30 Days of Ecommerce Testing Day 11: Sharing Personas

📆 30 Days of Testing
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This may be more a question than a statement.

Thinking in day 11 task, I’ve discovered an interesting persona: myself.

A person who works building products and have a wide vision of what a good product is and usability. Once in a while, i find myself abandoning products/applications (even ATMs!) because they work very poorly.

So, is this a kind of persona to take in consideration when working with personas?

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I would test from the perspective of an elderly person, for whom some things might not be so obvious.
They need written text and icons might not be obvious for them. They also need more guidance in the system.

Examples:

  1. To delete a product in some carts, there is no delete button (or just have trash icon) and we have to reduce qty to 0 to delete it from the cart.
  2. How easy it would be to add a voucher, sometimes the voucher is applied at the end when people might feel it will finalize the order without adding the voucher code.
  3. Are the shipping charges clear?
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Thinking from a different user persona’s perspective :smile:

So any website for that matter should be user friendly and user interactive.

Not all the users are educated enough, hence we should keep in mind that all kind of users can access the website:

Hence here are my few points:

  1. Navigation through the website must be user friendly, easy and simple
  2. A know-how or product guide must be incorporated in site
  3. Any time user makes an error, system must prompt enough for the user to make corrections, hence the vocabulary should be easy to follow by the user in simple english
  4. Home page link in all pages
  5. Titles and the contents, the links inside must be relevant enough
  6. Repetitive actions may be captured and presented to user asking if the system could repeat the same. (Like if grocery is ordered for the month, user would be prompted asking the list would be saved and auto ordered for next month)
  7. Use of uppercase letters, icons gives better visibility and appearance wherever required
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Not only for elderly persons :wink: If you are a newbie and never tried a feature so you will also have a problem with the usability. For example amazon, kindle: Why i can’t add a kindle-ebook to my cart? There’s no hint if you make a mouseover on this area, i see only a button “buy now with 1-Click” --> no login and bought with 1 click??? :thinking:

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I think before we come up with personas, we need to know what our business is first. Not all personas may apply to all business types.

So, my store sells books and stationery to college students:

Persona 1:
Fred, the bewildered freshman. He’s not even sure what books he needs. He has a schedule of classes, and knows he needs some books. He’s not sure if financial aid is covering his books or not, or how that even works.

Testing emphasis:
The search functionality should be robust. Search by subject, ISBN, description, title, author should all yield helpful results. If my store targets a particular college or colleges, I could possibly keep a database of what books are used for what classes, so we can search by class name. Make financial aid options are accessible. Test recommendation system for other supplies.

Persona 2:
Sandra, the seasoned senior. She knows exactly what books she needs, and additionally a few supplies she may have to get. She can easily search and navigate the website to find what she needs.

Testing emphasis:
Returning user profile and password reset functionality. Performance! Sandra is very busy and does not have time to fool around with the website!

Persona 3:
Richard, the returning student. He knows what books he needs, but is not that comfortable using the website.

Testing emphasis:
Search functions. Site accessibility and ease of use.

Note: I actually don’t know how to test all of the above things. I realize “ease of use” is vaguely defined. How do you test that? I really don’t know and could probably do some more research here.

-Dave K

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Nice ideas people :slight_smile:

@andrepm6 unless the service is really unique and cannot be has elsewhere, at least the savvier users sure will abandon it if it works “poorly” once they find an alternative. However, one person’s poorly is another person’s pretty ok, so I guess it will depend on the target group - unless the intended actions simply cannot be completed due to errors or it takes ages. As a persona, a sophisticated user is absolutely an option, I guess the question is how you prioritize it for the given product.

@dkotschessa I like how you added the testing emphasis info :slight_smile: Usability testing including ease of use is a huge field in itself and really cool if you enjoy some psychology. Back in the day I found the research of Jakob Nielsen really helpful in this area. The older articles might not be as relevant anymore, as for example the expectations regarding behaviors of UI elements (including physical such as touchscreens) or wait times probably changed quite a bit since 2005-ish :wink: Also the term “cognitive load” can be a good starting point to search for information on judging ease of use.

And here are my personas. I’m not really happy with how they overlap but my creative juices may need an RPG session right now…

  1. Shops regularly for the household, doesn’t like it so keeps orders infrequent but large. Is rather traditional and particular about the specific brands they buy but will take a replacement if the preferred brand is not available. Doesn’t like to browse, wants the least possible hassle, is not very Internet savvy. Shops late in the evenings from a desktop PC.

  2. Price sensitive, uses promotions and coupons where possible. Is willing to check back regularly from various devices and locations in case of timed promotions. Is a newsletter subscriber and often clicks from there to get the subscriber discount applied.

  3. Shopper from overseas, interested in newly released products. However, not everything can be shipped to their home country and only some payment options are available to them. Needs a reliable conversion of currency (with extra charges) and measurements and does not speak the main language very well. Willing to pay more for additional safety such as reliable shipping or extra warranty. Visits usually from a mobile device.

  4. Enjoys browsing and uses the cart as a wishlist. Checks out irregularly and modifies the cart contents a lot. Order value differs a lot. Visits from various devices. Sometimes comes back for the same product to gift to friends.

