Online Drug Store Ozerky. 1.Usability Research
On the first Research stage of the project our research team conducted several research to explore and analyze user's behavior:
Interviews with business
Google Analytics
Heuristic evaluation
User survey
Competitive analysis
Interviews with Business
We started from interview with business representatives to learn more about drug business. During the interviews we figured out a few important unique details:
Besides pills drug store sell cosmetics, home medical equipment, baby care products and so on. Delivery of drugs was not allowed by Russian law, though other goods are available for delivery.
Prices on same drugs can be different in different offline locations.
Drug store managers can order some special rare drugs from providers, if buyer really needs them.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics was one of the way to study users behavior. Through Analytics I learned how users find target product and how interface influence their behavior. I understood that about 40% of users still use catalogue to search target goods. So I needed to focus on this part and also to check on search engine. Maybe it does not work properly and this is the reason why people don't use it so much.
Google Analytics showed that only 51.86% of users go from search results to an item page. And almost 30% of users initiate new search before transferring to an item page. Assumption 1: Users don't find target item. Search results don't contain target item or users can not find the target item because of lack of filters.
Also Google Analytics showed that only 31.11% of users add an item to the cart after visiting item page. About 24% of users leave site. Assumption 2: Users are unsatisfied with product description, so they fill unsure about purchase.
Google Analytics showed that only 19.9% of users add items to cart from search hints. About 67% of users initiate a new search and about 9% go to Catalogue.
Assumption 3: Either search engine does not work properly or search hints often don't contain target items.
Google Analytics showed that only 15.59% of users transfer from product catalogue to item pages. Assumption 4: Lack of filters does not let users find target item.
Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic evaluation revealed a pool of usability issues:
A user had to choose store for pick up before navigating through catalogue or using search. And so a user saw only goods available in chosen store and prices only for this certain store.
Search engine didn't take in account typos, so sometimes users could not find an item.
Catalogue had 3 levels, and all of these levels popped up one by one when user hovered the "Catalogue" item in the menu and further. Pop-ups overlayed the whole screen but still could not fit the extensive menu list.
Adding items in the cart was incomprehensive.
Some scenarios were not worked out well. For example, users could order some unpopular items in separate page, submit the form and wait till drug store get the item from a provider. It was separate time-consuming process. And what if user need to purchase more units of usual drug than it is available on site? Can he/she order absent items? What he/she should do for that?
Survey
As a next step I conducted a survey. The goal was better understanding of users behavior and also to check main hypothesis.
The survey showed that
People mostly buy medicine by prescription - 66.6%. They don't choose medicine by themselves.
58% of the customers buy medicine with certain period.
Most of the customers come to the web site to see the price - 71%
Price is the key factor for almost 52% of customers when they choose the store for pick up.
31.5% would choose another pick up location if some items are unavailable in the closest one. And 28.9% would stick to the closest pick up point.
Most of the customers has troubles using search - 54.78%. The second popular problem is lack of information about products - 24.3%
Navigation and Structure
According to all the research I draw navigation map that described user scenarios. When I draw the structure of the site.
