|
SmartFurniture.com Site Usability Survey
Yisong Cheng - chenys@sims.berkeley.edu
Jennifer English - jenglish@sims.berkeley.edu
Sacha Pearson - spearson@sims.berkeley.edu
Kirsten Swearingen - kirstens@sims.berkeley.edu
Survey Conducted September 26 – Oct. 2
Report Prepared October 11, 2000
For:
Survey Project Requirement for IS 271
IS 271 Instructor: Dr. Rashmi Sinha
Address inquiries to:
School of Information Management & Systems
South Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Summary
This exploratory study was designed to answer the question, “What website features are important to individuals who browse and/or purchase items from SmartFurniture.com?” To answer this question, the group administered a web-based survey to about 120 SmartFurniture customers and about 620 visitors to the SmartFurniture site. We received 15 responses from customers and 21 responses from those who have only visited the site.
From this survey, we determined that most of the users of
SmartFurniture are between the ages 25 and 44, have various levels of online
shopping experience, and are shopping for furniture for both home and office
settings. They also indicated that
they discovered the site through search engines and secondarily through print
advertising and following links on other websites.
In general, respondents were very satisfied with
SmartFurniture. They indicated that
they valued good customer service, getting their orders in a timely manner and
security measures to protect their sensitive information. They also indicated, however, that the
site could be improved by adding an index to assist new and infrequent visitors
in navigation. For example, in querying browsers as to why they did not purchase
items, we determined that many could not find the product they wanted and
several also commented that they found the products more expensive than they
were willing to spend. In the display of the product information, the majority
of the users indicated that they preferred to see picture, description and price
first.
Because the level of respondents to this survey was so low, we recommend looking into methods of extending the survey over time. Two ideas to consider are: when visitors sign up to request more information, add a few survey questions into the form on a random basis; and when buyers purchase items, add a printed survey form to the order, providing an incentive for filling it out and returning it. Using this ongoing method, SmartFurniture can accumulate data regarding the usability of the site and reactions to SmartFurniture’s product.
Introduction
SmartFurniture.com is an e-business selling simple, modular furniture that can be combined in various ways to create shelves, tables, desks, and other storage units without using tools or hardware. At the SmartFurniture website, users can browse, search for items, design their own furniture combinations, and place orders.
The SmartFurniture website currently has about 1,200 hits (not unique visitors) per day—a reasonably large volume of traffic for a small e-commerce site. However, only 169 individuals have made purchases since the site was launched in July 1999. The owner of the company is interested in learning more about his customers in order to increase his conversion rate of casual browsers to buyers.
Our group conducted an exploratory survey to analyze what customers care about when they come to the SmartFurniture.com website and to identify the important factors in a customer’s decision to purchase SmartFurniture items.
Survey Design
In conducting the survey for SmartFurniture.com our project group completed the following steps, receiving feedback from Dr. Sinha on a regular basis:
- Establish the survey goal
- Identify target population and sample to be surveyed
- Develop pilot survey
- Run pilot survey and incorporate changes
- Deploy survey using web-based software (NetRaker)
The commentary that follows explains the rationale for our design decisions at each stage of the process.
Step 1: Establish the survey goal
In determining the survey goal, we tried to balance these goals with the reality of how people answer surveys. Our original idea was to help SmartFurniture identify some specific site usability issues so as to have a basis for recommending changes. However, upon further discussion, we realized that such a survey could easily fail if respondents did not fully understand the usability questions. (This concern was justified by the responses to one usability question we did include in our survey questionnaire.) In the end, we decided to design a simple but more reliable exploratory customer survey. Specifically, we decided that it would be helpful for the company to know how to encourage individuals who are willing to shop online for furniture to purchase from SmartFurniture.
Our goals were to answer the following questions:
- Who shops at SmartFurniture.com?
- What are SmartFurniture customer's experiences and preferences in online shopping?
- How can SmartFurniture.com improve its site to provide users a better browsing and purchasing experience?
Step 2: Identify target population and sample to be surveyed
In this step we tried to narrow down the population targeted by our survey. We wanted to focus on potential customers --- those who have some interest in purchasing furniture online.
Originally we planned to divide our users into three groups: Buyers (people who have purchased at least one item from SmartFurniture.com); Browsers (people who have visited SmartFurniture.com and asked for product catalogs), and Prospects (people who have not visited SmartFurniture.com but who have bought other items online and therefore might be open to making a furniture purchase from an e-commerce site). After some discussion, we decided to focus on the first two groups (buyers and browsers) since they have the most experience with the site, and their opinions are of greatest interest to the company.
