Offline retail planograms are completely fascinating. Before the digital environment (and their fantastic analytics) ever existed marketers have been intuitively testing and learning which layouts and organizations impact product sales. Though the applications are different, the offline environment can teach us a lot about ecommerce interface and user experience planning.
Here’s what a basic idea of what a retail planogram looks like:
In this example, clothes are arranged in 6 different ways with varying real estate given to specific products. Planograms like these are arranged to promote, cross-sell, and move specific products–and use finite spaces effectively.
Planograms do this by creating physical experiences for a consumer to navigate in-store. Online interfaces are built for multiple reasons: usability and experience being most relevant to this exploration.
Usability serves function. If a website is easier to use, the user is more likely to spend time to make a purchase.
Experience serves sentiment and feelings. If a website feels relevant and comfortable, the user is more likely to spend time to make a purchase.
Functional Layouts
In many (most?) ecommerce product layouts, products are arranged the same way with equal “real estate”.
Consider this example from Target.com:
There is a product organized for a “fun” display (not clickable for purchase), a cross-promotion sale, and then equal real estate given to each product available for purchase.
Zappos.com has a similar layout–the different is added (more overt?) customization.
It seems these websites favor usability over experience, though experience is certainly not neglected.
Forward-facing products seem to be the standard for ecommerce interface design. And this makes sense, as the user cannot physically touch, move or manipulate the environment.
This is meant for consideration, not criticism.
Target is doing some bleeding edge work with predictive analytics–not just online; check out How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did and How Companies Learn Your Secrets. (If predictive analytics freaks you out–as it does many consumers–please read Seth Godin’s recent post The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about). If you are interested in predictive analytics, contact me as it’s something I’ve really dove in to.)
And we all know Zappos is best-in-class eCommerce.
Experiential Layouts
But, then, there are interfaces seemingly designed for much more heavily for experience, like Burberry.com.
Burberry’s website feels much more like an in-store planogram. There is mixed product view styles on nearly every page, plus the added dynamic and video content as the user navigates through the page.
Accessories page:
Products page view:
An Analytical Look at Interface Planning
Case study begins on slide 15 on How to use Google Analytics & Social Media Data to Make Marketing Decisions http://bit.ly/uEEbLN
Online it’s easy to track how an interface is navigated and what how user interface changes impact on conversion.
Determining how to prioritize and display product requires many different considerations. A few things to consider:
- What is the desired conversion? (Drive in-store sales, convert sale on the website, reinforce branding)
- Is the product display consistent with branding goals? (Lifestyle brands may prefer experiential websites while big box stores may prefer usability.)
- Is the product display easy and relevant to the target consumer? (High-end or older consumers may prefer large product views while lifestyle or younger consumers may prefer seeing products “in action”.)
Store Mapping
Not only do retail planograms move product better, they aid in optimizing the organization of products in the physical space of the store.
Sections are placed to complement each other and catch the consumer where they are most likely to convert. Consider Target: Cookware isn’t far from food. DVDs are next to TVs. Accessories are next to clothing.
Online, this is achieved through website architecture. The information architect needs to anticipate where users will expect to see something and optimize conversions through organization. But offline store layouts do not translate the same way. Users navigate online environments differently.
Why? A few theories:
- Online caters to a singular user. Offline caters to families shopping together.
- Online cross-selling is easier. Offline cross-selling is less overt.
- Online environments can be customized to user behavior.
Your turn
How do you determine user interface plans?
What would you like to see differently from retail ecommerce websites?
Do you prefer retail ecommerce websites to their brick-and-mortar counterparts?
