10 comments

  • Philip LesterPhilip Lester, almost 6 years ago

    The irony of this page is funny

    • Pointless cookie notice at the top of the page that hides the nav.

    • Intrusive email newsletter signup that disrupts the reading experience.

    Screenshot

    11 points
  • James Young, almost 6 years ago

    talk of changing luminance contrast is all well and good and making a f-off massive green button saying "proceed to checkout" is always going to represent an improvement of sorts but the bigger issue with this checkout page is that it's trying to achieve at least 3 goals instead of just the one (getting the customer to buy their items).

    They're trying to hawk a credit card over checking out then they bizarrely have an apparently uncurated related products widget "ooh, you have a pair of shoes in your basket, you must like shoes, here are some more to look at.

    Sticking a giant button is simply shouting louder into the wind rather than addressing the overall structural clutter and lack of focus.

    7 points
    • Dominic Harkness, almost 6 years ago

      Good Point James! There are definitely way too many offers that distract from the main task at hand. One thing to consider however is that design teams at large corps most likely can't just scratch the credit card offer or product recommendations. Making smaller changes to the design however might be much more realistic.

      So, from a big picture viewpoint I totally agree with you. They should be focussing on the essentials. However, from a pragmatic angle this could be a much larger enterprise than making the most out of the current design.

      1 point
      • James Young, almost 6 years ago

        Yeah, I totally understand there's competing interests internally of course - the source of eternal frustration for me too!

        1 point
  • Dan Boland, almost 6 years ago

    This is a great example of how "UX insights" lose sight of the forest for all the trees. Sure, making the checkout button larger and in a different color is gonna score better than the old design, but ignores an even more important question -- if the checkout button is coming in fifth place or however you'd want to quantify it, can we instead mitigate or eliminate those elements that are stealing focus?

    1 point
  • Jonathan De Heus, almost 6 years ago

    I know that the eyetracking for this is predictive, but I'm really surprised at how the generated heatmap shows little to no interest on the checkout button. Sure, the white text/orange background button doesn't have as much luminance contrast as the white text/blue background button, but orange is a pretty salient color.

    Also, while I agree that there's too much going on in the page, I bet that their research has shown that the benefits of having a credit card offer and additional products outweigh the usability drawbacks. Since Zappos is owned by Amazon, those additional items would get the boot the second research indicated that users viewed them as detrimental to actually checking out.

    1 point
  • Goran Peuc, almost 6 years ago

    Hm, so the author assumes that there is actually a problem with current checkout process of Zappos (and I assume Amazon as well).

    What if there isn't?

    What if the data they have shows that all the funnels actually work (the credit card thing), that the orange Proceed to checkout button works, etc.

    It's a bit arrogant to point out the flaws without having the data to back it up. Because I can guarantee you, if that page didn't work Bezos would be chopping heads left & right.

    1 point
    • Dominic Harkness, almost 6 years ago

      It's not so much the issue that they don't work at all. Rather, the question is: How much better could they be performing? Both Zappos and especially Amazon have other value propositions going for them besides design. Amazon for example can deliver you anything from A-Z overnight. That doesn't mean however that they couldn't improve on the UX of their site. Rather, it's that users put up with a mediocre UX due to the other benefits Amazon or Zappos provide.

      2 points
      • Adam T.Adam T., almost 6 years ago

        Amazon has arguably the best UX of any online shopping site. It might not LOOK good, you might think it's "cluttered", but I can go from search page to a purchase receipt in 3 clicks if I want to. People that critique companies that literally run thousands of tests a minute are probably the same ones making unsolicited Craigslist redesigns because it's not "pretty enough". Good UX ≠ pretty design..

        2 points
  • Adam T.Adam T., almost 6 years ago

    The issue with this critique is that it assumes Zappos will be better off if a user immediately clicks checkout.

    I'd bet they figured out they can generate larger cart sizes by putting all that "clutter" there, and even if a user navigates off checkout page NOW, they recoup that purchase LATER, either by a user's own cognizance (maybe after they've added a suggested item to the cart) or through retargeting ads later, perhaps with larger cart value. Maybe they make x% more in the long term if users do "Apply now" for a credit card.

    It's this kind of short-sighted isolated critique that makes the whole take kind of useless by looking at the checkout page in a vacuum. User purchase journeys are WAY more than just point a -> point b, and I'm sure a company as big as Zappos knows just how to maximize profit at every step of that journey.

    So, it's probably quite the opposite of the clickbait "sin", it's probably making Zappos MORE money, which is the goal, no?

    0 points