsing Products on the ShopStyle iPad App

The Product Details Screen

Here are my thoughts on the app:

iPad App Pros

• It’s very easy to quickly narrow in on the type of product you’re looking for.  Categories are straightforward, and there are a variety of refinement options for things like brand, store, price, color, etc.
• It has a clean modern interface that looks nice on the iPad.

iPad App Cons

• It’s not social.  The ShopStyle website has components for creating and exploring lookbooks, following users, and checking out curated trends.  All of that is missing from the app.
• The app interface may be easy to navigate, but once you leave the product details screen for the product page on the retailer’s site, you’re stuck with an experience that isn’t mobile-optimized.

You may also want to check out the previous post on the Boutiques.com iPad app.

This past summer, Google acquired visual search company Like.com, leaving many to wonder whether Google would soon be applying this pattern recognition technology to Google Product Search.  Yesterday we saw the result of that acquisition.  Google launched new site Boutiques.com along with a matching iPad app.

The main screen of the iPad app lets you browse through style collections or "Boutiques."

Like.com began as a comparison shopping website that differentiated itself by focusing on “visual search.”  Unlike other comparison sites, the primary focus was all on apparel, with an emphasis on fashion for women.  Adding aspects of discoverability into the search and browse process, Like users could sort through products by choosing colors and shapes.  Select one blue hobo purse and the results would bring back any other similar blue hobo purses.  As a merchant, I began using Like.com in 2008, but the technology and interface were still rough and the backend reporting was almost non-existent.

Once you've selected a boutique, images of the fashion inspiration are above and relevant products can be browsed through below.

The release of Boutiques.com is a different step for Google.  The site is very un-Googley.  As a fashion and celebrity oriented site limited only to women’s clothing, purses, and accessories, Boutiques places itself as a formidable competitor to ShopStyle.  ShopStyle, a social shopping site that was acquired by Sugar Inc in 2007, has a similar focus and demographic.  Users create trendboards or lookbooks based on their favorite styles and celebrities.  Designer fashions from all the major retailers and smaller boutiques are pulled into the site, and users can group items together and search styles.  ShopStyle launched originally with just women’s fashion in the US, but has since expanded to include Men’s, Kid’s, Home, and other countries.  They also have an iPad app.

Select a product and the details for that item open in an overlay above the main screen. Other products that are "visually similar" are presented below the product details.

I decided to go through the Boutiques.com iPad app to check out the features and functionalities.  The session was recorded with my iPad usability testing camera (first prototype).  The camera is the funny looking thing in front of my face.

After exploring the iPad app a bit, here are my impressions.

iPad App Pros

• The visual search technology seems much improved from the older Like.com days and the interface is more modern and clean than anything Like.com ever had.
• You can refine products displayed by color, fabric pattern, price, and style.  I like the treatment of the popups that allow you to choose your refinements.
• When you select your product type (shoes, tops, etc), a drop-down shows all the possible silhouettes or styles for that type of item.  Just choose V-neck, blouse, tank, etc from the list and all matching products will show up.
• The interface, in general, is clean and modern feeling.

iPad App Cons

• When you tap a product, a product detail opens in an overlay.  After tapping out of the overlay to get back to the main site, the app crashed everytime.
• The app is designed for users to browse via style collections or “boutiques.”  That’s fine if you want to browse through fashion like a magazine, but if you’re actually on the hunt for a specific type of clothing, there’s no way to initially begin narrowing down by product or designer.
• The app wants to make personalized product recommendations based on your style interests and wants you to follow other users and create your own “boutiques.”  I don’t have any interest in logging in to the app and creating a new account, especially if I can’t do it from my existing Google account or through Twitter OAuth.
• From the browse screen, the interface tells you the designer, but you have no idea who is selling it until you pull up the product detail.  Even then, I didn’t notice the merchant listed until after playing with the app for awhile.
• The interface is only horizontal.  I really would have preferred it if the app had been designed to work in either viewing mode.

Interested in how Google’s iPad fashion app compares to the rest of the market?  I’ve also posted a comparison with the ShopStyle iPad app.

Around the same time that the United States fell into recession and once-extravagant consumers no longer shopped for extravagant luxury items, several new ecommerce companies launched, selling…luxury items. While this might seem counterintuitive, these businesses stepped into the market at the right time, with just the right selling strategy.

With a flash sale business model, companies like Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, and Hautelook began offering designer fashion and luxury goods at deeply discounted prices, for a limited time. Would-be shoppers can only access the products if they’ve first become “members” of the site. They then receive daily emails alerting them when a new sale is beginning. Members rush to the website, eager to steal a deal before the products are all sold out.

Discounted designer clothing, jewelry, and luxury home goods proved to be something of a hit with cost-conscious consumers, and many copycat businesses quickly followed suite. Sales at these sites happen daily, and while shoppers are informed of which designers will have sales going on any given day, they don’t know what items will be sold or what the prices will be. This piques consumer interest. Combine that interest with both the promise of savings and a tinge of cutthroat desire to buy the best products before anyone else, and you end up with fashion junkie visitors who come to your website every single day.

I recently came across an article by Joshua Porter on building everyday apps. According to Joshua:

“An everyday app is one that is used every day (or most days) by its users. This means that each and every day they do something with the app.”

Few apps are actually used every day, and few sites are visited every day. As much as we’d love to think that online shoppers are so intrigued with our products and services that they keep coming back to our online storefront day after day, the reality is that for many verticals, few customers even return once a month. The sites that do manage to bring in repeat visitors on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis usually have business plans or product lines that play into this frequency. They may offer daily new products, weekly sales or discounts, or subscription services on items you might need on a monthly basis. Even if your business isn’t destined to be an everyday site, you might be able to incorporate some features to make it a “more-often” ecommerce site.