The owner of the company supplied our team with contact information for 740 members of the target population.
Step 3: Develop pilot survey
In this step, we developed one survey for each group. The surveys for buyers and browsers were almost identical, apart from a couple of questions specific to buying and browsing. We tried to design our questions and our answer options so that they would make sense even if users had not visited SmartFurniture.com recently.
Most of the survey questions fell into three groups, corresponding to the three areas we were seeking to explore:
Who shops at SmartFurniture.com?
- Questions 1-3 are basic demographic questions about users (name, location and age).
- Question 7: how did people find out about SmartFurniture.com?
- Question 8: For what setting(s) are you considering purchasing furniture?
What are SmartFurniture customer's
experiences and preferences in online shopping?
- Questions 4-6 ask users about their online
shopping experiences and preferences.
- Question 11: Please rank SmartFurniture among all e-business sites you have visited.
How can SmartFurniture.com improve its site to provide users a better browsing and purchasing experience?
- Question 9: When browsing for furniture online, in which order do you prefer to view product information? (This is a specific question that may help SmartFurniture present their product information more effectively.)
- Question 10: In using SmartFurniture.com, which of the following would make it easier for you to use the site? (This is a general site usability question.)
- Question 16 (Browsers only): When you visited the SmartFurniture website, what prevented you from making a purchase?
- Question 12-13 (Buyers only): If you have made more than one purchase from SmartFurniture, what were the factors in your decision to purchase again?
After revising the survey several times as a group, we took the survey ourselves to be sure the questions and answer choices made sense. After making final revisions, we pilot tested the survey on others.
Step 4: Run Pilot Survey and Incorporate Changes
In order to know about potential problems in our survey, we ran several pilot tests of the survey to observe how people would respond to the questions and whether they could understand them well. One challenge we faced in our pilot testing was that people we could find for testing were actually in the “prospect” category, rather than “browser” or “buyer.” We circumvented this issue by asking people to view the site for at least 5 minutes before they filled out the form.
Based on feedback from the pilot, we were able to refine our survey. The main changes included:
- Rewording the product information
question. Instead of asking “What
do you expect to see first (price, picture, comments, or dimensions)?” we
provided users with optional groupings and asked them to state a
preference.
- Rewording the site usability question,
“What would make this site easier to use?” to make it less leading. For example, instead of saying “More
logical navigation through site” we offered choices of site elements to
improve navigation (a map or an index).
- Clarifying the e-business comparison
question, “Please rank SmartFurniture among all other e-business sites you’ve
visited?” by adding “in terms of your overall satisfaction with the online
experience.”
- Adding choices to the questions regarding
multiple purchases at SmartFurniture.
- Adding choices to the question regarding
factors in deciding to purchase online.
- Adding the age category under 18 after
realizing that many of SmartFurniture's customers are under
18.
See Appendix A for the pilot test survey.
Step 5: Deploy survey using web-based software (NetRaker)
We used NetRaker.com to design our survey and sent the survey to 119 buyers and 400 browsers by email. We found the software to be easy to use, but in certain ways it lacked the flexibility to meet our needs. For example, in question 6, which asked about the relative importance of various aspects of e-commerce sites in making an online purchase, we wanted to use a 5-point Likert scale that ranged from “Essential” to “Negative Impact.” NetRaker did not support a 5 point scale and did not permit us to attach our own labels; instead, we used a 10-point scale and used the question text to explain what the numbers represented. Another limitation was having only one question per page, requiring the users to click “Next” to advance through the questions. More specific critiques of the software appear in our Individual Survey Reports.
Survey Method
Participants
As described in step 2, we defined our survey subjects as people who are, at a minimum, interested in SmartFurniture.com. Based on their relationship with SmartFurniture, these people were then divided into two groups: buyers and browsers.
- A buyer is an individual who has made at least one purchase from SmartFurniture.com.
- A browser is an individual who has expressed interest in SmartFurniture.com by completing a customer inquiry form, either online or by sending a business reply postcard.
We contacted all of the individuals for whom the owner of the company had e-mail addresses: 119 buyers and 627 browsers. 15 buyers and 21 browsers responded to the invitation. We included all 36 responses in our data analysis.
We made a few assumptions about our user group: that all were able to access to the Internet, all had some level of interest in purchasing furniture, and all had visited the SmartFurniture site at least once. The sample closely resembles the population about which we wished to draw conclusions based on the results of our study.
