UPDATE: While it is not an e-commerce website, php.net is a great example of a website that doesn’t fall into these problems.

Introduction

Lithium ion battery technology is really cool, but lithium ion batteries don’t really last that long. So, when the lithium ion batteries in my dad’s camera die, what does he do? He is Internet-savvy long enough to know several websites where he could order a battery. He tried to get the batteries at:

• Buy.com
• Amazon.com
• BatteriesPlus.com
• BestBuy.com
• CanonUSA.com (This is a Canon camera we’re talking about here)
• (names of websites that I can’t remember)

So, how successful was my dad in ordering his battery? Well, he managed to get it, but how difficult was it? Problems that he encountered are listed below.

Problems in navigating large websites

1) Site search is difficult to find or doesn’t work well

On a lot of websites, when using site search, we had some problems. On a few sites (maybe on a site that I didn’t list above), the site search box itself was hard to find. This is a big problem. How is such a large site supposed to be navigable without a site search?

If the search box could be found, the results would be horrible. If you’re going to make a site search, you have to make it able to retrieve good results. If you want a good site search quickly, use a Google Custom Search Engine. Using a CSE may not be ideal, but it is the fastest way to make a site search that gives you good results.

There is also the small font problem. Is it just me, or do site search results display in really small fonts? The idea is for the user to see the results of their query without using a magnifying glass. Eveyrthing on the website, including site search results, should be in a visible font.

In one case, the site search simply failed as the links provided didn’t actually go to the product pages that the user would assume that they would go to.

2) Category listings aren’t precise enough

When site search failed my dad, he went through the category listings. You know. He went to the Camera section and then to Accessories and so forth.

Now, having just Accessories isn’t precise enough. Do you think that the user actually wants to look through all the camera accessories in order to find one battery model?

Now, the perfect solution would be search, but category listings is what you go for when search fails you. Since search seems so hard, precise category listings seems like a good thing to have.

3) The website hasn’t usually been built for all possible actions.

A lot of these websites are often very easy to navigate to achieve a certain task (buying an HDTV), but can be difficult to complete a different task (specifically looking for a certain type of battery).

A lot of the websites that my dad tried weren’t optimal for looking for batteries. Now, the web developers couldn’t possibly make a website where it was easy to achieve every possible task, but the site shouldn’t make it difficult to buy everything except what benefits the merchant the most.

So instead of only seeing if the site is usable enough to buy the latest HDTV, there should be tests to see if it’s easy to buy a very specific battery model.

Conclusion

It’s no easy task to build a large website. For those that make money off their website, website usability is essential. Maybe, in the future, it will be much easier to use these websites to buy a specific battery model.

Also, in case you were wondering (and you probably weren’t), my dad found the exact battery model produced by several different manufacturers and sold at a wide range of prices.

It will be interesting to see what changes come to these websites in the future, and I definitely know that my dad will be back on them. After all, lithium ion batteries only last a few years.