Case Study

HOW WEBSITE USABILITY AFFECTS

CONSUMERS PRODUCT CHOICE

A CASE STUDY OF: AMAZON.COM

Name: Ikem Charles

Student ID: 10521653
Course: Placement/case Study Module DES 7028 2011-12
Course Director: Caroline Norman
Date: 23.04.12
MA Design Management

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Contents
1. Introduction…………………………………………………………..3

2. Literature review………………………………..………………….10

2.1 Usability: Designing for Experience…….……….5

2.2 Web Usability and Consumer Behaviour……..6
2.3 The Amazon Effect…………………………………….10

3. Research Methodology………………………………………….12

4. Research Findings………………………………………………….16

5. Conclusion…………………..………………………………………..17

6. References…………………………………………………………….20

7. Bibliography………………………………………………………….21

8. Appendix……………………………………………………………….23

Introduction

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Website Usability has everything to do with how well visitors can interact and get around
the site. The nature and complexity of websites and the ever dynamic users with no time to
waste have urged on designers, interaction designers and UX specialists to narrowly study
this subject with the view to creating a usable and intuitive interface for users.

WHY AMAZON.COM..

Amazon.com have become a trusted site for unique shopping experience and a point of call
for online shoppers. According to Jakob Nielsen, amazon.com uses associative links to create
a fun and rewarding experience for users (Overbeeke et al, 2003). As a result, you can easily
spend much more time shopping on Amazon than is dictated by the simple metrics of
buying the book you came for as quickly as possible says Nielsen. This justifies the choice of
amazon.com as the subject of this study.

The concerns of modern designers and companies using websites to sell themselves is that
of usability. But usability goes beyond just being easy to use and functional and tends to
user-experience, user empowerment and engagement that drives fun and enjoyment.

The aim of this research therefore is to understand web usability using amazom.com as a
case study with the hope that the findings will inform a better decision making and serve as
a heuristics for designers/design researchers and students working on website usability
projects.

The research questions to be considered are; How usability enhances user- experience, The
relationship between design and usability and How amazon.com uses usability tactics and
functional advantages to enhance consumers choice.

The report will start with chapter 1, on introduction to usability and web usability. The
literature review will explore theories on usability and how Amazon is structured for
usability in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 will look at the research methodology used. Chapter 4,
findings of the primary research and an analysis of the findings. Chapter 5 will draw
conclusions from the secondary and primary research findings and how the two findings
answers the research question or create the great ontological divide.

2.0 Literature Review

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What is Usability?

According to (UPA), Usability is an approach to product development that incorporates

direct user feedback throughout the development cycle in order to reduce costs and create
products and tools that meet user needs. Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a
human-made object (Wikipedia.org). Also (Krug, 2000), usability really is just making sure
that something works well: that a person of average (or even below average) ability and
experience can use the thing - whether it's a Web site, a fighter jet, or a revolving door - for
its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated and (Arup, user design), Usability
is a measurable characteristic, that is present to a greater or lesser degree, that describes
how effectively a user can interact with a product. It can also be thought of as how easy a
product is to learn and how easy it is to use. Usability includes methods of measuring
usability such as needs analysis (karwowski, 2011) and the study of the principles behind an
objects perceived efficiency or elegance.

The International Organisation defined usability, ‘’as the extent to which a product can be
used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction in a specified context of use".-(ISO [9241-11]),

There may be no agreeable definition of usability due to the ontological debate of what
constitutes usability but (Nielsen, 2010) states that usability is a part of usefulness and
composed of the following framework;

1) Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they
encounter the design?
2) Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks
3) Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how
easily can they re-establish proficiency?
4) Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors and how easily
can they recover from the errors?
5) Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

This five attributes will serve as guide to Amazon’s usability due to its wide citation and use
by Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA).

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Learnability

Satisfaction Efficiency

Usability

Errors Memorability

Fig.1: Illustration of Usability Attributes (Nielsen, 1993)

2.1 Usability: Designing For Experience

The maxim is that any system designed for people should be easy to use, easy to remember
and helpful to users.

