Product Sorting Options Improve E-commerce Usability Response Coach® Blog

If you’re looking for some great product sorting options to add to your e-commerce site functionality, check out Shop.CCS.com. The visitor can “sort by” and “filter by” a number of very useful options, including best seller, what’s new, alphabetical, low price, and high price.

Simplified menu greatly improves website usability.

In early 2010, the site featured a busy main menu system. Special offers and utility-type menu choices were inter-mingled with e-commerce main menu choices stretching over 3 to 4 rows of real estate. And the use of numerous type treatments made it look all the more jumbled. In 2011, the website features a more logical, streamlined menu system.

On shop.CCS.com, the top menu system has been simplified. No longer is regular navigation combined with promotional offers, giving the top of the site a much cleaner look. This is critical for e-commerce success these days. Many web visitors have multiple windows open, and so only the very top of a website is visible. That most critical real estate better make the site clear to use. The shop.CCS.com product pages feature great tools for learning more.

Pros:

Search box is visible in the upper right corner
Shopping cart displays a running total
You can “filter by” and “sort by” many options (brand, size, color) within the product pages
All graphics are clickable
Back order or in stock note appears if you mouse-over a size
You can zoom for a larger view
Description, Sizing, Reviews, and Q&A are available right on each product page
Left column sub-menus easy to use

Cons: Since we reviewed the site in early 2010, all of the site’s shortcomings have been addressed. It used to be that to change the color of an item, you had to click on the color choice and then mouse over the photo to see just a portion of the product in that color. Now a simple mouse-over instantly changes the item’s color. And the Zoom function used to be unfriendly. You had to click to Zoom and then it was unclear how to get back to the main page. You just had to know there was a miniscule “close” in the lower right corner. Now the Zoom features a prominent “close” in upper right corner where it should be.

Shop.CCS.com updated USABILITY SCORE (scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is Fabulous, 1 is Horrendous)

Easy-to-use Main Menu 9 (previously, it scored a 3)
Know-where-you-are Sub-Menus 9
Utility menu 9 (previously, it scored a 4)
Search function 9
Help functions 8
Views of different versions of item 10 (previously scored a 3)
Navigation within product area 10
Completeness of product information provided 10
In-stock/out-of-stock situation 10
Clickable graphics/photos 9 (previously scored a 4)
Ability to enlarge product shots 10 (previously a 4)
Options for sorting products 10
Online catalog navigation 10
Running shopping cart total on screen 10

Total Score for the enhanced site: 133/140 =9.5 (2010′s score was 104/140 = 7)

Great to see a site with good usability continue to make improvements for GREAT usability. What do you think about shop.ccs.com? Did you notice anything that we missed?