'Retail UX Audit' for Holiday 2012 Released by Retail UX

Retail UX published the "Holiday 2012 Retail UX Audit," which evaluated 30 top retailers on the number of UX features found on their e-commerce web sites. The Audit gives retailers a view into competitive practices in digital customer experience.

Athens, GA (I-Newswire) December 7, 2012 - 'Holiday 2012 Retail UX Audit' Released by Retail UX

Nordstrom.com tops the UX Audit

*** Audit Results Available at www.retailux.com/Audit/Free_UX_Audit.html***

Athens, Georgia – Retail UX, a user experience strategy agency for top retailers, today released the Holiday 2012 Retail UX Audit. The Audit reflects retailers' efforts to introduce features that will make shopping easier, more effective, and more engaging on their e-commerce web sites.

“The UX Audit gives retailers an objective competitive benchmark in the area of user experience feature sets," said Paul Bryan, Director of User Research and Design Strategy for Retail UX.

To create the Audit, Retail UX reviewed the e-commerce web sites of 30 top retailers in Winter 2012. Retailers were assigned a total score based on the presence or absence of 30 user experience design features, which were derived from a comprehensive review of retail industry best practices. Of the 30 retail web sites reviewed, Nordstrom.com was at the top with 16 out of 30 possible points. Saks.com, Sears.com, and Walmart.com tied for second place with a respectable 15 out of 30 possible points. One new feature that we noticed is Charlotte Russe’s Send to Mobile, which allows customers to send a product that they’re viewing on the web to their mobile phones, which enhances the cross-channel customer experience.

The full list of criteria is presented in the Audit, as are the scores of all 30 retailers, and links to screen captures of all of the retailers' product pages.

"We were surprised that more retailers are not providing product videos on their sites. Saks is a stellar example of video implementation, and Zappo’s and Patagonia have had them for a while. We think product videos will be a standard feature on e-commerce web sites." Mr. Bryan said. "Another surprise is how long it’s taking retailers to offer a shop-the-outfit option when looking at images that display multiple apparel products on a model. And of course, virtual try-on is taking even longer to enter the retail user experience. Only H&M had anything close to what we consider a virtual try-on feature."

Mr. Bryan continued, "We don’t think that the total number of UX features is in any way a measure of a successful UX strategy. Developing a winning UX strategy is a formula that involves many internal and external factors. Retail UX considers such factors when conducting research and strategy engagements for our retail clients. The UX Audit is one small part of the work that goes into a UX strategy, and we choose to give that work away as a means of familiarizing retailers with our UX research and strategy consulting practice."

The Retail UX Audit is the basic free version of more extensive competitive and best practice reports produced by Retail UX in the area of multichannel retail. More detailed reports are available on a monthly or quarterly basis, filling the need for an inexpensive way for all team members and executives to stay current in the state of the art of digital retail user experience. Contact Retail UX for pricing information.

The Retail UX Audit, with links to screen captures of the product pages of all 30 top retailer sites, can be found online at www.retailux.com/Audit/Free_UX_Audit.html.

For more information about Retail UX, or the Retail UX Audit, please contact Paul Bryan at (770) 722-8123, or send an email to audit@retailux.com.

Contact Info
Paul Bryan
Director, User Research and Design Strategy
Retail UX
Phone: (770) 722-8123
Email: audit@retailux.com
Web: http://www.retailux.com