Procedures
Our prospective
respondents received an invitation email including the survey URL and the
incentive of a 15% discount on their next SmartFurniture purchase (see
Appendix B for survey invitation letter). We sent three batches of
invitations: the first to buyers,
the second and third to SmartFurniture browsers. We did not place a time limit on
completing the surveys—we expected that individuals would either fill them out
immediately or not at all. Most of our respondents did, in fact, answer the
survey within two days of receiving the invitation.
Data was recorded automatically by the NetRaker site, so we were able to easily access up-to-the-minute results--percentages and totals. To obtain the raw data needed to perform the analysis, we submitted a request to the NetRaker administrator and received e-mail containing tab-delimited ASCII files.
Although we had a poor response rate from the Browsers (only 12 out of the 400 initially invited), we opted not to send out reminder e-mails, at the request of SmartFurniture’s owner, who was concerned that sending a second unsolicited e-mail might alienate potential customers. He did, however, provide us with an additional 227 e-mail addresses for browsers, and from this group we generated an additional 9 responses, bringing the total survey participants to 36.
Participant Instructions
We used the instruction template supplied by Netraker, modifying it slightly for our purposes.
See Appendix
C for the survey instructions.
Results and Data
Analysis
Demographics
Geographical
Distribution:
SmartFurniture’s customers are geographically distributed throughout the United States. Although roughly 20% of the survey respondents were from California, 36 respondents came from 13 other states.
Age
Distribution:
Most customers are between 25 and 55 and the three main age groups: 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 are fairly evenly distributed (see Appendix E).
Frequency of
online purchasing:
Graph 1: Different Levels of Experience with Online Purchases (Buyers vs. Browsers)
Although there were no notable differences between buyers and browsers in terms of age and locations, the two groups did have different levels of experience with shopping online. The clustered bar chart in Graph 1 shows that buyers tended to have had more online shopping experience: 40% of the buyers surveyed had purchased online more than 10 times in the past six months while only 20% of the browsers had done so. Not insignificantly, nearly 20 percent of browsers had not purchased online in the past six months. SmartFurniture should focus marketing and web site changes to the needs of this population; those who are not opposed to buying online, but who did not do so in spite of this. These users may have needs that SmartFurniture can address. This can be explored in more detail in future surveys.
SmartFurniture customers are shopping for these
settings:
Overall, the top three settings are home (62%), home office (34%), and office space(30%) (see Table 1). Interestingly, when we consider buyers and browsers separately, we find that buyers buy more for home (73%) than for home office (20%) or office space (13%). However, browsers did not seem to have such strong tendency for home settings, with home (55%), home office (43%), and office space (43%). This was a multiple-answer question, so the important trend to note here is that among both groups, the same ordering of preferences was displayed.
Table 1. Settings for which people shop at SmartFurniture
|
|
Overall |
Buyers |
Browsers |
|
Home |
62% |
73% |
55% |
|
Home Office |
34% |
20% |
43% |
|
Office Space |
30% |
13% |
43% |
|
Reseller |
6% |
0% |
10% |
|
Store Display/trade show |
3% |
0% |
5% |
|
Other |
3% |
|
|
What are SmartFurniture customer's experiences and preferences in online shopping?
The main reasons customers use the web when
purchasing products:
This question is multiple-choice and results are shown in Table 2 below. Overall, convenience and the availability of more vendor/product information were the most important reasons cited by participants.
These results are closely aligned with the results of GVU's 8th WWW User Survey, which states that the most cited reason for using the web for personal shopping was convenience (65%) followed by availability of vendor information (60%), no pressure from sales people (55%) and saving time (53%). (http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1998-10/graphs/shopping/professional/q220.htm).
Furthermore, respondents to GVU's survey ranked "almost everything 'very important': timely delivery, security, quality of information, ease of ordering, ease of canceling an order, etc. The one with the highest percentage of 'very important' responses (89%) is, as we might guess, security. Interestingly, having the lowest price, was only 'somewhat important' to 55% of respondents." SmartFurniture survey respondents also rated most of the items highly and emphasized security while de-emphasizing price (see Table 3). (http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1998-10/graphs/shopping/professional/q220.htm).
