In the article I’ve taken a look at the following high street and pureplay retailers from a usability perspective…

The pureplay fashion retailers I’ve taken a look at are:

• ASOS
• Net-a-porter
• My Wardrobe
• The Outnet
• Koodos

The high street fashion retailers I’ve taken a look at are:

• Harvey Nichols
• Miss Selfridge
• Topshop
• Next
• New Look

The five questions I posed to each of these retailers are:

1. How seriously are they taking cross-selling and up-selling in order to encourage higher average order values?
2. Do they make standard delivery costs clear before you get into the actual checkout process?
3. Are payment options and cards accepted clear prior to checking out?
4. Have they enclosed their checkout as a way of potentially reducing checkout process abandonments?
5. Do they provide clear customer service contact details during the checkout process?

Take a look at the article and see how these retailers stack up!

If you are a fashion retailer you might also like to read about the Online Fashion 100 event on the 17th June in London, organised by Leon Bailey-Green.

Online Fashion 100, in the words of Leon Bailey-Green, is:

a collection of inspirational, interesting and influential people in the online fashion industry

Just some of the names and brands that are on the list include:

• MIRIAM LAHAGE of Koodos.com
• NATALIE MASSENET of Net-A-Porter and theOutnet.com
• ANDREW CURRAN & SARAH CURRAN of My-Wardrobe.com
• DAN WAGNER of Venda and OSOYOU.com
• NICK ROBERTSON & HASH LADHA of ASOS
• ROB JONES of Harvey Nichols
• DAVID WALMSLEY of John Lewis
• RICHARD BRASHER of Tesco
• NANCY CRUICKSHANK of http://www.videojug.com/ and TMG
• JULIA REYNOLDS of Figleaves.com

Download a pdf of the complete Online Fashion 100 rundown

It’s safe to say that the event should have a real buzz about it and I’m looking forward to meeting up with some of the Online Fashion 100 select plus other movers and shakers in the fashion retail business.

How much focus do the retailers place on a good user experience?

Following my recent usability and benchmarking article on Econsultancy I’ve published another article looking at some of the pureplay and high street fashion retailers when it comes to key areas of the online customer experience and usability best practice.

Pureplay fashion brands that feature include ASOS, my-wardrobe, Net-a-porter, Koodos and The Outnet.

High street fashion brands that feature include Harvey Nichols, Miss Selfridge, Topshop, Next and New Look.

Take a look at the article and feel free to get in touch if you would like more information.

Most recently I provided a full day of in-house training for The Scout Association. What was most interesting with this work was that they where embedding usability at the very start of their new e-commerce and ERP platform development project, rather than putting a focus on usability and customer experience at the latter end of the project, which is often the case.

In the words of E-commerce and ERP Project Manager Mark Selwyn,

In order to deliver the system within budget, my objective was to build “usability” into the design of the new web stores, using industry best practices, rather than have to rework at a later stage as a result of usability testing

E-commerce Areas Covered

The areas that I provide training on for the in-house e-commerce training are as follows:

• Homepage
• Search
• Navigation
• Category page
• Product page
• Persuasion architecture
• Cross-selling and up-selling
• Shopping basket
• Checkout process
• Web forms

Case Study For In-house Training

We have recently published a case study for the training course I delivered for The Scout Association which provides plenty of detail in the following areas:

• Background to The Scout Association
• Objectives for The Scout Association
• What I Delivered
• The Benefits and Impact for The Scout Association
• Testimonials
• Training Course Feedback Ratings

I must say I was delighted to receive the feedback that I received and its great to see how they are progressing with the project since I delivered the training course.

Are You Looking To Up-skill Your Internal Team?

If so then please give me a call and I will be delighted to provide a quote for delivering training and consultancy for you and your business. Typically one day of in-house training costs around £1000 plus expenses, and if a bespoke training course is required then planning time will also be charged. Please note prices exclude VAT @ 15%.

It would involved me providing 200 words of advice to the business Justin Guitar looking for expert advice and guidance on a particular challenge or objective they have with their e-commerce business.

Naturally I was delighted to provide some recommendations (see below) and you can also view the full article as a pdf which includes the companies business challenges, my recommendations, plus feedback from the business owner having seen the advice I had put forward.