Grow Community

Create a community for your visitors and people will have a reason to return to your site, even when they’re not going to buy. Diehard Wooters might not think twice about visiting Woot at least once a day or once every few days, but they didn’t become diehard fans purely from a love of random gadgets. Woot, the “One Day, One Deal” site does just that, they only sell one product each day (unless you count the fact that there are actually several Woot variations, like Shirt Woot and Wine Woot).

While innate curiosity might get a visitor coming back several times, it’s the social community that hooks fans in and keeps them active with the site, even if today’s product isn’t something that interests them. Woot products come with humorous descriptions, and they show the stats on how the product is selling – including how long before someone first completed a purchase, what quantities people are buying the item in, and how many other Woot purchases the various buyers have made. The first person to buy the daily deal is announced to the world, with a link to that member’s profile. Woot members can also join in a daily discussion surrounding the item, and like other forums, many members are longtime staples. There’s nothing like peer pressure to get someone buying.

Show Something New Every Day

It’s easy to get people checking in with your brand on a regular basis if what you’re selling happens to change every day. A bit like Woot, daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social offer special coupons and discounts for local products and services, but customers have to act fast because most deals disappear after only one day. Potential customers won’t find every deal of interest to them, but if they want to catch the good ones they need to come back day after day. Because Groupon and Living Social offer daily emails and mobile phone apps, many customers might be checking in with the brand on a daily basis even when they don’t return to make a purchase.

Fresh merchandise is a good way to entice many shoppers back to your site, but not everyone has something new to announce each day. Delight bridged the gap by offering daily “delights” for one item on their site each day. The merchandise isn’t necessarily new, but every day Delight features a special or discount for one specific item. Customers can choose to opt-in to the Daily Delight emails to receive updates every day about the featured product. If the item is something that truly tickles their fancy, they have until midnight to make the purchase.

Have Lots of Browse-Worthy Information

Dominate with content and visitors have something else to seek out besides your products. A lot of people visit Amazon. Most people probably don’t visit on a daily basis, though some do. Many of us probably find ourselves on Amazon’s site because Amazon has managed to own a corner of just about every market. From baby food to blow torches, Amazon’s got it.

Large product catalog aside, Amazon has amassed a large amount of interesting content unique to its site. Have you ever gotten lost in Listmania madness? You find one book that looks interesting, and then you check out a list to see if anyone has mentioned something else that might interest you. You see several new books, read a bit about them, and then before you know it, you’re off looking at another list. What about the “So You’d Like To…” feature where Amazon citizens can put together their own guides, complete with product recommendations and advice.

And did you know that there are communities on Amazon? People from all over can get together to discuss topics related to their work or interests. Amazon also has lots of customer reviews. The product reviews alone have made Amazon the first stop for product research for many consumers. With all the unique user-generated content, it’s easy to see why many people turn to Amazon when they’re starting some research or looking for new information. Even if Amazon’s product catalog was only half the size, Amazon and its users create enough new and interesting content each day to keep many people coming back to visit on a regular basis.

Play with Emotions: Incite Lust, Greed, or Competitiveness

Not all purchases are rational and sane. If they were, the number of product returns would surely dip. In fact, very few of our collective purchases are actually for items we absolutely need. While I wouldn’t recommend making the Seven Deadly Sins your marketing playbook, creating an addictive desire for your products and your brand will bring some visitors back to your site on a regular basis.

Companies like Gilt, Rue La La, and Hautelook have capitalized on our addictive tendencies and keep some visitors returning every single day. These flash sale stores, and the others that emerged following their success, typically offer deep discounts on designer goods: things that we want but usually can’t have. Sales are short, often only lasting a day or two. This adds a greater level of urgency to any purchasing decision, and suddenly, would-be browsers are turning into buyers. On top of this, quantities are limited for many products. If you’re not one of the first to get to the site when a sale begins, there’s a very good chance that the gorgeous dress you never knew you wanted is already sold out. Customers return, in part, because they’re out to beat the masses in the purchase of something lust-worthy and crave-inducing.

When it comes down to it, you don’t have to be an everyday ecommerce site. Very few businesses will see success if this is where their ambitions lie. However, do try to incorporate some of these features into your site, and you may start to see visitors return on a more frequent basis.

Photo from Flickr user Andyhay.

Although I regularly skim through news and updates about startup companies, a recent story grabbed my attention because it involved ecommerce, robots, and the quest to get the perfect fitting outfit to online shoppers.

While online retail and the technology that powers this field have matured considerably, one complication that apparel retailers still tussle with is fit.  It’s not easy to buy clothes that fit right if you can’t try them on first.

The fit conundrum isn’t new to online retailers (and it’s something that catalogers face as well), but – unlike other aspects of shopping online – it isn’t a problem that’s been widely fixed with more advanced technology.

Cyber Mannequins and My Virtual Model

Some of the My Virtual Mannequins from 2001

The virtual Erin sports a BCBG blouse and Mavi jeans.

A lot of companies have tried, and failed, to use technology to help shoppers determine if that pair of jeans or sexy top they’re contemplating will indeed fit.  Land’s End was one of the first companies to dabble with virtual model technology on their website.  As early as 2000, Land’s End had added a feature using My Virtual Model technology that created cyber mannequins to help customers truly size up clothing.  The virtual modeling technology advanced, and Sears, Lane Bryant, and others followed suit.