Table 2. What are the main reasons you use the web when purchasing products?
|
Reasons |
Percentage of respondents who checked the option |
|
Convenience |
92% |
|
Availability of information from vendors |
72% |
|
Saving time |
67% |
|
Personalized information |
64% |
|
Access to opinions of other customers |
25% |
|
Reviews and Recommendations from experts |
25% |
|
Not applicable |
14% |
Important factors when choosing to purchase from an
online vendor:
In Question 6, we asked people to rank the importance of 11 factors in deciding to purchase from an online vendor. The importance is measured on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 = not at all important and 10 = essential. The overall results are shown in Table 3. With the highest mean (9.4) and lowest standard deviation (1.1682), “getting orders/services in a timely manner” convincingly ranks as number 1 in importance. Security of sensitive information is rated next in importance, confirming that people do care about their privacy online.
“Variety of choices” was the least important factor. This result surprised us somewhat because in question 5, two people did mention in the free form this is one of their main reasons for shopping online. We think there may be a “proximity error” here. As mentioned in the survey design section, we originally planned to provide 5-point rating scales for this question, ranging from Essential to Negative Impact. However, since NetRaker did not support this in a compact format, we were forced to use the 10-point numerical scale instead. We think people may not have fully understood what the scale of 0-10 meant when they ranked the first option “variety of choices” (which can be indicated by high standard deviation (2.38) for this option. If we re-designed the survey, we would randomize the order of options to address this “proximity error.”
Table 3. The importance of 11 factors in deciding to purchase from an online vendor. (ranked by Mean)
|
|
N |
Mean |
Std.
Deviation |
| Getting
orders/services in a timely manner | |||
|
35 |
9.4000 |
1.1682 |
|
| Security
of sensitive information | |||
|
35 |
9.1429 |
1.8334 |
|
| Ease
of placing orders | |||
|
35 |
8.8571 |
1.6828 |
|
| Quality
of information about purchase choices | |||
|
35 |
8.8571 |
1.4781 |
|
| Ease
of contacting vendor | |||
|
35 |
8.8286 |
1.3391 |
|
| Easy
payment procedures | |||
|
35 |
8.5143 |
1.8845 |
|
| Easy
handling of returns or refunds | |||
|
35 |
8.4857 |
2.3436 |
|
| Lowest
price | |||
|
35 |
8.0857 |
1.9907 |
|
| Customer
service and after-sales support | |||
|
35 |
8.0000 |
2.0722 |
|
| Ease
of canceling orders | |||
|
35 |
7.8286 |
2.5493 |
|
| Variety
of choices | |||
|
35 |
7.7429 |
2.3806 |
Graph 2:
Importance of "variety of choices" for making a decision to purchase
online.
For the most part buyers and browsers were fairly similar in their responses to Question 6. Differences were only significant on three of the items. As shown in Graph 2, variety of choices was rated to be of high importance by more browsers than buyers. Because SmartFurniture sells basically only one product (even if it is configurable in many different ways), this result may help to explain why browsers opted not to purchase.
|
Graph 3: Importance of "ease of handling returns" in
making a decision to purchase online. |
Graph 4: Importance of "ease of contacting the vendor"
in making a decision to purchase online. |
Another interesting outcome was that 90% of the browsers rated “ease of handling returns” as of high importance, as opposed to 60% of the buyers (see Graph 3). This may point to the fact that browsers hesitate to purchase over the Internet because they are concerned about difficulty of returning unsatisfactory items. Similarly, the question about “ease of contacting the vendor” produced a comparable buyer/browser split—vendor contact is of high importance to browsers, of lesser importance to those who actually made a purchase (see Graph 4).
How SmartFurniture can improve its site to provide better user experience
Are users satisfied with current
site?
Table 4 shows how users rank SmartFurniture
among all e-business sites. At
first glance, it seems impressive that about 34% people rank SmartFurniture in
the top 10% e-business sites they have visited. Upon considering buyers and browsers
separately, however, we found that they held different opinions about
SmartFurniture. About 66.7% of the
buyers rated SmartFurniture in the top ten percent of sites visited and that may
be one of the important reasons they purchased from SmartFurniture. Conversely, only 10% of browsers ranked
SmartFurniture in the top 10%, while 40% of them ranked it only as top
30%-50%. There may be a correlation
between people’s satisfaction with the site and the decision on whether they
purchase from the site.
