Summary of Jam Session:
In this session we did 7 critiques. Nick Mercurio – Home Security, Mark Givert – Infrared Solutions, Christy Winfrey – Homeware, Aaron Kay – Clothing, Jen Cerrado – Clothing, Staris Jack – Clothing and Cristy Thomson – Plastic Containers
Critiques:
Critique 1
0:01:40 – Critique number 1 is for Nick Mercurio
Homepage: Casey shares his observations that homepage displays better on desktop compared to mobile view. There are some images and texts that are not clear in the mobile view. Tanner talks about the UVP. He shares that “Family owned & operated” is a good value proposition. Good improvements done by Nick from motion graphic to static icons. Also to emphasize, the team suggests moving “Simplified Installations” above Customer Support details. Aleks also suggests having post purchase surveys to get feedback from the customers. Tanner observes that the size of the footer is large and that it is occupying too much space.
Collection Page: Tanner notices that for the “Choose by Interest” filter, all tags are showing as interest. The team recommends simplifying the filter options more. Tanner also shares that the product name “The Controller” results in friction as customers might consider it as a controller and not as a camera. Aleks shares “bullet/list points” examples to better differentiate and describe products. Casey recommends applying a similar background (for the SkynetCamera 2.0).
Product Page: Brad reminds Nick in using the name “SKYNET” as product name as it may have trademark issues. The team recommends using a comparison chart to have a better approach in describing/emphasizing “Cordless Power – 3Hr Rechargeable Battery”. Aleks suggests adding photos to better describe the product features. Tanner mentions adding Power details in the FAQs section. For the 3D image, the team recommends adding a title to let the customers know that they can adjust their view in the 3D image. It takes too much space for the 2 motion graphic images. Recommends to have it in regular text for better readability. To help better describe the product size, the team suggests to include product images where the actual camera is in use (e.g. inside room/house). Tanner includes that the value propositions shown are generic and it doesn’t describe cameras in particular. For mobile view, “+” and “-” display should be fixed and the UVP icons should be larger as well.
Critique 2
0:44:18 – Critique number 2 is for Mark Givert
Homepage: Tanner talks about the banner layout and its blank spaces occupying most of the page. He also mentions that for header banners, it should highlight specific products or highlight what you are selling. For the “Featured Collections, to rename it to “Feature Products”. For simplicity, he also suggests removing the scroll left/right and having 2 rows with 3 products (desktop view). Recommends to remove dropdown menus for “Best Sellers” and direct customers to best selling products. Brad suggests to retain “Enter Email address” and remove first and last name fields. To add, the team suggests updating “Sign me up” to “Get the coupon”. Rosemary also reminds Mark about User tests to better understand customers behavior in navigating the pages.
Collection Page: For clarity, Tanner suggests having a better description for products “for hire/rent”. The filter currently setup is actually a sub-category. For easier navigation, Tanner recommends using a check-box filter and also to simplify filter formats/lists.
Critique 3
1:14:50 – Critique number 3 is for Christy Winfrey
Homepage: Brad mentions a promotional slider that is on auto-sliding that it will be better to have static for better readability. Per Tanner, instead of Sezzle details in the slider, it will be better to highlight “We pay shipping on all orders”. Good banner in desktop however it shows small in mobile view. Same as the banner, Rose Mary notices some readability issues for the UVP icons in mobile view. Tanner recommends moving the “As seen in” to a higher part of the page for it to be highlighted to the customers. He also recommends updating the layout for the text/image part “What is Vintage-inspired”. It doesn’t look in-tune with the whole page design. To avoid friction, improve/reword “Find Your Favorite” to be more specific to what the customer will see. For the reviews, it is the same case with other issues that it doesn’t look good/optimized in mobile view. To add, the label “Our signs, your home” doesn’t make a good connection with the customer. It should be updated to something like “Customer Gallery” where actual customer’s product images are highlighted. Brad recommends updating “Get $5” to “Get $5 off/Claim your $5 off”.
Collection Page: Tanner suggests updating the drop-down “Choose your size” to improve readability. Cristy mentioned they are already working on it. Good pictures and badges (Best seller/customer favorite) utilized for the Collection page.
Product Page: Using the mobile view, the team notices some bugs in terms of the alignment/line-up. Tanner reminds everyone to always check the mobile view on both Android and Iphone. Good sample size guide images. To add credibility, the team recommends highlighting the overall rating of the store in the Home page/banner. Text in UVP icons should be more readable by updating its font.
Cart Page: Tanner recommends updating “Checkout” to “Proceed to Checkout”.
Checkout: To add credibility, Rosemary suggests adding UVP under total amount.
Critique 4
2:02:33 – Critique number 4 is for Aaron Kay
https://www.theswankstore.com.au
Homepage: To free up more space, Tanner recommends moving “Log In” to the bottom part/footer of the page. To help customers focus more on the site, Tanner reminds Aaron to check Google Analytics to understand if “Follow us on Social” is being utilized. For clarity, Virtual Sale and Chat icons should be labeled. Wizard/Virtual Stylist works well to help the customer find the correct size for the product.Tanner commends Aaron for utilizing more the feature of Virtual Stylist. Home page banner looks good however it creates a false bottom which might affect customers not to further navigate below the page. Tanner likes the “14 New Arrivals this week” that makes customers get more interested to check new items. Instead of using “Join the Club”, Tanner suggests replacing it with a discount or perks offers.