  5. One-time user who is generally not interested in the type of goods the shop sells but wants to get someone a gift without having to register and generally without much hassle. Comes for a specific product but could use suggestions regarding the necessary accessories.

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Day 11: First of all I’m going to create a c2c e-commerce and it is a platform which allows to buy/trade/sell.
Here are my personas for this kind of e-commerce

  • Adeline, a young student whose is always up-to-date with the new technologies and likes all the fancy things, which means she likes all the cool stuffs. She is bad-temperate as well and doesn’t like the disorder. So she won’t accept any loading problems issues nor layout problems.

  • Jonas an old man who is not involved a lot with internet, most of the time asks for help to his granddaughter to help him. However, as he noticed that he has a lot of free time and he wants to learn how to deal with his computer. So he would be grateful to have an user-friendly interface and an intuitive page.

*Bobbie is a 30 years old who didn’t finish his studies and have an under-payed job. He likes cars, girls, discotheque etc… So when he wants to buy something, he wants it fast, without any problem and when it comes to customer support, he wants the customer services to be efficient and a quick response.

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A bit late but here’s my Day 11

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Correct, agreed with your point :slight_smile:

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A friendly reminder from the awesome sponsors in Sauce Labs:

@conorfi



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Catching up after returned to internet world from an unexpected trip

I will pretend to be a changing mind user, such that I will –

  • Keep adding and removing items in my cart
  • Close my cart/ page at all and re-open later on before confirming the purchase
  • Change my shipping address trying to save shipping fee (e.g. Address of shipping agents such as ComGateway) and test if shipment fee/ estimated delivery date can be updated accordingly
  • Wait for promotion for items in my cart before checking out. The checkpoint is whether the price is updated with the promotion accordingly

Thanks,
Anthony

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https://www.supertestingbros.com/blog/2018/5/17/30-days-of-e-commerce-testing-day-eleven

WOW this one was a lot of work, but, pretty fun too!

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Struggling along to keep up with 30DaysOf as well as the rest life, here are three personas from me.

  1. The soft user
    — An antithesis of a hard user: doesn’t know e-commerce, internet, and the likes —

1.1 If it’s not described (by text or visually - and only by standard recognizable icons) he may not understand it.

  • Are the descriptions of the current feature/fields/flow/exception-confirmation-question messages complete, clear and unambiguous?
  • Is the main user journey (steps) pronounced so he a) sees them among others as well as b) identifies them as a part of buying process (product details/search results -> cart -> checkout)?
    1.2 He doesn’t use keyboard shortcuts, sometimes event enter. Can he proceed by using the mouse only?
    1.2a He’s so used to his office forms uses the mouse only to change the pointer placement. Can he complete the flow without the mouse - at all? with ease?
    1.3 He won’t use advanced features, even when threatened with physical harm. Especially since he just doesn’t see them.
  • Are the default options (e.g. quantity, variants) correct for different types of products?
  • Are there effective alternatives to advanced search (e.g. convenient browse by category, similar items)?
  1. The Business user
    — She wants it all and he wants it fast, no fuss, no flimflam —

2.1 If it takes too much time, she gets irritated.

  • does everything (searching for articles / adding them to cart) loads fast (e.g. using max. allowed wildcards in search to get the most hits, adding multiple articles from the list with their respective “buy” buttons) and without errors (e.g. a short (precise) search query immediately after the first, big one and seeing if the first is cancelled/overwritten)
  • Can she effortlessly find the hammer is looking for? A specific hammer (search, rating by article name/code)? A non-specific hammer that meets her expectations (filtering, browse by category, all hammers indexed correctly in categories)?
    2.2 if the user journey is not smooth, she gets irritated
  • Does she have to think about the system while using it - is it simple control for simple flow? Are the buttons big, clearly identifiable (e.g. because of colour/location)? Are all the obligatory fields/actions (e.g. for going to the checkout) noted up front or only after an initial submit? If it is the latter, is the page auto-focused on the matters that require user attention?
  • Isn’t there too much clutter on the page? Is the main flow visible ? is it pronounced enough so that the extra features do not compete for user’s attention?
    2.3 If she can get all she wants in one go, she’s a happy businesswoman
  • Are the good deals - product/article relations (accessories & spare parts, sets, similar items, promoted items) - pronounced?
  • Are they easy to add to cart or does it require going through yet another product details page?
  1. The paranoid user
    —I’m sure they’ve forgotten something. You just can’t trust these guys! Whom? All of them; the things I’ve read on the internet…—

2.1. He will check if all the prices match (free movement between search categories/ search results/ product and cart as well as between cart and checkout, logged in and the anonymous user, without losing the state (sessions length, basket persistence) - and price must match as well ofc)
2.2. He will test the boundary values for all the discounts (like the price reduction, free shipping), packages (esp. with breakable + non-breakable packages), minimal values and their prices - ensure that everything works and is clearly summed up in the cart summary.
2.3 He will re-check if he orders exactly what he’s chosen. Ensure all the variants (esp. for multi-variant products) are discernable (inside and outside the cart)

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