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E-Commerce User Experience

July 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guide to making eCommerce sites more efficient

Web guru Jakob Nielsen teamed up with design maven Donald Norman to form a consultancy which now dominates the business of Web ‘usability’. E-Commerce User Experience is a company report they have produced which offers guidelines on how to make e-commerce sites more efficient. The suggestions they make are based on findings from detailed studies of twenty e-commerce sites, with users in the United States and Europe. The sites tested are typical e-Commerce sites – clothes, flowers, books, furniture, toys, and CDs. Companies range from Boo, Sears, Disney, and eToys, to Herman Miller. The main issues covered include how to sell goods and services, how to build trust with customers, and how to display product information.

E-Commerce User ExperienceOther important issues include trading across national boundaries, and making the ordering transaction as smooth as possible. The testing methodology is meticulously documented, and in line with current thinking on quality testing, the emphasis is on small groups carefully watched – not mass numbers. It throws down the gauntlet to his critics. What he’s saying is – ‘This is what users actually do and want. Can you prove otherwise?’

Nielsen even gives you advice on how to do your own usability testing – and how to cut corners to make it cheaper than the very service he offers. In other words, he follows his own principles of ‘show the customer what’s available’. This is an approach which inspires confidence in the user – and it does the same for his readers.

He deals with issues which are very basic, and yet which can be difficult to do properly – such as how to categorise topics on a site. Do CD-ROMs belong under ‘entertainment’ or ‘electronics’ – or both? How to classify information requires that you have analysed your bank of data closely, and conceptualised the connections between its items.

On some of his recommendations you might be tempted to think ‘But that’s common sense’. For instance – ‘Make it clear how much products cost’. But when he examines the sample sites, it’s interesting how they often don’t deliver this information. Prices are often concealed until late in the checkout process.

He’s very thorough on how search results should be displayed – and in particular ‘failed results’. Any eBusiness which carries a lot of different stock items needs to think this issue through carefully. There’s also a detailed examination of the heart of any eCommerce site – the shopping basket. Every click, box, and link is examined for its relevance and efficiency.

He follows the policy of comparing eCommerce sites with physical bricks and mortar stores – which is reasonable, because these are the real competition. Some people are bound to complain that Nielsen’s paradigm is entirely commercial, arguing that there are Web sites where the ‘experience’ is paramount. His reply will be to point to his title – this is e-Commerce. But in fact the lessons we can learn from this can meaningfully inform designers of all kinds of sites.

Nielsen’s approach forces you to consider every smallest detail of the on-screen experience from the user’s point of view. This means clear labelling and navigation, intelligent page design, and thoughtful information architecture. Show graphics of your products – close-up pictures giving details. Arrange shopping carts so that the customer choices on colour, size, and other variables is made before the actual check out.

Don’t be surprised by the high price tag. What you’re paying for here is an industrial strength professional business report. Anybody working in eCommerce will profit from its recommendations. It’s packed with first-hand experience, well illustrated with real-life examples, and the advice offered is based on rigorous testing.

As one of his enthusiastic reviewers at Amazon says – ‘Anybody contemplating a serious e-Commerce site will find their investment in this report repaid ten times within the first year’s trading’. I think that might also be said for any serious Web designers or design studios.

© Roy Johnson 2002

E-Commerce User Experience   Buy the book at Amazon UK

E-Commerce User Experience   Buy the book at Amazon US


Jakob Nielsen et al, E-Commerce User Experience, Fremont (CA): Nielsen Norman Group, 2001, pp.389, ISBN: 0970607202


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Filed Under: e-Commerce Tagged With: Business, e-Commerce, E-Commerce User Experience, Jakob Nielsen, Online selling, Usability, Web design

E-volve-or-Die.com

July 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

eBusiness techniques and strategies for success

Mitchell Levy preaches the simple message of all eCommerce books – “At the most basic level, online customers expect service, speed, and easy access”. In fact the overall message of E-volve-or-Die.com is that the customer must come first. He certainly explains how eCommerce works at a practical level, with lots of real life examples. It’s a world of constant experimentation, collaborating with the right partners, and keeping the customer at he centre of every decision. Part one deals with the transition from the industrial to the digital age; part two is how to form and implement a business plan; part three deals with marketing; and part four is about shifting markets, surviving, and e-volving into the future.