Table 4: How users rank SmartFurniture
among all e-business sites.
|
|
Overall |
Buyers |
Browsers |
| Top
10% | |||
|
34.3 |
66.7% |
10% |
|
| Top
10 –30% | |||
|
17.1 |
13.3% |
20% |
|
| Top
30-50% | |||
|
22.9 |
0% |
40% |
|
| Below
50% | |||
|
2.9 |
6.7% |
0% |
|
| Not
sure | |||
|
22.9 |
13.3% |
30% |
|
| Total | |||
|
100.0 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
On the other hand, buyers have had the experience of a successful transaction with SmartFurniture and, presumably, satisfaction with the product, so they may rate the site more highly than they would strictly on the site's merits. It is difficult to compare the two groups because of this difference in experience.
Furthermore,
participants in this survey were self-selecting. It may be that buyers who were satisfied
with SmartFurniture were more likely to respond to the e-mail solicitation and
therefore the feedback was positively skewed.
How can SmartFurniture improve its
site?
In question 10, we asked people to select from 10 options which would make the site easier for them to use. As shown in Table 5, especially from the Overall column, people’s opinions varied a great deal. This may indicate that people did not understand the questions very well, rather than a true divergence of opinion.
Even so, we can still learn something from responses to this question:
- An index of the site would be helpful,
especially for browsers. 34%
of the participants indicated that a site index would make the site easier
to use. Browsers in particular
liked this idea--as many as 48% of them selected this option. An index usually helps new users to
get familiar with a site or help them when they get lost on the site. This also points to the possibility
that the site architecture needs to be revamped - a site index is a quick
way for users to circumvent the designed architecture of the site to find
what they need. The request
for a site index might indicate that the site's navigational structure does
not work for users.
- Buyers are happier with the site than
browsers. It is unclear
whether addressing the problems cited by the browsers will turn them into
buyers. In future iterations of
this survey, it might be a good idea to add a question about whether the
implementation of the change would influence the decision to
purchase.
- The order form is OK. Among 15 buyers, only two of them indicated that they would like a different order form. We found this result surprising, because initially our project group considered focusing the study entirely on the order form.
Table 5: How we can make the site easier to use?
|
Site re-design recommendation |
Browsers |
Buyers |
Overall |
|
An index of the site |
48% |
20% |
34% |
|
Not having to scroll in a window |
33% |
7% |
21% |
|
Larger/different fonts |
29% |
13% |
21% |
|
Less advertising |
29% |
7% |
18% |
|
Icons for navigation instead of words |
29% |
0% |
16% |
|
Instructions for how to navigate through site |
19% |
7% |
13% |
|
A map of the site |
14% |
13% |
13% |
|
Other |
14% |
7% |
26% |
|
More search options |
14% |
7% |
11% |
|
Less text |
5% |
7% |
5% |
|
A different order form |
0% |
13% |
5% |
Another usability question we asked in our survey was specific to the presentation of product information. The majority of respondents, 58%, indicated that they would like to see a combination of picture, description and price first.
Table 6: Users prefer to see picture, description and price first, then drill down for available colors and customer comments.
|
Product Information
Presentation |
Percentages |
|
See picture, description & price first, then click for color and comments |
58% |
|
See pictures first, then click for price, color, description & comments |
26% |
|
Missing data |
8% |
|
See description & price first, then click for picture, color & comments |
5% |
|
Other |
3% |
Our data show that 40% of surveyed buyers have purchased more than one item from SmartFurniture. When asked why they returned to SmartFurniture, customers most frequently cited “good customer service and after-sales support,” “clear instructions for assembly,” and “wanted more of the same” (see Table 7). In the free-form text box, two people commented at length on the good customer service from SmartFurniture. Least important were “easy handling of returns and refunds,” “variety of choices,” and “security of sensitive information.”
Since these are repeat buyers, it seems reasonable to assume that they were satisfied with their initial purchase and therefore have not had reason to experience the need for a refund or return - so they would not know whether SmartFurniture offered good service in this regard. For this reason, it is not safe to assume that good support for refunds and returns are not important to customers.
Table 7: Reasons for repeat purchases at SmartFurniture.com.
|
Reasons |
Percentages |
|
Good customer service and after-sales support |
40% |
|
Wanted more of the same |
40% |
|
Clear instructions for assembly |
33% |
|
Getting orders in a timely manner |
33% |
|
Option to design my own product |
33% |
|
Easy payment procedures |
27% |
|
Ease of placing order |
27% |
|
Price |
20% |
|
Wanted to add different components to my system |
20% |
|
Quality of information about purchase choices |
20% |
|
Security of sensitive information |
13% |
|
Variety of choices |
7% |
|
Ease of canceling orders |
0% |
|
Easy handling of returns or refunds |
0% |
Table 8: Browsers reasons for visiting SmartFurniture.com
Two out of three people (13 out of 19) arrived at the SmartFurniture site looking for furniture, as shown in Table 8. That statistic tells us that the other third of the browsers arrived expecting to find something other than furniture. This may help to explain in part the high number of hits and the low conversion rate—one third of the visitors had no intention of shopping for furniture in the first place, regardless of the quality of the product or of the website.
