'Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit' Released by Usography

July 26, 2011 - PRLog -- 'Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit' Released by Usography

Buy.com and Sears.com top the User Experience Audit

***Full Audit Available at http://www.usography.com/audit ***

Athens, Georgia – Usography, a user experience strategy agency for top retailers, today released the Summer 2011 Retailer UX Audit. The Audit reflects retailers' efforts to introduce features that will make shopping easier, more effective, and more engaging on their e-commerce web sites.

“The UX Audit gives retailers an objective competitive benchmark in the area of user experience feature sets," said Paul Bryan, Director of User Research and Design Strategy for Usography.

To create the Audit, Usography reviewed the e-commerce web sites of 100 top retailers in Summer 2011. Retailers were assigned a total score based on the presence or absence of 30 user experience design features, which were derived from a comprehensive review of retail industry best practices. Of the 100 retail web sites reviewed, Buy.com and Sears.com tied for first place, with 16 out of 30 possible points.

Walmart.com made the most dramatic improvements in terms of UX features of all the 100 retailers. Walmart went from a score of 8 out of 30 to a score of 15 out of 30 in just one quarter. Features added include: Facebook Like, Social Media Sharing, Customer Images of Products, and Order Online/Pickup in Store. The full list of criteria are presented in the Audit, as are the scores of all 100 retailers, and links to screen captures of all of the retailers' product pages.

"In Usography's research with customers of many top retailers, we have found that the user experience of a web site can make the difference between a sale and abandonment for a competitor's site," Mr. Bryan said. "If this happens over thousands or even millions of customers, then we're talking about a sizeable amount of lost revenue due to user experience deficiencies."

Mr. Bryan continued, "As UX strategy consultants, we're not trying to imply that the total number of UX features is in any way a measure of a successful UX strategy. Developing a winning UX strategy requires an intensive analysis of many internal and external factors. Usography considers such factors when conducting research and strategy engagements for our retail clients. The UX Audit is one small part of the work that goes into a UX strategy, and we choose to give that work away as a means of familiarizing retailers with our UX research and strategy consulting practice."  

The Retailer UX Audit is the basic free version of more extensive competitive and best practice reports produced by Usography in the area of multichannel retail. More detailed reports are available on a monthly or quarterly basis, filling the need for an inexpensive way for all team members and executives to stay current in the state of the art of digital retail user experience. Contact Usography for pricing information.

The Retailer UX Audit, with links to screen captures of the product pages of all 100 top retailer sites, can be found online at http://www.usography.com/audit.

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Usography is a user experience research and design strategy agency. Usography helps companies understand their customers and succeed in digital commerce. Usography's clients have included The Home Depot, Coca-Cola, SAP, and Delta Air Lines.