E-volve-or-Die.comIt’s all expressed in an upbeat, gung-ho style which sometimes slips over into enthusiastic cliche – ‘E-commerce is here to stay’ and ‘Thinking outside the box’ – but on the whole his writing is clear and vigorous. Yet it does seem rather perverse to insist that eCommerce be called ‘a holistic Internet-enabled entity’. He deals mainly with big businesses such as eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! (all of them one time risky start-ups) but the principles are the same even for small businesses.

What most people will not be aware of in eCommerce is how heavily it relies on partnerships, affiliate programmes, and all sorts of new intermediary trading – as well as the new business opportunities created by payment mechanisms, reminder services, portals, and traffic monitoring.

Some of his larger management strategies make big business sound a bit like some form of economic Boy Scout utopia, with everyone on the payroll pulling together with no such thing as friction or rivalry in sight. The rest is sensible advice, and his proposals are backed up with evidence.

For the most ambitious readers, he outlines the issues and opportunities of establishing a global presence, and he shows how to make the important decisions in focussing on your core business abilities and ‘outsourcing the rest’.

At the sharp end of serving the customer is establishing a customer database – to which all employees should have access. The other element which is both new and yet a constant of eCommerce is change.

Don’t make a five year but a one year business plan – and be prepared to revise it after six months. Nothing stays still on the Net.

People with small business sites will be glad to know that he offers plenty of tips on how to make your site more effective – all of which is elaborated on the book’s own web site at www.ECnow.com – and he ends with a series of real life case studies of companies who have successfully embraced the new opportunities.

This book will be of interest to students and teachers of business studies, commercial site managers, and anybody who wants to take a look at the practical consequences of launching into eCommerce.

© Roy Johnson 2001

E-volve-or-Die.com   Buy the book at Amazon UK

E-volve-or-Die.com   Buy the book at Amazon US


Mitchell Levy, E-volve-or-Die.com, Indianapolis (IA) New Riders, 2001, pp.324, ISBN: 07357102871


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Filed Under: e-Commerce Tagged With: Business, e-Commerce, E-volve-or-Die.com, Online selling

eBay Hacks

June 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

eCommerce tips and tricks for auction success

eBay is one of the big eCommerce success stories – a giant marketplace where over 20 million goods of all description are being bought and sold at the astonishing rate of $680 every second of the day. You can buy and sell almost anything. Some people buy what others throw out at knock-down prices, then re-sell the same stuff at a profit – and actually make a living doing so. David Karp’s book is not just a user’s manual – though it does show you how to use the system. And the hack in his title refers to making the best of its features to improve your trading. He explains how to use and improve search terms to find what you’re looking for.

eBay HacksHe also includes Perl scripts for those enthusiasts who want to take their buying and selling strategies to a more serious level. There’s an amazing amount of detail on how to operate the bidding system, including tips on what’s called ‘sniping’ – making a killer bid just before an auction closes. All this is advice based on first-hand experience. He’s a seasoned buyer and seller, and he even reveals some of the mistakes he has made.

There is a dizzying array of checks and balances to promote fairness and minimise cheating on eBay. The auction process works through interlocking systems of trust, public feedback, posted reputations, and third-party arbitration for any disputes.

He deals with an amazing range of skills: page design, eCommerce payments and banking, digital photography, scripting (if you want to maximise control) public relations (dealing with buyers or sellers) and mail order techniques for shipping items you sell.

Finally, for those who want to open a serious business, he explains the steps for running a full time store on eBay. You can also join their affiliate program and ‘make money whilst you are asleep’.

You might want to start with just a little part-time hobby, or you could become a serious eCommerce day-trader. Either way, everything you need to know about taking part in the world’s biggest auction is covered here.

The latest edition has been completely revised and updated to make use of an array of new tools and features, as well as to reflect the changes in the eBay API, eBay’s policies, and the general practices of its increasingly sophisticated users.

