Research: Most retail Web sites fail basic usability test

Research: Most retail Web sites fail basic usability test
Tags: Customer Experience, Online Retailing, Technology
October 7, 2008

Internet Retailer: To gauge the quality of online customer experiences, Forrester Research analysts recently reviewed 1,200 Web sites, including e-commerce sites — and only three percent passed the firm's usability test.

"The No. 1 failure, believe it or not, is text legibility," said Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst of customer experience with Forrester. "In this day and age companies are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, in their sites, yet display content in a way in which people can't read it. Another failure near the top of the list is inefficient task flows. Some e-retailers, for example, have checkout processes that put you through too many steps. The processes simply are not efficient."

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