Ten years later, My Virtual Model still exists and variations of its offerings have been put to use on many sites.  However, in a basic search I wasn’t able to track down any sites that are currently using the customizable virtual models to let shoppers demo different apparel items. The MVM site itself does let you customize a model of yourself and play around a bit with some clothing items in their community site.  Even so, I didn’t find the experience very compelling and the technology felt a little clunky.

Few clothing choices exist in the MVM community site for trying on, which I think is indicative of the expensive nature of the program – for clothing manufacturers and retailers to take advantage of the virtual models and cyber fits, every single garment has to be scanned by MVM technology.  In a world where new styles come seasonly and designers often do limited cuts of products, the cost and time involved is incredibly prohibitive.

Augmented Reality and Fashionista

Tobi's Fashionista augmented reality.

About a year ago, ecommerce apparel companies started to look at another emerging technology: augmented reality.  In the fall of 2009, clothing etailer Tobi launched Fashionista, a program that capitalizes on shoppers with webcams to allow them to virtually try out clothes.  Fashionista required customers have a web camera, Flash, and the desire to move around in their living room until they hit the perfect spot where their full body image could be overlayed with outfits.

While perhaps amusing (I never tried it), Fashionista did little to help shoppers determine fit.  Like MVM, Fashionista (a product of interactive marketing company Zugara) is an expensive feature to add.  In addition to the cost of licensing an augmented reality technology, all product imagery has to be shot or appropriately edited for layering on top of a webcam image.  The technology itself is also resource intensive.  Interestingly enough, as I browsed through Tobi’s site, I no longer see reference to the Fashionista feature anywhere within their product pages.

Robots and Fits.Me

The Fits.Me Robotic Mannequin

The news that caught my attention last week was about Fits.me.  The young company, currently in beta and based in Estonia, has developed robotic mannequins that can be customized by the shopper to match certain body measurements.  Shoppers can then use the mannequin to “try on” various sizes of products, looking for the one that fits best.  Fits.me is capitalizing on the fact that online apparel sales represent something like a $26billion market in the United States alone this year.

While it sounds interesting, I fail to see the point of the roboticized mannequins.  Can’t the same thing be accomplished with an adjustable 3-D rendering?  In order to use the technology, Fits.me requires samples of each clothing item (in each size).  They then take up to 2,000 photos of each product.  They digitalize the whole thing, set up a virtual fitting room, and charge retailers on a CPC basis.  The whole thing takes 2-3 weeks of work.

The High Cost of Virtual Fitting Rooms

My take: The product won’t make it big. In order to justify the cost of virtualizing physical garments, you pretty much have to be a big company and be the manufacturer as well as the retailer.  You have to have complete control of the timing and production process.  Land’s End fits the bill here.

The thing is, many companies like this have already adopted fairly consistent, standardized sizing.  And a lot of these companies have retail stores where you can just go and try the clothes on in person.

Still the Best Bet for Virtual Fitting

Some companies have tried to combat the problem of unknown fit by offering the stats of the model under the clothes.  This is great – if you happen to be 5’10 with a 34B chest, 24 inch waist, and wear a size small and 26 in jeans.  In my opinion, clear product imagery, detailed descriptions (that include fit notes), and a lenient return/exchange policy are still the most cost-effective ways for ecommerce apparel companies to help customers find the best fit.

If any non-manufacturing online apparel retailer had room to play with virtual sizing technology like Fits.me, I would point my finger at ShopBop.  As a powerhouse of designer fashion and an arm of Amazon, the company might have the leveraging power to play around with expensive virtual fitting.  With a free shipping and free returns policy, I’m sure any money saved on returns and exchanges would also be a boon.

Virtualized sizing and fit help is most needed by retailers who sell clothing from a variety of designers, many of whom often take liberties with size and offer limited runs of styles.  Unfortunately, the more exclusive the clothing is, the fewer the number of cuts done and the more quickly retailers work to get the products out into the online world.  This is why it’s tricky for many apparel etailers to get successful product review programs going – by the time people come to review the item, it’s already sold out.

As much fun as I think it would be to have a robot or virtualized avatar scour the web and return with a plentitude of products that fit me perfectly, I don’t see it happening in the near future.  For now, determining online fit will remain a complication that ecommerce clothing companies must face.

Through adherence to strict usability principles and continuous optimization testing, many online merchants have arrived at a set of standard features that keep their ecommerce stores easy to use and simple to buy from.  Even small design and functionality changes can have large effects on conversion rate and order value.  Here are 21 usability principles that I recommend all ecommerce websites consider.

1 – Use Visual Navigation Cues

Show your customer where he or she is within the site by using a breadcrumb trail.  Breadcrumbs should provide a quick visual reference so your customer can easily determine where product pages and subcategories lie within the overall structure of your site.  Use headers and subheaders on your page to break-up text and product information into easy-to-digest and quick to find morsels.

Breadcrumb Navigation on Bluefly

2 – Offer Lots of Sort Options

If you have product categories and subcategories that include more than just a handful of products, be sure and offer multiple ways to quickly sort the product listings.  Pertinent sort options for your site might include High Price to Low Price, Low Price to High Price, Top Rated to Lowest Rated, Lowest Rated to Highest Rated, Bestselling, Popularity, Name A to Z, Name Z to A, Most Reviews, Least Reviews, Newest, Featured, and others.

3 – Let Customers Choose The Number of Items They See

Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to quickly visually skim the products within a category, only to be limited to seeing just a few items on a category page.  Let your shopper choose how many products she wants to see on a category page.  You can have options that range from 9 to 99 to best suite your shoppers’ preferences.  Make one option a “View All” so that customers can quickly see every product in a particular category and make fast decisions about whether to dig deeper into that particular product style.

