Usability Study Report
Introduction & Research Objectives
Urban Kids is a retail clothing store under the larger company YM Inc. This brand’s focus is on selling trendy children’s clothing at budget friendly prices. Some of their competitors include Gap Kids, Joe Fresh, and Zara Kids.
The company’s business and experience goals include growth, selling more, and improving their website.
Their website http://urban-planet.com/pages/urban-kids was put under a usability test. We needed to determine if the site design is user centric and find any issues we didn’t know. Areas for testing also included the Information Architecture, making sure the current UI is accessible and evaluate the intuitiveness of the experience.
Improving the usability would help improve the ROI on the site.
Approach & Methodology
- 45-50 minutes allocated for each respondents to do the test
- The test was held in another room with a laptop setup. Recording software and webcam was used to capture the user’s interaction onscreen including the audio interaction while performing the required tasks and their conversation with the Moderator.
- In another room, there was a group of observers listening and watching the interactions live. This group of observers included the class of students and a few clients from Urban Kids.
Test Objectives
- Overall customer path to purchase
- Account registration
- Quick add function
- Test the visual design perception
- Information Architecture
- Wish List
- Test filters & search & findability
- Mobile experience
- Find any issues and specific needs different from Sirens/UrbanPlanet
- Product detail page, perception of product quality
- Local navigation
- Uncover research objectives
Participant Summary
3 Respondents were recruited meeting the following characteristics:
- female, 30-40 years old
- married or with a partner
- mom with 1-2 kids between ages 2-10 years old
- located in GTA
- mobile & tech savvy
- shops at places like Gap Kids, Joe Fresh
Recruitment of respondents were done via Social Media posting.
An incentive of $100 Urban Kids Gift Card was provided to all respondents once test was completed. All 3 respondents participated and completed the tasks required. There were none “no shows”.
Tasks Performed
1. On the website find 2 tops for less than $10 each and add them to the bag
2a. Add 2 unicorn items to the bag
2b. After adding items to bag, find out if you can get your order by tomorrow
3. Find details regarding the return & exchange process of Urban Kids
4. Find girl’s dress that does not contain synthetic fabrics
5. Find the closest Urban Kids store location and check if it’s open tomorrow
6. Find a way to stay in tune with the latest deals and trends of Urban Kids
7. Find Varsity Bomber jacket and see if the size you want is in stock
Bugs & Issues
Discovered during Task Scenario 5
- Users had issues finding specific Urban Kids stores due to technical issues
- There were also issues with the store finder link shifting to the Urban Planet brand and not staying on Urban Kids
Usability Problems & Recommended Actions
Here are some of the problems discovered and the recommended solutions to address it:
Severity: CRITICAL
Tasks involved: ALL
Recommendations: Fix filters
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: 2a, 7
Recommendations: Add filters to search results
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: 1, 2a
Recommendations: Add “Continue Shopping” label to exit, or close button (X)
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: 4
Recommendations: Add a material filter to product categories, or create a 100% cotton collection
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: 2a, 4
Recommendations: Isolate results by brand depending on your tab, AND/OR allow users to filter by brand/gender/age when on results pages
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: 1
Recommendations: Segment size filter by gender/age AND/OR include a size chart/guide within the size filter
Severity: MAJOR
Tasks involved: ALL
Recommendations: Create a link-back to search terms results page
Severity: MEDIUM
Tasks involved: 1, 2a
Recommendations: Add gender neutral category to navigation and/or filter
Severity: MEDIUM
Tasks involved: 2b
Recommendations: Add shipping option information to bag, test different highlighted options for delivery on PDP, add microcopy and specific delivery times to PDP to encourage purchase
Severity: MEDIUM
Tasks involved:6
Recommendations: Redo icon to resemble a specific contact icon (non-email)
Severity: MINOR
Tasks involved:6
Recommendations: Create a more prominent placement for newsletter capture, i.e., higher on the page, more copy, different color, time pop-up
Severity: MINOR
Tasks involved:ALL
Recommendations: Provide additional search direction, inject micro-copy into the search box to guide users
Severity: MINOR
Tasks involved:4
Recommendations: Combine and/or overlap sizing ranges to create better parent categories for sizes
Conclusions
The overall feedback from this Usability Test show there is a preference for more Gender Neutral clothing for children. Being able to continue to shop once items were added to cart was very important to the users as it can be a nuisance to have to continuously scroll and figure out the flyout box. Users felt it took too many clicks and time to add and go back.
The sales promo banner were very visible and all respondents agreed they would click there first, however the overall feel of the site could be less gender biased to accommodate moms shopping for boys.
The search and filters were not as well utilized by the users. A more intuitive or suggested search may help guide the user while they look for items. The products & sizes coming up under the search were often times too expansive and many include some irrelevant items which made it difficult to pinpoint what they were looking for.
