Droves of shoppers at Staples Inc.'s retail Web site, Staples.com, last year began abandoning the site's registration process midstream, leaving behind online shopping carts of unpurchased office supplies--and concerned Staples officials. While other companies facing a similar challenge might have rushed to the nearest Web design guru for a site overhaul, Staples went directly to its customers to expose problems with the site that developers originally missed.
Members of the company's usability team combined their own expert review of the site with formal usability tests with consumers to pinpoint the roadblocks in the site's registration section. After Staples revamped the section in April last year based on the testing results, the number of shoppers dropping out of the registration process decreased by 53 percent. To read the story, click here:
http://eletters1.ziffdavis.com/cgi-bin10/flo?y=eOGI0CxcNa0DSr0eWF0AY
Not all usability tests are created equal. As important as it is for companies to undergo testing in the first place, it's just as critical for them to time testing to match the stages of a Web site's development. To read the story, click here:
http://eletters1.ziffdavis.com/cgi-bin10/flo?y=eOGI0CxcNa0DSr0eaz0Aa