Revolve Clothing Lets You Select the Number of Items That Appear On A Page

4 – Offer Browsing Refinements

Let your customer control the shopping process and easily filter through your large product categories by offering plenty of refinements on your category, subcategory, and search pages.  Include filters appropriate to your product lines that will make it easy for the shopper to compare products and quickly generate pages of items that include attributes he’s searching for.  If you sell shoes, you may want to allow attribute refinements by color, heel height, shoe style, shoe size, price, and brand.  If you sell TVs, you may consider options like type (LCD, Plasma, OLED), screen size, resolution, price, brand, and aspect ratio.

At Endless, You Can Add or Remove Product Attributes to Refine Your Search

5 – Make Narrowing Refinements Removable

Just like you should include lots of options for your shoppers to drill down into the product attributes, make sure that narrowing refinements can be remove.  That way, if you land someone on a customized page, the shopper can choose to de-select some of the options he’s less interested in.  Active shoppers may also prefer to delete product attributes from their selections rather than hitting the back button and retracing their steps when in the middle of searching for product options.

6 – Make The Search Bar Obvious

Put your search bar above the fold, preferably somewhere up in the header or top nav portion of your page.  Make the search bar big enough to find without trying, and don’t let customers second-guess it by including similarly-styled email sign-ups or other form fields within close proximity of the search bar.

7 – Help Your Customer Search

Searches are rarely perfect.  Help your shoppers along the search process by including auto-corrections or suggestions for any misspellings that get typed into your search.  Include a “Did You Mean?” recommendation when searches return no results.  If your search platform returns categories and products, give the searcher some reference by listing how many product results are within each of the categories returned.  Begin showing popularly searched for terms and results in a search box dropdown as your customer begins typing.

8 – Put Contact Info in Plain Sight

Put your customer service contact phone number above the fold on all your pages.  If you don’t do customer service via phone, or if you really don’t want your phone number in the header space of your pages, at least include a link to your contact email, live chat, or customer service page in the header where it will be easy to locate.

ABT Electronics Prominently Displays a Phone Number and Live Chat in the Header

9 – Use A Persistent Shopping Cart

Keep your shopping cart link and/or icon above the fold on every page.  Keep it in the same place on each page, and make sure it’s on every page within the ecommerce site.  When a shopper adds an item to the cart, represent the action by showing a visual change in the total number of items added to the cart.  If you can’t create a dynamic item tally within your ecommerce platform, at least show a state change of some sort (change the color, change the iconography) when an item has been added to the cart.

The Office Max Shopping Cart Updates Once An Item Had Been Added

10 – Show Products On Your Category Pages

Don’t make your customer click through one or more layers of product categories before seeing actual products.  Put all of your products within a category on that category page.  If you’re using category pages as a way to show subcategories and refinements, that’s fine (see numbers  4 and 5).  But be sure and show at least a first page of products within that category without making the customer navigate to a subcategory page first. (Tip: Make category overview pages that display a representative assortment of products accessible with just one click from the homepage.)

This Site Fails to Show Any Products on the First Brand Category Page

11 – Include a Detailed Product Description

In a brick-and-mortar retail store, the shopper has a greater opportunity to touch a product, try it on, shake it, smell it, and maybe even peek inside the box.  In an online environment, all you’ve got to sell your products are product copy and imagery.  Good copy sells.  Make your product description as detailed as possible, but don’t think you can’t have fun with it.  Enticing, humorous, or vividly visual descriptions can convince customers to buy purely with words.  Include as many specifics as possible about use, size, fit, fabric or materials, weight, compatibility, and anything else that might be important to the decision-making processes for your specific product line.

12 – Use Quality Imagery

That single small manufacturer-supplied photo isn’t going to cut it.  Get high-quality photos of each of your products.  Include shots from multiple angles.  Provide photos with the different color combinations.  Show the clothing on a model.  Show the furniture in a room.  Let your customer zoom in or open an enlarged image.  If you’ve got the resources, include product demonstration videos with someone explaining how the item works, how it’s assembled, or how it looks when it’s worn.

13 – Make the Add to Cart Button Visible

Surprisingly, product pages still exist where it looks like the Add to Cart button was an afterthought.  If your intent is for website visitors to purchase your products online, then be sure and make your buy button stand out.  Keep it above the fold of the product page, and put it near the top of the product information.  Choose a color or design that stands out and contrasts with your other page elements.  Don’t hide it within a cluttered mess of product information.

Toys R Us Makes Their Price and Buy Button Stand Out By Using a Contrasting Color for Both

14 – Make the Price Easy to Find

It is much more difficult to convince a shopper to buy something if she can’t figure out how much it will cost.  Make your product price bigger and bolder than your other on-page text, and surround it by whitespace so that it stands out.  Keep it within proximity of the buy button, don’t bury it down on the page.  If your customer is about to save money, highlight that by showing the sale price or the discount off the MSRP.  Make it clear how much money your customer is saving, but don’t include so many numbers that it becomes difficult to tell which is the actual product price.

15 – State Your Lead Time or Product Availability

Use phrases like “Out of stock but coming soon,” “Almost sold out,” “In stock and ready to ship,” or “Pre-order only” to indicate the availability of the item.  Don’t be afraid to indicate lead time.  If you’re upfront with your lead time and your lead time is accurate, (include phrases like “Ships Today,” “Ships in 2-3 Business Days,” or “Ships in 10 Business Days”), then your buyers will be less likely to become irritated by longer wait times.  Don’t ever make a shopper add an item to her cart (or worse yet, make it all the way to the checkout) before indicating that the item is out of stock or unavailable.

