I can see why the use of the word triumph may not seem justifiable, and the issues you have picked up, in particular the small add to bag button, may well impact on conversions to a certain degree.

As I mentioned towards the end of the post, there are a number of key areas where I personally would recommend House of Fraser spend time on fine-tuning the UX, such as the checkout process and account creation. I would expect these areas will have a much greater impact on potential conversion rates and user frustrations, which is why I highlighted these ahead of some of other usability concerns such as the size of call to action buttons etc.

Even with all this in mind, for the target audience of House of Fraser and the functionality and experience provided, overall I would still maintain that the site is a user experience triumph (especially on the brand promotion and persuasion architecture emphasis), although the site isn’t without usability drawbacks.

I would be interested in your thoughts on any blue-chip, enterprise level e-commerce sites which you would consider as triumphs for user experience? These could be developed on Elastic Path’s software or not.

Much appreciation for your comments once again.

Paul

No matter how thoroughly the retailer’s focus on branding and persuasion has been integrated into the site, if it fails to provide a basic level of usability, user dissatisfaction and low conversion rates are sure to follow.

I agree with your comments on a lack of thorough user testing. In particular for the the checkout process and some of the browsing routes users may go down, during my review it was clear that there were barriers to completing particular tasks and certainly areas were users could become confused due to inconsistent destination of links, navigation elements and logos.

With regards user testing I suspect you share my views of their sheer importance in gaining real users insights into how different target audiences interact with a particular site to achieve their goals.

I have previously posted an article on the Business Benefits of User Testing which you may find interesting and/or confirm your own views.

The new Apple iPhone browser, which I expect will be a perfect piece of kit for some House of Fraser shoppers, will at least allow for a richer mobile experience (once downloaded over the airways of course!).