The prevalent definition of usability has been on improving ease of use, but there is more to
usability than ease of use (overbeeke et al, 2003). Stating that user may choose to use a
product that is difficult to use because it is challenging, seductive, playful, surprising,
memorable resulting in the enjoyment of experience .This new school of thought have
called on designers and computer scientists to not only focus on the ease of use and task fit
but to understand users more and in their whole context and determine ways to better
design for experience.

This has inspired the discipline we know as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI began as
a partnership between computer scientists and cognitive psychologists (Bannon, 1997). One
of the attractions of cognitive psychology is the metaphor of ‘’Human as an information
processor’’. Bannon notes that this reduces the translation problem at least in principle,
since both the user and the system are modelled in the same framework of concepts.
Finally, users are not interested in products; they are in search of challenging experiences
notes (Djajadininrat et al, 2003).

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2.2 Web Usability and Consumer Behaviour

But how does Usability on the web affect consumers’ choice?
(Jordan, 2003), for a product or service to be really compelling, it has to engage with the
people at three different levels; 1) Functional, 2) Emotional, 3) Aspirational.

Functional

Emotional

Aspirational

Fig.2, Illustration of user engagement levels (Jordan, 2003)

*Functional: Means the product should work well and be easy to use

*Emotional: The emotions associated with a product should be appropriate in the context
of the associated tasks E.g; for a website like Amazon.com, people should have feelings of
trust and security since most people will store their bank details and other valuable
information.

*Aspirational: Relates to what does owning the product say about the user. E.g; If you shop
groceries over the internet, then you are up to date and would be seen as a really smart
person.

These approaches see the person as a ‘user’ and the product as a ‘tool’. Furthermore, the
concept of usability can be interpreted in terms of User-Centered design (overbeeke et al,
2002) states that people’s skills are used when interacting with products and may be
considered on three levels; Cognitive skills, perpetual motor skills and emotional skills.
Furtherance to this is that knowing, doing and feeling play a whole part in our interactions.
The works of Jordan and Overbeeke will help us to evaluate and categorise the user
according to their skills and knowledge of interacting with (Amazon.com).

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2.3 The Amazon Effect: A view of amazon.com

Amazon.com is one of the largest online retailers (isakib.com).They are known for selling
books but also sell tons of products and services. The priority therefore is to sell millions of
products to customers on a daily basis.
Amazon.com founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos. The vision of their business is, “Relentless focus
on customer experience by offering customers low prices, convenience, and a wide
selection of merchandise.”(Chaffey, 2012).By 2003, Amazon has reached a $5billion sales
mark. This took Walmart almost 20 years to achieve notes Chaffey.
In the run up to the dot-com boom, many internet start-ups failed. But Amazon was able to
wither the storm. According to (Chaffey, 2012), amazon.com in their SEC filing, the goal is;

“We work to earn repeat purchases by providing easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable
fulfillment, timely customer service, feature rich content, and a trusted transaction
environment’’.

Round (2004) notes that Amazon focuses on customer satisfaction metrics. Each site is
closely monitored with standard service availability monitoring; site availability and
download speed. Interestingly it also monitors per minute site revenue upper/lower bounds
– Round describes an alarm system like a power plant where if revenue on a site falls below
$10,000 per minute, alarms go off!

Amazon.com’s focus on customer service, satisfaction and experience may have been term
to describe their success. But lying in-between those terms are usability, user-experience
and satisfaction.
With the business of putting customer experience first and ensuring their satisfaction. They
have features that boasts on simplicity and ease of use amongst many attributes embedded
on the site.