This Product Description from National Business Furniture Says When the Product is Expected to Ship

16 – Show Cross-Sells and Related Products

Offer browsers other product options from the category or product pages.  You can include fields for cross-sells or up-sells for the current product type, related accessories, popular products, or best sellers. Your customer will have more options for browsing through the depth of your product catalog, and you’ll increase your opportunities for making a sale.

17 – Offer Multiple Shipping Options

You don’t need to provide the full gamut of shipping services from the likes of UPS, FedEx, DHL, and the postal service.  But if your ecommerce site offers several shipping options, then your store will be better positioned to capture sales from customers with different needs and urgency timeframes.  By including shipping from more than one carrier, your customers will be able to choose one that they are familiar with.  Make sure your delivery options are all clearly stated.

18 – Allow Checkout as a Guest

Don’t force your customer to create any kind of account.  Offer checkout as a guest, checkout as a returning customer, and the option to sign-up with a new account.  However don’t require that shoppers have an account before they add items to their carts or make modifications to the items in their carts, and don’t insist that they sign-up as a user in order to make a purchase.

19 – Show Recognizable Security Measures

Convice your shoppers that they are making a purchase from a trusted and safe site by presenting recognizable security badges or trust certificates on site pages and by using an SSL certificate at checkout.  Trust and security certificates should reassure would-be buyers that their sensitive credit card and personal data is safe from hackers.  Imagery badges from sites like Verisafe, McAfee, and Thawte indicate that the site is being monitored for security breaches and that private data will be kept safe.

National Business Furniture Suggests Safe Shopping by Showing their McAfee, VeriSign, and BBB Badges

20 – Let Customers Confirm Their Order Details

In the last step of the checkout process, present your shoppers with a chance to confirm every aspect of their purchase – before they hit the submit button.  They should have one last opportunity to double check the products they’ve set to order, their shipping and billing addresses, their chosen shipping method, and their payment details.  During the checkout process, reassure customers that they will have a chance to check their order before they submit it for purchase.  If customers can double-check their order details one last time, your rate of cancellations or calls to change incorrect order details may go down.

21 – Send a Follow Up Confirmation Email

Once an order has been placed, have a confirmation email ready to go that is automatically generated and will be immediately sent to the customer.  Show as many of the order details as possible, including a line item list of products ordered, a reiteration of the bill-to and ship-to addresses, the payment account that the purchase was charged to, and a notice on when shipment tracking will be available.  There should be a link back to the website where the customer can login to his account to view order history online.  For customers who checked out as a guest, offer a link for creating an account.  You can also use space in the confirmation email for sharing discounts good for future purchases, highlighting popular items, or making upsell or related product suggestions that the buyer might be interested in based on his recent purchase.  Did he just purchase a new computer?  This could be a good time to include a reminder that it’s not too late to purchase an extended warranty for new electronics.

The Order Confirmation Email From Rue La La Presents All The Order Details

Final Thoughts

The implementation of these best practices can play a great role in changing how long shoppers stay on your ecommerce website and how many eventually make a purchase.  While the field of ecommerce has matured, many retailers – both large and small – are still guilty of site features and functionalities that ultimately make it more difficult or less desirable for a customer to shop online.  While these 21 tips do not represent the ultimate list of usability standards for ecommerce sites, their implementation and use may increase the order value, conversion rate, or engagement level of your online shoppers.

When done well, blogging can be a great way to develop a stronger rapport with your customers. Many retailers also start blogging with intentions to bolster their search engine rankings and gather links from other blogs or websites. Good blogs will lure readers back again and again with worthy content and may turn a browser into a buyer or a one-time customer into a lifetime fan.

I recently spent a little time checking out the blogging efforts of some of the largest online retailers to see how they approached the design and layout of their company’s blog (or network of blogs). While blogging can help build a company’s credibility and might spread information about products to a wider audience, blogging isn’t for everyone and some of the biggest ecommerce businesses don’t run their own blogs. This is a look at a few of the blogs from those who do.

Amazon Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank of 1 for 2009)

Omnivoracious’ Amazon Blog

Omnivoracious is a blog about books written by a handful of people who love to read.

Platform: Custom / Typepad (blogs on separate domain are Typepad, blogs within Amazon are not)
Domain: Separate Domain and a duplicate copy sits within the Amazon domain.
First Post: 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right
Features: The right column includes a link to the RSS feed, an “about” section, a blog roll, and a looong list of topics covered in the blog. Confusingly, the blog exists in two locations (at omnivoracious.com and at amazon.com) with slightly different information in the right hand column between the two. The version within the main Amazon site is more difficult to navigate through archives.

Amazon Daily

Amazon Daily aggregates the other Amazon blogs. It sits within the Amazon domain.

Platform: Custom
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right
Features: The right column includes a link to the RSS feed, a link to sign in, a calendar of posts by date, and a list of topics.  Missing is a search of blog articles.

Amazon also maintains a number of other blogs following the above formats.  Blogs on separate domains include Chordstrike, Al Dente Blog, Car Lust Blog, End User Blog, Armchair Commentary, Wag Reflex, and Toy Whimsey.  Blogs within the Amazon main domain include Baby Babble Blog, Green Scene, and Amazon Game Room.

Dell Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 3 for 2009)

Direct2Dell – Dell Community

The community of Dell blogs pulls together articles and posts about Dell products, technology, and aspects of Dell as a company.