In the next
iteration of research, it would be wise to follow up with a question to
determine from where these individuals, users who came to the site looking for
something other than furniture, arrived.
This might help to determine how to improve referrals to the
site.
Table 9: Browsers with/without a purpose
60% of those who
visited the SmartFurniture site did not have a particular item of furniture in
mind (see Table 9). This means that
they were truly “browsers,” likely to explore the site in an unsystematic
way. The other 40% of the visitors
probably conducted more focused explorations of the site, perhaps using the
site’s search tool.
Table 10: Browser success in finding what was expected at SmartFurniture
Only 3 out of 13 browsers (about 25%) who were seeking a particular item actually found it at SmartFurniture (see Table 10). Because we did not include a follow-up question, we cannot be certain of the precise reason the users could not find the items they wanted: Did SmartFurniture not offer the desired item? Or did the user spend a short time searching and then give up before he or she was able to locate the item?
The following question, depicted in Table 11, presents similar results. The top reason cited for not purchasing from SmartFurniture was an inability to find what was wanted. Whether an item was not offered or the user was simply unable to locate the item through the website, the result was the same -- the customer departed the site without making a purchase. More research in this area (what are the true obstacles to “finding”?) would be of great use to SmartFurniture.
Table 11: What Prevented Browsers from Purchasing
|
I couldn’t find the products I want on SmartFurniture |
38% |
|
Items cost more than I am willing to pay |
19% |
|
Concern that credit card information might not be sure |
14% |
|
Prefer not to purchase furniture on basis of 2-D photos |
5% |
|
Difficulty completing form |
0% |
|
Lack of information about the company |
0% |
|
None of these |
29% |
A second issue unrelated to site design is the cost of the items. This obstacle to purchasing received the second highest ranking. The “Other” category provided some additional information: primarily "not purchasing yet," "still deciding if this is what I need," and "worried about the quality of the item."
Conclusion
From the survey results, we arrived at the
following conclusions:
- Although there is no difference in term of age and locations between buyers and browsers, buyers and browsers do have different online shopping experiences.
- SmartFurniture’s furniture is purchased more for home use than office use.
- Providing orders/services in a timely manner and protection of users’ online privacy can distinguish SmartFurniture from other online furniture stores.
- More investment on site design is worthwhile.
- An index of the site would be helpful, especially for browsers.
- Product information should be presented with a combination of picture, description & price.
- SmartFurniture has the potential to capture more buyers from the browser group
15 out of 120 of the buyers responded – a very good response rate. However, only 21 out of more than 600 of the browsers responded. Based on this low response rate, we hesitate to generalize these results to the entire population of online shoppers. Additionally, there could be some biases built into our sample. The buyers might have been motivated by the 15% discount—if they purchased before, they might wish to purchase again at a reduced rate. The requirement to disclose their names in order to obtain the discount may have limited the degree of criticism they offered. Furthermore, since buyers were more likely to have already had a positive experience with SmartFurniture, they may have skewed the results to be more positive towards the site.
We do think that this initial survey indicates further areas for SmartFurniture to explore in the future with additional surveys. For example, we think that the reasons people visit the site should be explored more in depth.
It would be especially interesting to determine, when browsers did not find what they expected at SmartFurniture, what exactly they believed the site would offer. Perhaps the name is confusing or misleading or more specific advertising is necessary. Of course, this data will be extremely difficult to capture as the majority of these visitors will likely only quickly browse and then leave.
Also a series of interviews with users (both buyers and browsers) would also illuminate some of the remaining questions and provide more information that could be used to improve the site.
We do however think that a few basic improvements will help to capture or convert more browsers into buyers. Primarily improving the navigation and adding an index will assist users in locating the items they need. The company already succeeds by pleasing many of the buyers with strong customer
service and a good quality product--now it needs to leverage knowledge of its customer base to better serve their needs.
Appendix A:
Pilot Test Survey
Each group member conducted 1 –2 pilot tests with friends and colleagues. We incorporated feedback from the test in the final version of the survey.
The pilot survey appears below:
All survey
participants
1. Location (City and State)
2. Age Group
