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When
a company like Ward's has a large catalog/direct sales business and is
driving a lot of offline sales online, “catalog quick shop” is an area
it must focus on.
The
area on wardsci.com has one thing going for it: It's named
appropriately. “Catalog Quick Shop” is a much better and less esoteric
name than, say, “Easy Order.” It's also highlighted appropriately in
the navigation, has pictures of its catalogs once you get to the page
(a plus from a user perspective), and the buttons are BIG, RED, and
AGGRESSIVE.
But
it's lacking many vital elements. First, it is missing alternate
contact information (phone, fax, e-mail contact info) in the right-hand
column. People always ask, “Why would you push people to the phone?”
It's a good question and easily answered: Item numbers, especially
large and complicated ones such as Ward's uses, are easy to screw up.
Ward's has added a couple of lines of directions, but they are
confusing at best for a typical user.
And
if you do mistype anything on the site, you are going to get an error
message that says, “This item does not exist.” Ward's should do much
better at sniffing, sensing, and suggesting item numbers that are in
close proximity to what the user typed in.
Ward's
does a cool thing in that it's added the cart to the bottom of the
quick-order page once an item has been added. The cart could — and
should — be a lot more aggressive, but the fact that Ward's included it
is a breakthrough.
Checking out
Ward's
shopping cart is solid. It's not perfect, but it's better than most.
The checkout process is broken down into five quick and easy steps.
First
is the sign-in step. It's clearly broken down into two distinct
sections — one for existing customers and one for new users. Each area
asks for the user's e-mail address. This is an excellent technique as
it allows Ward's to send follow-up e-mails to users who abandon their
cart before completing checkout.
The
second page is the bill-to, a perfect choice because it asks for
information that the users know and can fill out quickly. The third is
the ship-to, also the right thing to do at this point. Ward's obviously
knows that the further along that users get in the process, the more
likely they are to complete it.
The
“Review and Complete Your Order” page is by far the worst step of the
checkout process. To improve it, Ward's should add credit-card icons,
eliminate as much of the small “disclaimer” verbiage as possible, align
the fields, put the comments box underneath the payment information
instead of to the side of it, and most important, not break the page
into two columns. The more a cart looks the same throughout the
process, the more comfortable the user will be in finishing it.
Two
of the major weaknesses in Ward's checkout are that the company doesn't
address privacy and security enough. E-commerce companies must address
both issues in every view of their cart and checkout.
Second,
Ward's should use the right-hand column of the checkout to show a
picture of a person — a friendly, helpful face that encourages you to
keep going while making you feel safe and secure.
The
company should also make a much bigger deal of its offline contact
information. This is important for all e-commerce companies, as a
typical merchant will get about a quarter of its sales from online via
an offline channel, such as the phone or the fax. You will never get
everyone in your user base to feel comfortable shopping online.
Therefore, if you get them to the cart but they decide to abandon, you
should provide them with an option for calling or faxing in their order.
Ward's
does use a temperature bar throughout its cart so that users can know
at a glance where they are in the checkout process. The bar could use
more sex appeal — it is drab and doesn't even feature the traditional
shopping-cart icon — but it is functional.
Ward's
uses a perpetual cart throughout the site. The perpetual cart is
properly featured in the upper right-hand corner and has options for
viewing and printing. It should have e-mailing and saving as options as
well.
Overall,
wardsci.com has good esthetics. The designers obviously know a thing or
two about online eye paths and user-specific simplicity. The site is a
three-column site and the columns are appropriate in size and length.
The colors are simple, and the designers are careful to not use too
much yellow (often associated with fear or caution.) The red is very
effective.
The
photos appear to be taken from Ward's offline materials, specifically
the catalog. They are small and leave a lot to be desired. In Ward's
case, like most others, multiple image views on some (not all) of the
products would be helpful.
Other
things that Ward's does well are its red BUY NOW buttons (although they
should be bigger); in-stock messaging, especially in the cart; and good
content sprinkled throughout.