Platform: CommunityServer 2008.5 SP2
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: July 2006
Columns: 3
Layout: Unlike most of the blogs seen here, this design places the components and blog features in a left column with the main article content in the middle.
Features: List of blogs, languages, and post categories in the left column.  RSS and email notifications, blog roll, and archives are in the right column.

Apple Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 5 for 2009)

Apple Hot News

Though hard to call a real blog, the Apple Hot News page aggregates articles and recent pages, and offers subscription via RSS.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Within main site
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, components in the right column.
Features: The page holds the typical Apple store top nav, presents snippets of content articles down the middle, and offers links to top TV shows, tunes, trailers, widgets, and more down the right.

Sears Holdings Corp.

(Internet Retailer Rank 7 for 2009)

My Sears Blogs

The blog posts about all things Sears: corporate news, local store events, and the latest sales and specials.

Platform: Typepad
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: March 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middles, information on the right.
Features: Among the blog features of the right column are categories, archives, polls, and a Twitter stream. Links to reviews and community discussions are also present at the top.

Newegg Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 7 for 2009)

EggXpert Community Blogs

The EggXpert community blog space brings together blog posts related to technology, gadgets, deals, and topics of interest to the Newegg family of sites.

Platform: CommunityServer 2.1 SP2
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: April 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Article content fills the middle, information is on the right.
Features: The right hand column includes links to FAQs, forums, shopping sites, social media sites, most viewed content, most comments, and RSS syndication.  Missing is an easy archive or category breakdown, although the content has sorting options.

Best Buy Co.

(Internet Retailer Rank of 10 for 2009)

Geeksquad Intelligence Geek Blog

The Geeksquad blog focuses on geeky news and tech information.

Platform: WordPress
Domain: Within Main Site (geeksquad.com)
First Post: January 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right.
Layout: The sharp looking GeekSquad blog includes categories, a blog roll, archives, recent posts, and a tag cloud in the right column.  The top navigation includes a site search, social media links, and links to other BestBuy/GeekSquad pages.

QVC Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 11 for 2009)

Blogs in QVC Community

The QVC blog community brings together a whole network of blogs from various QVC employees.

Platform: Custom/LiveWorld
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: April 2009
Columns: 2 (primarily)
Layout: Main blog information is in the middle.
Features: The somewhat feature-sparse layout has several links on the left for navigating back to forums and the blog community main page.

SonyStyle.com

(Internet Retailer Rank 12 for 2009)

Sony Electronics Blog

The Sony electronics blog brings updates on Sony technology and new happenings from the digital world.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: April 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: The electronics blog is easy to navigate and has links to comments and social bookmarking tools below posts. The right column includes links to the RSS of the blog, an about section, and ways to subscribe, along with an archive, links to other social networking pages, featured posts, recent posts, recent comments, and podcasts.

SonyStyle USA Blog

Even more news and info from Sony.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: May 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: While I’m confused by Sony’s need for two separate blogs, this blog is similarly organized: some links are at the top of the right column, and the right also displays the archive, popular posts, categories, favorites, and links to other Sony sites.

WalMart

(Internet Retailer Rank 13 for 2009)

CheckOut Blog

A blog about written by the “team of experts at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club who have really cool jobs working with gadgets, games, sustainability and more.”

Platform: Custom
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: August 2007
Columns: 3
Layout: Main content in the middle; two split columns on the right.
Features: Blog articles fill the left-center section of the layout, while the first right column includes categories, the blog roll, a brief “about” blurb, and links to Flickr and YouTube feeds.  The second right column includes an RSS subscription, a blog search, a Twitter link, and recent posts, most commented posts, archives, and an author list.

HP Home & Home Office Store

(Internet Retailer Rank 16 for 2009)

HP Blogs

A large collection of blogs from the HP community.

Platform: CommunityServer 2008.5 SP1
Domain: Subdomain
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: The blogging community uses a layout with blog content in the center and a right column navigation that includes a search, syndication links, blog tags, and blog categories.

Netflix Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 18 for 2009)

The Official Netflix Blog

Blogging about Netflix and the movie experience.

Platform: Blogger
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: May 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: On the right are relevant Netflix links, information about the blog, an archive, labels, and a Ning community badge.

Gap Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 25 for 2009)

Athleta Chi

Th blog of the Athleta brand brings together inspiring stories of female athletes and informative sports articles.

Platform: WordPress
Domain: Separate Domain
Columns: 2
Layout: Article content in the middle, blog information on the right.
Layout: On the right, the Chi blog includes options to subscribe via email and RSS, new articles, featured articles, recent comments, events, a blog search, and a link to article archives.

HSN Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 26 for 2009)

HSN Blogs

Industry experts offer advice to the HSN community.

Platform: Custom
Domain: On Main Site
Columns: 2
Layout: Main blog information in the middle.
Layout: Actual blog pages are mainly comprised of article content with links to other blog articles by the same author on the left.  The main blog page includes a blog roll on the left and an aggregate of recent posts in the center of the page.

Zappos.com Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 27 for 2009)

Zappos Blogs

The Zappos blog is actually a collection of frequently cited blogs focusing on various aspects of Zappos culture.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Subdomain
Columns: 2/3
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Layout: The main article content is in the middle, links to other Zappos blogs fill the top nav, and the right column is divided into two columns in places.  The right space houses an RSS link, popular posts, active blogs, and blog tags.

