Re: 61% of users could not buy (fwd)

[Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>]

At 11:22 AM 2/6/00 +0000, John Nissen wrote:
>Hello,
>
>There seem to be a lot of problems for sighted people to buy
>online.  On the "curb cutting" principle, it would benefit
>sighted people if web sites were accessible to visually impaired
>people.   Could the WAI content guidelines be extended and promoted 
>as good practice for commercial web designers, regardless of 
>any disability that the potential customer may have?
>
>There seems to be a lot of resistence to the existing guidelines.
>I suspect that much of the resistence of commercial world, and
>politicians who support that resistence (e.g. by interpretation of
>ADA), is because "it costs".  The message should be that "it saves"!  
>

Not just "it saves," but moreover "it gains."

People who can't grok how to operate their way through the site don't buy.
People who don't understand what they bought, return goods.

Taking the trouble to understand and apply the accessibility guidelines
will make merchant sites more comprehensible and usable for more people
than just those with articulable functional impairments.  This will
increase sales-per-visitor and not just reduce returns-per-sale.

The Wall Street Journal this week featured an article on how Jeff Bezos, of
Amazon.com fame, does his job.  He is constantly looking for ways to make
their site easier to understand and use.  Not surprisingly, theirs is one
of the more broadly usable sites on the Web.

Earlier the WSJ had a Page 1 article mentioning the higher return rate for
online sales as compared with brick and mortar retailing.  This is due to a
shortfall in effective communication.  Paying attention to the problems of
the consumers at the edge of the usability of a site generally tends to
increase the usability for more people than just those on the fringe.

Most retailers have been struggling even to get into the game.  Those at
the top of the heap like Amazon are the ones with enough focus to actually
pay attention to differences in usability, change and improve their
practices, and stay ahead.


I agree this is a theme we will want to come back to many times to sell the
program.

Al

>Just a thought.
>
>Cheers from Chiswick,
>
>John
>--
>Forwarded message follows:
>
>Date:         Fri, 4 Feb 2000 10:57:55 +0100
>Reply-To: Pascal MAGNENAT <pascal.magnenat@INTERACTIONS.CH>
>Sender: "ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion)" <CHI-WEB@acm.org>
>From: Pascal MAGNENAT <pascal.magnenat@INTERACTIONS.CH>
>Subject:      61% of users could not buy train tickets on the Swiss Federal
>              Railways site
>To: CHI-WEB@acm.org
>
>Hello,
>
>My name is Pascal Magnenat. I am an independant usability consultant 
>based in Geneva. I am member of SIGCHI for several years but 
>I haven't attended any event organised by SwissCHI yet. Hope I will 
>do in the future!
>
>I have recently studied the usability of 9 swiss e-commerce sites, 
>namely Ackermann, Apple Switzerland, Fre'quence Laser, Easyshop Nestle', 
>La Cave Edicom, Le-Shop, OfficeWorld, SBB and Ticketcorner.
>
>13 frequent Internet users have been asked to order 2 items on each 
>of these sites. The 3 components of usability (efficiency, effectiveness 
>and satisfaction) as defined by ISO 9241-11 have been measured according 
>to the following criteria:
>
>1) conformity to the given instructions
>2) time spent (max. 15 minutes)
>3) degree of comfort (1 to 7 scale)
>4) user satisfaction according to time spent (1 to 7 scale)
>5) user understanding of conceptual model (1 to 7 scale)
>6) usability perception (1 to 7 scale)
>7) reuse probability (1 to 7 scale)
>
>Here are some of the conclusions:
>
>1) For most users, order an item on the web is difficult: only one 
>out of 13 users has successfully ordered all the items on the 9 sites 
>tested;
>
>2) usability varies a lot from one site to another: twice as many users 
>have placed an order on La Cave (85%) than on the SBB site (39%); 
>in half the
>time.
>
>3) users are very sensible to the ease of use and are not willing 
>to make a disappointing experience twice!
>
>Possible origins of poor usability:
>
>- visibility of text or graphic hyperlinks
>- poor feed-back
>- inappropriate trolley metaphor
>- unpredictable effect of the browser "back" button (many users tried to
>delete an item thrown in the trolley by this mean)
>- reliability
>
>The full report (English version) is available at
>http://www.interactions.ch/e/extras/copy.html.
>
>Have a nice day.
>
>
>Pascal Magnenat
>Usability consultant
>"Usability professionals' association" member
>

>---------------------------------------------------------
>Phone +41 878 878 638
>Fax +41 860 793 01 39 01
>Email pascal.magnenat@interactions.ch
>Web site  http://wwww.interactions.ch
>Postal address Colombettes 21, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland
>---------------------------------------------------------
>
>-- 
>Access the word, access the world       Tel/fax +44 20 8742 3170/8715
>John Nissen                             Email to jn@tommy.demon.co.uk
>Cloudworld Ltd., Chiswick, London, UK   http://www.tommy.demon.co.uk
>