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NAVIGATING THE HOMEPAGE

Courtesy: Amazon.com
Technology is a huge enabler for an internet business like Amazon.com. Key features of the
website especially on the homepage as with the other pages according to (Chaffey, 2012)
can be noted below as shown;

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Customized webpages
Editorial/Customer EG;Recommendations&
Product Information
review
Notifications

Search book,look inside

Search feature
Image Upload book&search inside
(intranet/internet)
book

1-Click
Online
technology/Secure Wish list,Buying guides
recommendation list
payments

Fig.3: Illustration for Amazon features (Chaffey, 2012): source: www.smartinsigts.com

Amazon augments its product descriptions with information and recommendations from
both Amazon staff and customer reviews (Nielsen & Tahir, 2002).
Since Usability has attributes as (Nielsen, 1993) quoted, Amazon.com applies these
attributes especially with its features optimized for personalisation (Nielsen & Tahir, 2002).
They also note that Amazon uses color sparingly and effectively for emphasis and here,
attesting to the attribute according to Nielsen.
As an e-commerce site, simplicity and usability is crucial without making it any difficult for
users. Let us look at Amazon’s homepage and analyse the extent of its conforming to the
usability attributes.

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Os and Browser
welcome&site
Content controls
Self-promotion
Navigation
Advertising
of Interest
Identity
Filler-1%, Unused-12%
19%
26%
5%
35%
0%
2%

Fig.4: Screen Real Estate for Amazon.com (Nielsen & Tahir, 2002), Homepage usability

According to the pie chart;

35% = Content of Interest: This may include personalization, recommendations and peer-
reviews of shopping lists (customer, staff), reseller/partnership reviews. It is an integral
strategy to selling and cross-selling to their customers.
26% = Navigation: Constitutes of the links and hyper-links, pop-ups and referrals and wish
lists.
5% = Welcome & Site Identity: Includes registration page and prompt sign-in for new users.
According to Nielsen & Tahir, in their book, Homepage Usability,’ it is good for Amazon to
sell the benefit of signing in rather than just promote registration as a user task’.
So, combining these three attributes it contributes 66% content of the site, Since Amazon’s
vision is geared towards providing ease of use and functional service for customer
satisfaction (Chaffey, 2012), these are just the tools to drive traffic and participation. Not
surprising that Amazon enjoys one of the highest average revenue per unique user on the
tech industry heavy weights surveyed (comscore, 2011).[see: table in appendix page 22].

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Research Methodology

In trying to evaluate a site like amazon.com to determine the impact of usability on visitors
and shoppers, this research considered the fact that Amazon has been in existence for over
17 years with many changes ever since.
The approach to determining a methodology for the evaluation of the site would be to take
a reverse engineering approach since the site has already been designed.
This methodology will involve a detailed qualitative study known as ”Usability Testing”.
What is a Usability Test?
Usability test involves a systematic observation under controlled conditions to determine
how people can use the product (Jerz, 2011), also, (Sharp et al, 2007) is an approach that
emphasizes the property of being usable.ie it is the product that is being tested rather than
the user.
In this case, the researcher is trying to establish a relationship between the usability of
Amazon.com interface on the product choice of consumers.
In a usability test, the goal of the test has to be determined and it generally involves
measuring how well test subjects respond in four areas; efficiency, accuracy, recall and
emotional response.
According to (ISO, 2010) usability test has to be defined beforehand, so if the results of the
test meets the usability goals, then the system can be considered usable.
Why Usability Test?
Usability test will allow the efficiency in conducting a test on Amazon.com by merely
observing users use the website. Using a defined set of task and then assessing the user-
satisfaction during the test.
The procedure will be to sub-divide the amazon.com interface into functional genres and
then create tasks to test the attributes of each of the sub-divisions
With little time and budget, usability testing will be the most efficient qualitative approach
in this study
What to Test
Initially the users will be defined. By rephrasing the user category using the works of
(Jordan, 2003), that users associate with a product based on 3-levels; Functional, Emotional
and Aspirational;

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Functional Emotional Aspirational

Shoppers Surfers Window

shoppers

Fig. illustration of user category according to (Jordan,2007)

This categorization will enable us to understand the intentions and motivations off each
visitor as it enter the site during the test.
Next will be to start with a plan. The plan will define a set of objectives according to specific
sub-divisions of amazon.com using; Information Architecture, Interaction Design and
Identity design.
Then task will be created the users will participate in the test using random selection.
As with qualitative study, the problems of this usability test is selecting the right audience
and framing the right questions that will answer the questions.
(NB: time and number are the two main measures used in terms of time it takes typical
users to complete a task (Sharp et al, 2007).

