How e-Commerce Sites Converse With Customers
In a retail store, a person walks in and an associate (hopefully) asks, “How can I help you?” The customer then has an opportunity to explain where he or she is in the process of purchasing a product or series of products. The sales associate can step to any point in the sales process, and at any level of detail that the customer indicates they are ready for. They may simply want to know where the nails are, in which case they are looking for directions. They may want to know how to build a deck, in which case they are looking to the associate to provide instructions. Or they may be preparing to remodel their den, in which case they may want an overview about the whole project, or may want advice about how to approach various parts of the project. These three quests involve some of the same products, but are vastly different in the type of support that the associate can offer.
On a web site, the interaction design needs to anticipate and evaluate what the customer is doing and what they need in order to leave with all the products they came to buy. The knowledge that the site has of the customer’s goals may be based on past purchases or recent interactions, or could depend on clickpaths and searches. Or the site can attempt some type of conversation that involves some responses to questions and then a series of product-finding steps. Regardless of the approach, the interaction design of the site needs to take into account the purchase stage and process that the customer is in, as well as the preferences of the customer, in order to provide a higher order of service than the typical search and navigation system have to offer.
Fortunately, most e-commerce customers and sites do not have an infinite number of high value, high frequency interactions. They tend to fall into patterns. Those patterns can be understood through a number of different research methods, and, once understood, can form the basis of high value usage scenarios. These scenarios can then be used to guide interaction design. The scenarios are different from use cases, which consist of every function that the system is capable of carrying out. Scenarios focus on valuable events, whether the value is based on total spend or frequency of occurrence.
So customers often want directions, or instructions, or counsel. What these customers are probably not looking for when they enter the store are lots of advertisements about products unrelated to their quest. And yet, dissect many e-commerce page designs, and you see some space devoted to directions for finding a particular item (navigation), less space devoted to instructions, although that is slowly changing, and precious little space offering practical advice about choosing between one product and another, although that information is well-understood by many of the store associates. Fortunately, social media tools are starting to bridge the advice gap. It’s just a little hard to tell the chaff from the wheat sometimes.
Copyright 2009, Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (http://www.usography.com)
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