Download the full business clinic article from Royal Mail (pdf)

Paul Rouke's advice on Royal Mail's ask the expert clinic

By taking part in this Ask The Expert business clinic I was then asked if I would take part in a range of ’1 minute mentor sessions’ on video, which provide businesses who go on to the Royal Mail’s SMART portal with expert tips and advice in areas such as marketing, improving conversion rates, improving efficiency, multi-channel retailing and delivery options.

More information and links to the videos will follow soon, although you may well find the videos by taking a look at the SMART portal.

Having recently delivered in-house e-commerce training and on the eve of a public training course with Econsultancy, I thought I’d share a fine example of an online retailer following usability and best practice principles to drive improvements to their conversion rates and customer retention.

Enter The Boook Depository. Only a young pureplay brand, launched in 2004 and with a recent redesign in 2009, The Book Depository certainly does alot of things right when it comes to providing an enjoyable, intelligent and usable shopping experience.

A screengrab of The Book Depository website, good usability and best practice

Using our new e-commerce benchmarking application I’m looking forward to comparing how The Book Depository fair to other online book sellers. One thing is for sure though, their approach of always tackling the question “what do our customers want” has led their e-commerce experience to be a fine example of good usability and following best practice.

Which online retailers would you put forward as more examples of a great user experience?

Top Tips for Increasing Your E-commerce Conversion Rates

Below are a few top tips for improving both the usability of your e-commerce site and small changes which can help improve conversion rates. Further resources are provided at the end of the article.

Search and Navigation

• Make search an integrated and intelligent piece of functionality – if it isn’t, visitors will quickly dismiss the tool as something that will help them find what they want, and in turn could consider jumping over to a competitor site.
• Provide predictive/suggestive search results – benefits include reducing the number of ‘no results found’ pages, promoting saving information which will appeal to shoppers, plus exposing some of your product catalogue which the shopper may not have realised existed
• Allow visitors to filter your product range by relevant attributes (price bracket, specification, colour, size etc) – the easier you can make it for shoppers to find products which match their requirements the more likely they will be to purchase from you

Shopping Basket

• Don’t hide your delivery costs until the checkout process – even if a shopper can specify a more expensive delivery option in checkout, at least ensure your standard delivery charges are provided
• Make it clear what payment options are available, before the checkout process – especially important if you don’t accept debit card payments like www.booking.com
• Promote free delivery options clearly, if you provide them – this can play a significant part in persuading visitors to both make a purchase, but also increase their order value if it means triggering a free delivery level

Checkout Process

• Rule number 1 – enclose your checkout process. There are a range of key reasons why this is so important for retailers, one of which is ensuring you are focusing the shoppers mind on the 1 key action you want them to do – place their order with you. More advice on why you should enclose your checkout process can be seen in the resources at the end of this article
• Make it absolutely clear the levels of security you provide – concerns over credit card fraud are here for the long term, and you should make sure your visitors have every confidence in you to keep their details secure
• Pay close attention to how to present forms – by adopting form field best practice you make the checkout process more streamlined and you keep the shopper in a positive buying mood. Straight to the point error messages that point the finger at the visitor is one way of putting a small usability barrier in front of them

All Areas, Especially Shopping Basket and Checkout

• Carry out split testing and multi-variate testing – alongside best practice principles, this is one of the primary ways of affectively measuring the differences in click-throughs and engagement when adopting different designs, buttons, colours and messages

Looking for More Best Practice Tips and Advice?

If you are interested in gaining a much greater understanding of how small but integral changes can be made to e-commerce sites to help improve conversion rates, then the upcoming training course on the 23rd April in London is for you.

There is also funding currently available which could cover the cost of the course.

