The tale of ecommerce
Ecommerce sites serve two main purposes. The first is to provide information about the company. The second, and arguably the most important, is to make a sale. And when customers visit an ecommerce site, they want the most direct route to the point of sale. In other words, the fewer required page views, the better. But balancing this with a plethora of inventory, company information, and product information can be tricky. PrintRunner.com, PrintingforLess.com, and PrintingCenterUSA.com provide great examples.
PrintRunner.com
PrintRunner.com handles a large inventory well by showcasing the top-level categories in the body of the page (4) and featuring a more-detailed product menu in the sidebar (2) on the left. The shopping cart is in the main navigation bar (1), the flash area (3) is used to showcase products, and it provides a sitemap in the footer (5). PrintRunner.com generally fits with a users' preconceived notion of what an ecommerce site should look like, and benefits because of that. On average, it took visitors just 2.5 pages to complete a task, with a failure rate of 33 percent. If that percentage seems pretty large, keep reading.
PrintingforLess.com
PrintingforLess.com put a large focus on content. Although all the main items (1-5) appear to be placed in the same order as PrintRunner.com, the density of text and graphics, paired with an unclear navigational scheme, made it difficult for visitors to find what they were looking for. It took visitors three pages to complete a task, with a failure rate of 44 percent.
PrintingCenterUSA.com
PrintingCenterUSA.com had a very different setup from the two previous websites. And while different can be good, in this case, it wasn't. Users found the colors distracting and the layout confusing. It took visitors 3.5 pages to complete a task, with a failure rate of a staggering 56 percent. And nearly two-thirds of users specifically said they would not make a purchase from the site.
The winner of this tale: PrintRunner.com.