Blog Design Tips to Remember

If you’re setting up your own blog or re-evaluating your existing blogging efforts, you may want to take note of these recommendations: Include a link to your blog’s RSS subscription and/or email subscription in the upper right portion of the page.  You should also include a search for your blog, but don’t default to using your product catalog search field from the ecommerce portion of your site.  The search should pull up articles from the blog itself. If you have an email signup and a search bar at the top of your page, make sure to clearly indicate which is which.  Customers won’t be amused if they enter their search terms into your email box because they couldn’t determine the function of the text field.

If you’ve gathered more than a handful of posts, include an easy way for visitors to browse through your blog’s history, whether it’s a calendar, an archive, or a list by month.  Few will spend the time hitting your posts’ “more” links looking for that article they saw two months ago.

Use some of the right column space to highlight featured posts that may interest new readers.  This could be a section of links to the most popular posts, the most commented on posts, or just the stories that you believe were special.

For a look at more on blogs from ecommerce companies, check out a list of blogs from the top 100 online retailers, a slightly older post from Get Elastic on the same subject, and some recommendations on doing blogging right.

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, many people are taking to the web in search of the perfect SLR camera, GPS navigator, or pair of shearling boots. Driven by large product catalogs filled with feature-rich SKUs some online retailers have tackled the presentation of their products head on. And rightly so. Whether most ecommerce sites are aware of it or not, the design and layout of category browse pages and search results pages plays an important role in the buyer decision making process.

When shopping online, consumers evaluate products based on what they see – usually making quick judgments in a matter of seconds. In their quest to find the perfect product, their buying decisions may be influenced by the information presented on the web page. Designers, developers, and online merchandisers can sway the buying process in certain directions by directly manipulating the sort order of products on these overview pages.

Interface Design Influences Buying Decisions

Web interface design can play a critical role in the consumer decision making process for online shoppers.  As consumers evaluate products and navigate through categories of items, they often quickly narrow their preference list based on the product information presented on the initial search results or category pages.  Just the right amount of appropriately placed product information can turn a browser into a buyer.

Many marketers and merchandisers are aware of the importance of creating a detailed product page, making sure to include relevant information like technical specifications, size, material, color, and compatibility that will influence consumers’ decisions. However, they may be less aware of how sort order and merchandising characteristics on category and search results pages can play a role in sales.

Most ecommerce sites with more than a handful of products have category pages and/or search results pages where visitors browse through multiple products while narrowing down their search. These lists of products are usually defined by a common search term or a shared product category and are usually organized in a default manner – sometimes just as an alphabetical listing of products, as a list based on when the product was added to the database, or by the prevalence of the searched term within the product description. A lot of platforms have a default rule for product display order, but most also enable you to change the default in your backend to something like sort by newness, sort by price, sort alphabetically, etc. Most platforms also give advanced merchandisers the ability to manually arrange products into any order within a category.

Put Your Important Products First

It may seem obvious, but consumers aren’t likely to buy things they never saw. They’re prone to remember the things they came across first. The position of a product within a list of other items on a category page can influence the consumer’s shopping behavior. Let’s say your electronics store has a category page covering 20 external hard drives, but you’re most keen to sell three specific hard drives. Maybe the margin on these products is better or they’ve gotten good reviews.

From cognitive psychology, we know that humans in general have a limited attention span when it comes to long lists of information, and multitasking shopaholics are no exception. The larger your product category, the greater the level of fatigue your shoppers might experience when browsing through the products. Consumers also tend to scan product category pages sequentially and may not continue down through a long list of items. Use your platform’s merchandising capabilities to bump featured products to the top of category pages or search results. If your categories are large, consider refining them into smaller sub-categories based on certain attributes so that products don’t get lost in the long list.

Sort By Quality of the Product

In one study of the effects of sort order on consumer choice, a group of researchers found that in a test involving the ordering of various feature-rich digital cameras on an electronics site, sorting by product quality influenced buyers’ decisions. When category pages were sorted in descending order by quality (digital cameras with the most features and best attributes on top), the quality of the product became more important to the shopper in the decision making process. The importance of price did not increase. However, when products were sorted in ascending order by quality, quality became less important and price grew in importance during the decision making process.

By highlighting the attractive attributes like features and higher quality at the top of the page, the retailer made these characteristics easier to compare between products. When products are presented in an order based on some characteristic of quality, they may be more likely judged based on that quality than if they were presented randomly.

Products displayed on category browse or search results pages can be sorted in a variety of ways. Online retailers have the advantage of manipulating the sort order of various groupings of products to influence consumer decision making. Based on the theory of loss aversion, consumers may place more importance on product configuration if the products are sorted in a descending order rather than an ascending order. With loss aversion, consumers would prefer avoiding loss (in this case, the loss of features and functionality) to acquiring gains. By showing the highest quality products first, each additional product represents a loss in features.

Merchants selling high-end products, take note: Merchandising your categories and search results pages so that the highest quality or most feature-rich products are displayed first may be beneficial. Sorting items in descending order by quality could make consumers more quality sensitive and take away the focus on price. However, offering products randomly based on features may influence shoppers to put more weight on price. If you want to offer higher price and higher quality items, experiment with placing products in descending order by quality.

Learn more by checking out “Order Effects on Consumer Product Choices in Online Retailing,” from researchers at the National University of Singapore.

Update:  You can read more about retailers experimenting with category merchandising (and a quote from me) in the article Role Player from the February 2010 issue of Internet Retailer magazine.

Buy buttons may be the one thing no ecommerce website should be without.  A lot of people have expressed thoughts on what makes a buy button better – be it brighter colors, bolder graphics, or a bigger size.  It makes sense to want to optimize your add to cart button, as the ultimate goal of any product page is to get that product into the shopping cart.  It’s common to hear that vibrantly colored flashy buttons attract our attention, subliminally compelling the shopper to click.  But if a big red button offered guaranteed clickability, surely every online store’s product pages would sport the same.  So how do the nation’s largest etailers treat the essential add-to-cart?  I grabbed a list of buy buttons from the top 50 ecommerce companies in 2008 to see how the buttons really did compare.

