“Just browsing thanks”
In your usability/UX/design job, you have tons of metrics, videos, documents and statistics dissecting click throughs, website navigation methods and customers getting filtered out as they make their way though the purchase process . How does your product handle the case of the “wish-list” shopper?
I realized the other day that my wife alone has probably greatly (relative to my wallet) skewed the statistics that landsend.com just briefed to thier boss last week while she was looking around: “Well ma’am, we keep losing these 400 dollar sales and we can’t figure out why!”
I’ve come to the conclusion that my wife uses web applications like a grown up version of “playing house.†I can just see a room of Infinity auto website guys salivating over this 60K car that someone is building online and piling on the options while my wife is dreaming of that raise she’s hoping to get…and sure, I admit- I’ve visited the apple.com site and selected a machine beyond my means…who hasn’t?
More realistically though, my wife uses all e-commerce sites like amazon’s wish list. She will build it up for X-Mas shopping to get an idea of the total cost, but mainly to see the fruits of her 30 minutes of shopping excursion all together in one place. She’ll promptly print or take notes, then close the browser… sale lost?Why don’t more sites have a “wish-list” to embrace this behavior? It would be much more interesting for me to know that a my customers are sitting in front of their computers daydreaming about my products then to simply see an abandoned cart and make inferences.
How do companies handle this when it comes to metrics? How do we know if this user is frustrated that there is not a dealership in town, or the shipping prices wasn’t right…or if the customer was “just looking, thanksâ€
2 Comments
This is yet-another-example of how web stats really don’t ever truly paint a full picture. ;o)
Exactly. It’s ridiculous to think everyone walking to a physical store will make a purchase on every visit - why we have that expectation of online stores is beyond me.
Coincedently, the lack of a purchase is frequently indicates a customer experience success. Things like;
‘Do they have it?’
‘Is this the right thing?’
‘How much is shipping?’
‘What do others think of it?’
Can all be answered without making a purchase - and are all integral to a positive customer shopping experience.