Research Findings

At the first stage of the usability test, a total of 15 users where studied. Each user was given
a task to perform. Each user had to perform the same set of tasks. Their answer, actions was
closely monitored and recorded.
The scenario was for each user to perform (shop) on Amazon.com under normal conditions
while the objective was to record certain features of the interface. The task list would
include the following;

Participant Task List

Objective
Task ID
ID
1 1.1
2 1.2
3 1.3
4 1.4
5 1.5
Task
Go to amazon.com webpage via the browser
Search and find a 1GB micro SD card
Select your preferred choice and shop it as always
Under a budget of £3, place the item in the shopping cart
Checkout the sellers’ review, read recommendations before checking-
out

6 1.6 If you don’t have an amazon.com account already, then register

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7 1.7 Add yourself unto the RSS and email alert list for special offers

*If you experience any difficulty or concerns, pls notify the facilitator
*optionally click on interesting pop-ups and advertising messages

According to the overall goal of the usability test, the test will attempt to create a task that
will take the user through the various objectives as would be derived from the parameters;
Overall Goal

This plan is designed to evaluate the amazon.com webpage. The parameters to be

evaluated will be; The Information architecture, Interaction Design and
Identity/communication features.

Specific Objectives

ID Feature Testing Objective

1 SEARCH
1.1 Understanding of the search feature and search returns
1.2 Ease of use for finding desired products or making a choice
1.3 Readability and comprehension of received search output

2 LINKS/HYPERLINKS
2.1 Are the links leading to the expected outcomes
2.2 How many clicks away to the shopping cart
2.3 How long does it take you to find an item

3 PRODUCT LISTING
Are the products listed in tune with the consumer’s mental model
How helpful were the recommendations and product suggestions

ID Feature Testing Objective

1 POP-UPS
1.1 How you react to product pop-ups
1.2 Expected action on click of pop-ups esp; for special offers, information,
error msgs, discounts, reminders

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1.3 Where does clicking a pop-up lead you..,

2 WORDING
2.1 The wording are supposed to provide a guided direction to the cursor
2.2 Framing icons with words and actions, fonts (visibility)
2.3 Wordings display,(on-mouse click, on-touch)

3 ADVERTISING
3.1 How do users react to advertising, openings
3.2 Is advertising actually good and how do they help users
3.3 Target advertising msgs and understanding of the users shopping behaviour

ID Feature Testing Objective

1 EDITORIAL VOICE How is the entire experience of shopping on amazon feel
1.1 The word feel, graphics and direction of the webpages

2 RSS AND ALERTS

2.1 Timely, mannerly (no spam) and automatic alerts
2.2 Making RSS and alerts valuable by mapping users behavior and shopping
cart

3 COLOUR-
CODING/SCHEME
How memorable is the logo
Color-matching on pages, color-variation and inclusive design for dyslexia
users and other users with issues such as; color-blindness
4 REGISTRATION
Having an account on amazon.com
How comfortable were users while shopping and time expended

The objectives will represent the basis for creating a task list and emphasis will be built
around the needs for each of the parameters.

