Effective Link Building Service: Just Behave: Ecommerce Usability Showdown: Affiliate VS. Merchants

**Ecommerce Usability Showdown: Affiliate VS. Merchants**

**by Gab Goldenberg**

According to Google, affiliates provide such a road-rage-awful
experience that they deserved to be kicked out of AdWords en masse. My
experience shopping for a new laptop for my dad during Boxing Week
more than proved that status as an affiliate site hardly determines
usability, and that merchants sin liberally against the commandments
of user experience.

I began my search at Shopping.com, the big affiliate datafeed
aggregator and comparison shopping site. Following that, I typed
laptops into Google to shop some Canadian laptop sites, assuming
correctly that I'd get mostly big Canadian retail names. I ended up
browsing the following sites.

Site
Type of Site
Why I Shopped There

Shopping.com
Large, Branded Affiliate
Past experience

FutureShop.ca
Big Brand Retailer
My dad liked a model in their flyer; they also ranked on Google.ca

TigerDirect.ca
Big Brand Retailer
Recommendation from a friend

HP.com/Canada
Brand Manufacturer/Retailer
Rankings

LaptopCloseout.ca
Small Canadian retailer
Rankings

Lenovo.com/CA/
Brand Manufacturer/Retailer
Rankings

MDG.ca
(a large Canadian retailer)
Rankings

How did I evaluate each of these sites?

I rated some of the sites on all the following usability metrics,
while blitzing through a few because I was running low on patience by
the end of this comparison.

Onsite search quality: The relevance of onsite search results.
Filters: The variety of filters available, their usefulness and
whether they're cumulative (e.g. can be used together) or exclusive
(only one filter allowed at a time).
Message matching: Whether the site's claims on one page are fulfilled
when you click through to the next. I don't score this since it's just
a negative goodwill factor—it's expected, not a bonus for
customers.
Other goodwill factors: Steve Krug's goodwill tank paradigm says
that visitors have a measure of goodwill that can be increased or
depleted. Once depleted, visitors leave.
Selection: How accurately needs are met—is it a least worst
option or exactly right?

The metrics are listed in the order they affected my research and my
perception of how others prioritize them, too. I've bolded factors
that stood out.

Shopping.com

Onsite search: 2/10. Terrible. Searching for a laptop model-name
yielded car parts, and looking for a 162 HP laptop, or 16 inch HP
laptop yielded mainly accessories.

Filters: 10/10. Excellent. Shopping.com provided me with useful
options to filter by specs (screen size, hard drive space, price etc.)
and the filters can be used together (e.g. 16 inch and 250 GB+ hard
drive).

Additionally, these filters drive the site's title tags, URLs and
page heading, all of which boost SEO and message match.

Note: Having great refinement options does /not/ replace quality
search results because many visitors just want to search, not click.

Message matching: Shopping.com delivers on its promises. Nuf said.

Other goodwill factors: 7/10. The site features reviews, and the
calls-to-action are easily found when I'm ready to buy. However, it
doesn't show whether the merchant has it in stock, which data you'd
hope a mega-affiliate like this would have access to.

Selection: 10/10. Even after drilling down through multiple
refinement options, Shopping.com showed me dozens of products.

FutureShop.ca

Onsite search: 0/10. The same three queries as above returned no
results. This is despite having the model listed on the site (it was
the one my dad wanted) and a selection of 16 inch laptops.

Filters: 5/10. You can filter laptops by screen size, refurbished
origin, or tablet/specialty. Those are useful options, albeit
limited in variety. Additionally, the filters aren't cumulative, so
you can see either 16 inch laptops or refurbished laptops& but not
refurbished 16 inchers.

Message matching: Covered.

Other goodwill factors: 6/10 In-stock vs. sold-out status:
FutureShop.ca handles this poorly (they get a 6 instead of a 7 because
they have direct access to inventory data, unlike affiliates).
Category pages display out-of-stock products without telling you
they're out of stock, so you waste time going to detail pages where
the information doesn't stand out. Because it doesn't stand out, you
waste time looking for the info or for the add to cart button if you
assume that the product is in stock.

On the other hand, FutureShop does feature breadcrumb navigation that
helps you make sure you're in the right place, and for in-stock
products, the calls to action are prominent.

Selection: 7/10. If you're content with browsing according to limited
refinement options, FutureShop has a fair depth of laptops within the
various sizes available. On the other hand, their refurbished and
tablet laptop selection is negligible.

TigerDirect.ca

Onsite search: 11/10. TigerDirect takes extra steps to go the mile!
Not only are their search results relevant, they also offer you filter
links above the results that match popular filtering options such as
brand and price. The only drawback is that the results are below the
fold due to a large site-wide banner.

Filters: 10/10. The retailer offers a deep variety of useful filters,
and they are cumulative.

Message match: If I scored this, I'd dock (just) a couple of points
from TigerDirect for making me scroll to see my search results. Other
users might not know where they are. The refinement options are above
the fold, so it's not the end of the world.

Other goodwill factors: N/A . I did notice a Hacker Safe logo, which
typically helps sites convert better by reassuring visitors, but I'm
personally indifferent.

/Selection:/ 5/10. While TigerDirect has a great variety of sorting
options, their inventory is low relative to Shopping.com. You can
argue that's normal since Shopping.com is an affiliate getting feeds
from multiple merchants, but this argument cuts both ways since some
advantages are inherent to being a merchant (e.g. greater likelihood
to get reviews posted).