Collection Page: Tanner commends utilizing again the “Virtual stylist” in Category page. He also mentions sizing information (One size fits all) usually not included in the Category page. Good format of “Filters” and “Search”. Tanner suggests utilizing Google Analytics to understand what customers tend to “Search” more.
Product Page: Tanner shared his experience with other stores regarding split payment. In his previous experiences, he shares that there is low sales if there are 2 or more split payment options. Rose shares that she is encountering some mobile view issues with Virtual Stylist in selecting sizes. Also in Mobile view, the team notices there is an opportunity to move “Add to Cart” for it to be easily located (preferably below the price). Tanner also recommends not to put links that will transfer the customer to other sites (e.g. Youtube videos). Aaron may just embed the video within the store. For “Review Stars”, it should be indicated near the product’s name. For the cross sale section, Tanner suggests to lessen the items displayed “Related Items”.
Cart Page: Good free shipping offers. For Shipping discounts, Tanner mentions to update “Top Banner” to match the location of the customer.
Checkout: Good Checkout formats.
Critique 5
2:56:25 – Critique number 5 is for Jen Cerrado
Homepage: Tanner notices there are several button colors utilized in the homepage. This might irritate the shopping experience of the customers. For mobile, the text “Everyday Clothing for Everyday people…” shows small and might affect readability from the customers. The team also noticed the heart icon for “15% off” as this might cause confusion. Heart icon not usually used for discount information. UVPs is also not clear per the design of the homepage. Tanner suggests standardizing UVP icons. Under featured collections, Tanner noticed the last image for “Featured Collection” is actually a specific product and not a collection. For sweatshirts (Desktop view), Tanner suggests having 2 across to improve visibility for the design in the sweatshirts. While for Mobile, he mentions to have 1 image across only. For the footer in mobile, Rosemary noticed there is a dropdown for “Footer Menu”. The team recommends checking on the setup for the Footer. Jen shared concerns about the currencies showing on her site. Tanner recommends starting with US currency first. Once the issue is fixed, Jen may add other currencies. .
Collection Page: Tanner noticed there are a lot of items in the navigation (upper part of the Collection and Product pages). He recommends limiting it with 2-3 categories and adding new ones as you go.
Product Page: For the Product page, Tanner noticed it is better to switch from sizes to swatches. He also noticed tabs issue where it can be fixed in the themes. For mobile view, Rosemary recommends increasing the size of the price to have better display for the customers. Also, to have more consistency in UVPs design (same in Homepage). For the shipping & return tabs, the team observes it is like a wall of text. They recommend having it shorter for easy readability. For the image in Product description, Tanner observes there is not much value on it and suggests removing it. Tanner also mentions to move the size guide near the Size dropdown.
Cart Page: Tanner shares that based on the recent tests, adding the payment icons are not necessary. For the “Continue Shopping”, he suggested converting it from a button to a link (blue text link).
Checkout: For better readability, Tanner mentions there is still opportunity to increase the size of the text located on the top of the page. For Express Checkout, recommends removing the GPay icon and replacing it with Paypal icon as there is only 1% using GPay. To have consistency on the color, Tanner recommends changing the green and red font colors in the Checkout page.
Critique 6
3:18:30 – Critique number 6 is for Staris Jack
Homepage: Conversions are doing around 5% which is good. Tanner recommends checking repeat customer rate. Also to drive daily revenue, Tanner suggests increasing backend like first the emails and later on SMS marketing approaches.For the Newsletter, Tanner recommends a video in AMA that discusses about 5 stars segments to have a better approach for Newsletter structure. .
Collection Page: Based from the previous tests done, Tanner recommends removing “Quick Buy” as it doesn’t help improve conversions.
Product Page: Tanner mentions trying “Bundling” that might also help the store to increase average order value. He also remind Staris not to focus only in newsletter and try testing other automated campaigns that do specific cross/up sells as it will improves the current numbers.
Cart Page:
Checkout: In identifying which will be “optional” for email and phone numbers, Tanner suggests doing tests to check which will work better as it varies per store.
Critique 7
3:41:30 – Critique number 7 is for Cristy Thomson
Homepage: Tanner observes that the design of the homepage is not that trustworthy. Site isn’t very professional for customers to trust and buy products. Also, banner and product images used are a little dark that it doesn’t scream fresh. Brand icon also does not reiterate the store name which also impacts trust factor. Also, Search bar is not visible. Rosemary shared the store name Stasher (https://www.stasherbag.com/) as a good example for the images and banners utilized.
Collection Page:
Product Page: Texts are currently center-aligned. Tanner suggested changing it to left-aligned for better readability. Rosemary also notices there is still room for improvements for the page to focus more on the buy section.
Cart Page: When adding “Priority Shipping”, it should be itemized in the Cart page. Also, there should be a subtotal in the cart page.
Checkout: To build more trust, Tanner reminds Cristy to add contact number and brand name on the upper part of the checkout page.
Noteworthy Topics:
0:19:25 – Bullet/list points
1:13:05 – User tests
2:20:00 – Discount offer
2:27:12 – Split Payment options
2:45:21 – SMS for Discount
2:55:10 – Site Speed testing
3:37:10 – Bundling