Good usability + rich content = A good brand experience - Blog

Good usability + rich content = A good brand experience

31/05/2011

It’s hard to be critical of the web channel of a brand that’s so financially successful as Burberry clearly is, as they continually and consistently post an ever-increasing uplift in sales and profits.

But when it comes to the web, I don’t do subjectivity. My job is to help client’s take a completely objective view of the performance of their e-commerce channel. I use analytics, I use benchmarks, and I use a tried and tested template that works through the customer journey on the client’s site focusing on usability, user experience and the ‘blockers to conversion.’

Looking at the current and recently launched Burberry site, it would be easy to make the assertion that they’re not looking for the web to be a significant sales channel and that the focus is more around the brand and customer engagement.  I don’t believe this to be the case, as I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make the level of investment they reputedly made in creating the new platform and site. You don’t become as financially successful as Burberry is by not looking for a well - defined ROI on your investment around the web.

Burberry has already had a very successful foray into social media with their ‘art of the trench’ campaign.  And I wonder if this influenced the creative thinking behind the new site?

I dare say that true brand loyalists will enjoy the new site, and those with time on their hands (Which they’ll need if they want to buy something) will enjoy the marriage of rich content and merchandising.

But in my opinion, and based on my knowledge of how people shop online and why they shop online, I think they’ve gone too far in trying to push the boundaries of usability. However, I should also note that the site renders quite well in mobile, so as sales pick up through m-commerce they will do better through this channel.

I believe that you can successfully marry rich content, product and the transaction experience. But not at the cost of the latter, otherwise you’d be better off with a marketing driven brochureware site.

The problem is that the key driver for most customer’s when it comes to the web is convenience and immediacy. And neither appears to be part of the existing customer value proposition on the Burberry site as it takes a fair bit of time to work out how the site works and how you can view and compare similar or alternative products, and quite simply it’s not an easy site to use or to buy on.

And for self service, task rich, time poor customers, which I’d imagine make up a fair percentage of Burberry’s core customer, this will be immensely frustrating.

The fact that so many past and present Burberry customers chose to engage with the ‘art of the trench’ social media campaign does not mean that these same customers will display the same behavior when buying on the current e-commerce site. As the two scenarios are entirely different, the former is when the customer has time on their hands and chooses to engage with the brand, the latter is most likely when they don’t have time on their hands and they simply want to make a purchase, quickly and efficiently.

Of course lots of customers will also be researching a potential purchase online that they intend to make offline, but again most customers in this context are short of time and are likely to find the site a tad frustrating.

I also think it’s unfortunate to launch with some fundamental and basic hygiene factors not in place. Burberry falls into the trap of many other high-end brands, where search doesn’t work effectively due to the naming conventions around product categories. For example, if I search for ‘jeans’ I get 11 products back, whereas if I search for ‘denim’ I get 87 styles returned. They can fix this with a simple ‘redirect’ where ‘jeans’ becomes a synonym for ‘denim’ so that when a customer searches for jeans they see the full collection.

But that’s not the only issue with search. When I do search for denim and have 87 styles returned, I’m not presented with anyway to narrow my selection down to a more relevant choice. I’m a 45-year-old man. I don’t want to see kids or women’s jeans. And I’d also appreciate the ability to narrow my choice down further using facets such as fit (sadly an even more important criteria these days) and possibly price.

All of this said, I do think it’s a rich experience and for customers with time on their hands it will reinforce the reasons why they connect with the brand in the first place.

But I think if they retained the rich content and made it accessible in a more standardized information architecture and navigation structure, that this would be still be a huge move on from the previous site and one that would drive a better user experience for all customer groups, and therefore would be far more successful from a sales perspective.