Analysis
Each of the 15 users performed the task successfully and the transcript of the result would
be recorded as shown below;

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User 1 User 2 User 3 User 4 User 5 User 6 User 7 User8-10

Search Search Search search search Links Search links

5clicks 7 clicks 6 clicks 5clicks 5clicks 8 8 >10

2.08mins 2.15min 3mins 3mins 4.28mins 5.40mis 5mins 5.19mins

s

Uses cursor yes yes no yes Yes With difficult Yes

guide

Follows links Links links Links Links Links Links With difficulty

Existing user Yes Yes - yes yes yes yes

Fig.7. Table showing results of usability test for 15 sampled users

From the Table a graph would be adapted to indicate the disparity between the different
users and various approaches that the users bring to the task.

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`````

6
5
4
3
2
shoppers
1 Surfers
0 Window shoppers

Fig.8.Graph Showing the results of usability test task against the user type

• According to the graph; 80% of shoppers are used to the Amazon interface and were
able to perform the task under 3mins. Compared to 40% for surfers and 60% for
window shoppers.

• The Shoppers, made use of the links more than the surfers and Window Shoppers.

• The shoppers were composed of existing Amazon users that already know how the
site operates and can predict the outcome of clicks.

• The window shoppers, attempt to do more clicks than the rest of them

This test measured time and the effectiveness of links and the existence of error.

Conclusion
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Good design is problem-solving. The web have since shifted from “pixel-based” design to
“rule-based” design (Veen, 2001).Designers cannot just pass off a photoshop sketch to
assistants and ask them to make the page writes veen.

The usability test on Amazon.com’s homepage validates the extent of usability in

contributing to the consumers output on the site. Helping to drive participation and repeat
purchase and visitors. It will be viewed that the attributes of usability can be found inherent
in Amazon.com’s website at various navigation points, links and webpages.

The audience sample which can be thought of as amazon’s hypothetical audience were able
to engage with the site on three levels; functional, emotional and aspirational at various
stages individually. The users are an attestation to usability tactics of Amazon in appealing
to their audience in the affective states and allowing the user to interact with the site and
create his or her own experiences with usability attributes such as memorability, learnability
as originally noted by (Nielsen, 2010) being inherent in shaping the users interactions.

Nowadays, everybody claims to take man not technology as the starting point in designing
product interactions but they seldom practice it.

This study restates the values and benefits of usability. It is thus a call for designers to
rethink product design from the ground up. Design is not about beauty but a smile in the
user’s heart which has been the focus of Amazon in winning the user’s heart and directing
them towards meaningful interactions, highly functional interface, with less time and can
then sell and resale to the users using personalisation and customisation.

Finally, the notion behind usability is that if an object is designed with the users psychology
in mind, it will be more efficient to use, easier to learn and more satisfying. This study have
enabled us to assess the metrics driving such in Amazon.com and being aware of the
motivations that various types of users bring to the experience.

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Enjoyment, Kluwer academic Partners.

*Round, M. (2004) Presentation to E-metrics, London, May 2005. www.emetrics.org.

*Sharp,H.,Rogers,Y.,Preece,J.2007.Interaction design; Beyond Human Computer Interaction.

John Wiley &Sons,England.2nd edition.

*Usability Testing. accessed via;http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/usability/intro.htm

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via;http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/about_usability/definitions_of_usability.ht
ml.

*Usability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability#cite_note-3

*Veen, J. 2001.The art and science of web design. New Riders Publishing.

*Wilson,C.2005.Usability and user experience design: the next decade. intercom jan,6-
9.www.stc.org/intercom/pdfs/2005/200501_6.pdf

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*Wingrad,T.1997.From computing machinery to interaction Design

Appendix

Courtesy:www.smartinsights.com

User Profile

Demographic requirements; Shoppers, Surfers and window shoppers,

18 and above
Value-conscious, ecommerce friendly.

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Methodology

Item Details
Testing Procedure Formal Usability testing on the Amazon.com webpage
Location Office home/kenrick library
Moderator Charles Ikem
# of Participants 15
Required Equipment  Computer with acess to testing environment.
 It should have the screen recorder software installed.
Observation/watching using camera and jotters/diary
Session Date(s) March 7,10,11:
Description Users will be observed while performing a list of tasks, for each of the
audience types identified.

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