HP.com/Canada/

Onsite search: 0/10. The results page lacked any reference to 16 inch
laptops, and the first three categories it sent me to (those visible
above the fold) lacked any such models. Additionally, my eye was first
drawn towards the green-highlighted Recommend Links, making me think
I wasn't looking at search results.

Filters: 0/10. What filters? HP's idea of a filter is to let you pick
between a variety of notebook PCs helpfully branded as Compaq
Presario, HP Home, Pavilion, Touchsmart of HP HDX. As an outsider to
HP, these are meaningless to me. The rest of the site doesn't make
things any easier.

Message match: As with the search and filtering functions, this isn't
intuitive. After deciding to try some of HP's jargony category links,
I thought they must have been broken because they don't take you to a
new page. It turned out that they changed the main rectangle above
them—which they're not related to by visual hierarchy—so I didn't
notice what happened until I looked around. My eyes were focused on
the selector links below the main rectangle, which is why I didn't
notice and had to think, to paraphrase Steve Krug&

Similarly, the dark colored links that appear are virtually
indistinguishable from ordinary text. So unless you rollover, it's
unclear where to click for the next step.

Other goodwill factors: If the above weren't enough, HP commits two
more sins. First, clicking one of the marketese category links takes
me to a page featuring a laptop picture and two calls to action
(compare these products and HP Pavilion Home Network PCs). It's not at
all clear why I'm not already viewing their selection of laptops, so I
click HP Pavilion Home Network PCs again (the smaller green area, not
the title/banner higher up):

To reward me for clicking, HP serves me an unholy avalanche of
information overload. Notice the horizontal and vertical scrollbars?

Selection: 5/10. The selection is wide, but as we've just seen, it's
not filterable or accessible in a format that allows me to make my
decision easily.

LaptopCloseout.ca

This site is remarkably fast. It took less than 60 seconds to show me
the door! Why?

Calling the prominent support number drew an automated message that
the inbox was full. Also, the warranty page refers to various
conflicting periods such that it sounds like there's no warranty
despite the looks. Consider:

/If you're not satisfied, simply return the laptop in its original
condition within 3 days of receipt&/ I have 3 days to return it if
I'm not satisfied? That's all?
/All laptops sold through Laptopcloseout.com are entitled to laptop
closeout 1 to 6 months days full warranty&/ Huh?

Lenovo.com/CA/

With the exception of a gibberish 156-character URL that would reduce
CTR from search results, Lenovo scored very highly.

Onsite search: 7/10. Searching for a Lenovo model (the S10e) returns
it #3 behind some support results for it, which isn't perfect but
still good enough. And a search for a 153 laptop returned numerous
models (they have no 16 inchers from what I could tell). The only
letdown was a search for a 15 inch laptop only returning 1 result.

Filters: 10/10. With numerous filters, including some particularly
valuable ones for holiday shopping (ships within X# weeks), which are
cumulative, Lenovo makes it easy to find what you want.

Message match: Taken care of.

Other goodwill factors: 8/10. Above the fold, the intro paragraph to
each laptop line clarifies which type of customer each laptop line is
intended for.

And the product-line comparison chart they offer below the fold is
extremely valuable to methodical shoppers who want more details for
comparing their choices. On a slightly odd note, their search results
include many IBM.com pages, whose presence won't make sense to anyone
unaware that Lenovo bought out IBM's Thinkpad laptop line.

Selection: 7/10. While it's again narrower as compared to
Shopping.com, Lenovo is a manufacturer, so this is to be expected.

MDG.ca

We regularly receive MDG's flyers at home, so I was curious to see
how their site would perform. The performance was laughable, since
there was such poor message match across the site's pages.

On one page, MDG offers to recommend the right laptop according to
your lifestyle/usage.

On the next, instead of recommendations, I get a /credit
application/. No thanks that's not what I asked for.

Conclusion

The user experience offered to a potential visitor can't be
determined solely on the basis of whether a site is an affiliate site
or a merchant, regardless of the brand size. HP is a merchant and the
best known brand of any of these companies, and their performance was
the worst. Lenovo is also a manufacturer and retailer, but their
performance was highly impressive, just as Shopping.com's was.

LaptopCloseout, MDG and FutureShop showed that you can be small,
medium or large retailer and still leave users scratching their heads.

Perhaps those trust metrics from Google's Vince update reflected how
quickly visitors click through from Google or other user happiness
metrics (Google's term), but they don't necessarily correlate with
user experience metrics post-click.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.

Gab Goldenberg <http://searchengineland.com/author/gab-goldenberg/>

also writes his own SEO blog <http://seoroi.com/blog/>
where he discusses advanced SEO tactics and ideas. He loves offering
SEO consulting <http://seoroi.com/seo-consultations>
to entrepreneurs.

<div><a href="http://www.superbhosting.net/"><img
src="http://www.searchmarketingnow.com/_images/superb.gif"
border="0"></a></div>
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to a Search Engine
Land, Search Marketing Now or Search Marketing Expo newsletter. To update
your subscriptions or unsubscribe, use your newsletter preferences page at
http://third.thirddoormedia.com/lists/?p=preferences&id=2&uid=f9779113b77d03598707df46ae032f9b.
Or send your written request to: 279 Newtown Tpke., Redding, CT
06896</font>

Effective Link Building Service

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Just Behave: Ecommerce Usability Showdown: Affiliate VS. Merchants

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me