© Roy Johnson 2005

eBay Hacks   Buy the book at Amazon UK

eBay Hacks   Buy the book at Amazon US


David A. Karp, eBay Hacks: 100 Industrial-strength tips and tools, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 2nd edn, 2005, pp.447, ISBN: 059610068X


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Filed Under: e-Commerce Tagged With: Business, e-Commerce, eBay, Online selling

Small Business Websites that Work

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

practical guide to getting started in eCommerce

If you want to develop small business websites using eCommerce, this is an overview of all the things you will need to take into account. Sean McManus starts out by pointing to the new approaches required when doing business electronically. Your customers will expect instant responses; web sites must deliver up-to-date and accurate information; you need to make yourself and your products and services easily accessible. He doesn’t go into much technical detail – which is probably a good thing, given that so much is available elsewhere.

Small Business Websites that WorkInstead, he provides a strategy overview punctuated by thumbnail case studies. It’s a list of Good Ideas for maximising the relationship between you and your customers – actual and potential. Planning a site and creating the content; integrating the site with your business; and the advantages and disadvantages of trying to do it all yourself.

He puts a lot of store on learning from good examples, and there are detailed analyses of well designed ecommerce sites – pointing out how and why they are successful.

He points out free content and tools where they are available, covers the important details of domain names and hosting, and offers a checklist of what he calls the ‘sixteen crimes of Web design’. These include pointless animations and splash screens, cliched graphics, ‘under construction’ notices, and poor layout.

There’s not as much on affiliate programs and credit card handling as I would have expected, but he makes up for this with plenty on site promotion and search engine optimisation.

This will make a good primer for anybody who wants to make a serious bid in the world of eCommerce within the limited budget of a small enterprise. You will probably need additional help with the details, but this offers you an excellent overview.

© Roy Johnson 2003

Small Business Websites that Work   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Small Business Websites that Work   Buy the book at Amazon US


Sean McManus, Small Business Websites that Work, London: Prentice Hall, 2001, pp.202, ISBN: 0273654861


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Filed Under: e-Commerce, Web design Tagged With: Business, e-Commerce, Online selling, Small Business Websites that Work, Web design

Web Site Marketing Makeover

July 25, 2009 by Roy Johnson

how to make your Web site more usable – on a budget

Marcia Yudkin is offering here the sort of tips on Web site ‘usability’ made famous by Jakob Nielsen – but she does it in a gentler and less challenging manner. Few of the suggestions she makes in Web Site Marketing Makeover require any expenditure – just energy and intelligence. This is the latest title from TopFloor Publishing – who specialise in books which offer geek-free, common sense advice to people working on a budget. It will be ideal for people who want to improve an existing web site – and for those designing one who want to make it effective.

Web Site Marketing Makeover She goes into the fine details of Web enterprise – starting from such fundamental issues as the name of the site, the appearance of the home page, and the number and size of the items on it. All her suggestions are designed to promote maximum usability and user-oriented design. She is a supporter of the approach taken by Nielsen, Edward Tufte, and Steve Krug. She describes how to create useful navigational links: how to name them, group them logically, and display them in a way which will attract users without making the page ugly.

There’s an interesting chapter on how to create the writing which is going to do the bulk of the work of conveying what you have on offer to your visitors. Yudkin is drawing on her experience as an advisor to a wide variety of businesses, and the examples she cites range from non-profit-making organisations, individual entrepreneurs and consultants, to big organisations such as finance companies and e-commerce giants.

Almost every page carries screenshots showing negative as well as positive examples to illustrate the advice she offers – and she is brave enough to talk you through her own makeovers of commercial sites.

For those interested in hard e-commerce, there is plenty on forms, subscription systems, payments, and how to build the confidence and trust of the customer. But typical readers are likely to be those working to a budget – and they will appreciate her pointers towards free resources in every section. These really are impressive in their range – free content, software, services, graphics, fonts, advice – even free e-commerce shopping trolleys.

This is another excellent addition to TopFloor’s Poor Richard series – worth it alone for the superb annotated listing of recommended books and Web resources.

© Roy Johnson 2002

Web Site Marketing   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Web Site Marketing   Buy the book at Amazon US


Marcia Yudkin, Poor Richard’s Web Site Marketing Makeover, Lakewood CO: TopFloor Publishing, 2001, pp.249, ISBN: 1930082169


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Filed Under: e-Commerce Tagged With: e-Commerce, Marketing, Online selling, Technology, Web design, Web Site Marketing Makeover

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