I love that you guys asked such specific questions like “What % of visitors on authentication page ended up on password reset page?” and “What % of those actually came back to finish the transaction after reset”. Thank you for including the wait time for the analytics.

Did you guys perform any AB testing of the solution? Or did you just do it?

I’m working for a company that is somewhat new to using UX and completely new to using analytics. I’m trying to get a process in place for getting data to the UX department and setting up the environment for testing.

You’re an inspiration

I asked them about it and it turned out interesting … basically they so stridently pursue their business model of great post-sales service (no-questions-asked, simple returns, for example, but it goes beyond that) that requiring registration is ultimately beneficial. I.e., they favor the prospect of a repeat customer over the near-term benefit of a one-time purchase. I have no doubt that they have numbers to back this up, given who they are and who their parent is.

Of course, that could change over time … for example when we’ve all already decided that Zappos is the place to buy shoes. Just goes to show that different places get lots of different results, I guess! More good reasons to keep up the research.

Thanks,
Matt

In this instance we were recruiting people who shopped online. During the recruitment process, we would interview them in detail to learn where they shopped regularly. This helped us learn how long they’d had their account.

We don’t keep a pool of participants, per se.

For our studies these days, we use Usability Works for our recruiting. They do a fabulous job. — Jared

Thanks,
Lars

And honestly, don’t we all freaking hate websites that say “register for an account”? When you shop online, are you excited and thrilled at the chance to collect yet another account login, like some sort of bizarre internet equivalent to getting the the complete 1994 TOPS baseball card collection?

Theoatmeal even made a joke about it. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/shopping_cart

How many subjects were used in the test? Did you have a single test blending some return users and some first-timers or did you do separate tests for the 2 segments? Did you test hundreds? Tens?

This was a Bell System study for 411 service. The contract for the database system was awarded based on how long it took for results to start to appear on the operator’s screen. The “winner” gave out keychains with their slogan “Type Less, See More”. Their method, which failed to take into account how long it would take the operator to wade through the results, was to type 4 characters and view the results. Springer and Sorce showed that by typing 6 characters (about 200 msec up front), the operators were much faster at providing the information. How much faster? First let me tell you that at that time, 411 service was free and cost the Bell System $11 million per second per year, so a savings of 1 second would save $11 million. The average time savings was over 5 seconds per call, or $55 million per year.