Below are further details on what will be covered in the days training course:

Product page best practice

• how to introduce best practice into your customer experience
• how some of the biggest e-tailers are following or defining best practice
• how to cross-sell and up-sell affectively
• how to introduce persuasion architecture

Shopping basket best practice

• pros and cons of the most popular implementations
• understand the impact you can have on consumer confidence
• how to channel customers into the checkout process

Checkout process best practice

• the rational behind enclosing the process to reduce checkout abandonments
• a framework for delivering a best practice checkout process
• how to reduced usability barriers to completing forms during your checkout process

Advanced user experience techniques

• how to engage and delight customers with memorable interactions

Useful resources

• best practice tips for search implementation
• benefits of suggestive/predictive search (scroll down the page)
• benefits and best practice for multi-faceted navigation, for both users and retailers
• the importance of enclosing your checkout process
• form field best practice, vital for checkout processes

Richard has certainly ‘done his time in retail’ as he’s worked his way up from his retail position in Great Yarmouth all the way through to becoming the Chief Executive Officer at leading fashion retail company River Island. At River Island Richard is responsible for the growth and expenditure of the continued success of the multi million pound turn-over that the top high street retailer secures.

It was a Q&A style evening, attended by around 90 people, where Richard talked very openly about his background, the River Island story and how it was originally born from the Chelsea Girl brand, the growth and importance of online for River Island, along with a range of questions from the floor, including a couple from me.

Questions ranged from what advice Richard would give to aspiring fashion designers (including a group from Manchester Met that I was sat with), how can new supplier’s best get their foot in the door and compete against supplier’s in the far east and eastern Europe, along with me asking about the their online operation.

My 2 questions where:

PR: You have mentioned about how successful your e-commerce site is for River Island. Can you provide some insights into what growth you have seen over the last 2 years with online, and what % of sales come through this channel compared to the high street?

In response Richard replied:

RB: Online is hugely significant for our business and is growing constantly, although I can’t share more than that! We have won awards for our website and we are currently on the 3rd generation.

PR: Your website is flash based, which is almost exclusive in the online retail sector. Is this an intended differentiator for your business (Richard had earlier talked about some of the ways River Island ‘do things differently’ and ‘do what works for them and their customers’), and what else can you tell us about your approach to online?

RB: We are actually in the process of moving away from our current flash based retail site. This evolvement has taken longer than we had anticipated although we are due to launch our new site later this year.

Later in the evening after the official Q&A’s had finished I grabbed a few more minutes with Richard, (who I must say is one of the most down to earth CEO’s I have had the pleasure of speaking to!) where I asked a few more questions regarding their e-commerce operation and the strategy for moving onto a much more trackable, personalised and best practice driven e-commerce operation.

Without disclosing too much here Richard shared some really interesting insights, and I’ll be watching with interest to see how 2009 shapes up for River Island business, in what is extremely challenging market conditions.

My presentation slides and further usability resources from the event are also available for reference.

Manchester Digital Introduction and Usability Primer

Usability – Stripped Bear from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

An introduction to Usability: What’s The Use? by Shaun Fensom from Manchester Digital, followed by a short primer to usability by Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD.

No matter how many job titles there are in the usability and user experience field, at least all professionals share 1 common goal…

Usability – The Importance For Internal Business Systems

Usability – The Importance For Internal Business Systems from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, talks about the importance of usability for internal business systems, specifically around staff productivity and process efficiency.

The presentation touches on common barriers to staff productivity, some of the main reasons for these barriers, plus a short video of a manufacturing company who are embracing user-centered design as a way of combating the traditional software development issues on a companies productivity.

The presentation also asks business owners a few key questions, such as do you listen to your staff, do you staff waste valuable company time doing repetitive tasks, and do you know what is the on-going cost to your business if you use un-usable software systems.

Usability – The Importance For Websites and Online Marketing

Usability – The Importance for Customer Facing Websites from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, talks about the importance of usability for businesses communicating with both new and potential customers.

Featuring a case study of how a company improved their revenue-per-employee by 95% over a 2 year period, along with some attendee participation, this 17 minute presentation touches on a wide variety of websites and activities, such as lead generation sites, information portals and search engine marketing campaigns.

Most significantly conversion rates for e-commerce websites are discussed, where usability can have a remarkable affect on a companies bottom line, if the right decisions are made in making improvements.

Full event details and resources

You can view further information from my presentations, including the video clip on User-centered design from a companies perspective, at the events page on our main business site.

In addition below are the presentations I gave on the night…

An introduction to usability

Usability for customer facing websites

Usability for internal software systems

Usability Testing and Usability Evaluations for Retailers

The new page also features links to our e-commerce research services, usability testing and usability evaluations, which can be invaluable for existing retailers who are looking to develop the business case to replatform.