As you can see, they are not all big, bad, and red.  In fact, this collection of buttons resembles a bag of mixed-colored candy more than anything.  So how did the attributes break down?

Buy Button Color

Green  13 (26%)
Red  10 (20%)
Orange  10 (20%)
Blue  6 (12%)
Grey  4 (8%)
Yellow  3 (6%)
Pink  2 (4%)
Purple  1 (2%)
Black  1 (2%)

Buy Button Color Tone

Warm  25 (50%)  – That’s red, yellow, orange, and pink.
Cool  20 (40%) – That’s green, blue, and purple.
Neutral  5 (10%) – That’s black and grey.

Apparently brown just isn’t a hot button color in anyone’s book.

Add to Cart Call to Action

“Add to Cart” – 28 (56%)
“Add to Bag” – 10 (20%)
“Add to Shopping Cart” – 2 (4%)
“Add Items to Bag” – 1 (2%)
“Add” – 1 (2%)
“Add to Basket” – 1 (2%)
“Select Delivery Date” – 1 (2%)
“Add to Shopping Bag” – 1 (2%)
“Next” – 1 (2%)
“Order Now” – 1 (2%)

I guess the needy plea, “Buy Me Now, Please!” didn’t make the cut.  In terms of the use of “bag” versus “cart,” in general the retailers employing the “bag” are more likely to be associated with bags in their physical counterparts, like apparel retailers.  (When was the last time you pushed a shopping cart through Nordstrom?)

Extra Add to Cart Button Graphics

None  28 (56%)
Arrow  8 (16%)
Cart  6 (12%)
Plus Sign  3 (6%)
Bag  2 (4%)

Button Size

Does size matter?  Circuit City and the Systemax family of sites seem to think so.  Each of their sites uses a strikingly large green bar as their add-to-cart.  Never mind if green isn’t associated with the brand.  On the smaller side, Gap has chosen a barely-there concept.  The petite pale grey design certainly doesn’t stand out on their many-shades-of-grey site. Gap’s sister brands Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, and Piperlime also appear to be taking the less-is-more approach.  I didn’t measure each button, but most fall within the realm of 1 to 1.5 inches.

Findability Still Matters

In the end, it doesn’t matter how fantastic your button looks, if it’s hard to find on the page.  (This is one argument for vibrant contrasting colors; the more attention it attracts, the easier it will be to quickly spot.)  Online shoppers are accustomed to quickly scanning pages to pull out relevant information.  A button that jumps off the page eases this process.  Most retailers stuck with common usability conventions and set their buttons in a sans serif font – although L.L. Bean seems to have missed the memo on this one.  Twenty-five of the buttons capitalized the first letter of each word, 20 put the whole call to action in caps, and 5 chose all lower-case.

The Gap and Target’s use of white on light grey is probably better avoided; some old printing conventions still hold true online, and high contrast between text and background is one of them.  As comparison, Musician’s Friend black text on lighter yellow background quickly jumps out and is easy to read.  All in all, many of the buttons are not readily identifiable out of context.  For me, Amazon, Victoria’s Secret, and Toys R Us maintain the company branding and are familiar enough to be identified, even without the corresponding site.  There doesn’t seem to be a clear set of guidelines that even the best-performingetailers use when crafting their buttons.  The best recommendations may still be to ensure that the button is clearly visible and stands out on the page, regardless of color or size.  For an older look at shopping cart buttons, Get Elastic rounded up a list of over 100 buttons in 2007.
Update:
After talking with some usability consultants at Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability 2010, it seems that green is indeed the preferred choice over red for usability studies examining effective buy button color.

The Websites:

1. Amazon.com
2. Staples.com
3. Dell.com
4. OfficeDepot.com
5. Apple.com
6. OfficeMax.com
7. Sears.com
8. CDW.com
9. Newegg.com
10. BestBuy.com
11. QVC.com
12. SonyStyle.com
13. Walmart.com
14. Costco.com
15. JCPenney.com
16. shopping.HP.com
17. CircuitCity.com (CircuitCity is now owned by Systemex Inc, which fell at #21 on the Internet Retailer list for 2008. Systemex also owns TigerDirect and CompUSA.  They all have the save Buy Button).
18. Netflix.com
19. VictoriasSecret.com
20. Target.com
21. LLBean.com
22. Macys.com
23. Williams-Sonoma.com
24. Gap.com
25. HSN.com
26. Zappos.com
27. Amway.com
28. Overstock.com
29. Avon.com
30. 1800Flowers.com
31. Nordstrom.com
32. Buy.com
33. SportsmansGuide.com (As owned by Redcats Group, who also have a lot of other websites I could have chosen from, but I didn’t).
34. NeimanMarcus.com
35. MusiciansFriend.com
36. Blockbuster.com
37. PCConnection.com
38. ToysRUs.com
39. Cabelas.com
40. BarnesandNoble.com
41. Scholastic.com
42. HomeDepot.com
43. VistaPrint.com
44. SaksFifthAvenue.com
45. Nutrisystem.com
46. Drugstore.com
47. Nike.com
48. Kohls.com
49. JCrew.com
50. OrientalTrading.com

This list of sites was compiled from Internet Retailer’s list of top 500 ecommerce businesses for 2008.  Omitted from the list is Peapod Inc, which is a login for current customers only site.