Subscribe via RSS FeedBrowsing Usability: Overstock Blows Amazon Away
It excites me to know end to praise a usability innovation from an online retailer that is NOT Amazon. Hooray!
I noticed a filtered navigation design on Overstock that is really interesting. It combines search with filtered navigation - here’s what I mean:
Say you’re checking out the “Rings” category. You’re presented with a number of ways to narrow your results: Category, Metal, Size, Price and Stone.
But if you’re looking for say, a cocktail ring - this could include a variety of gemstones and metals, could be at any number of price points and would depend on what size you are looking for. Rather than looking at ALL items in the “Rings” category, you can hone in on just the cocktail rings by searching for “cocktail.”
Now you can see how many cocktail rings belong to each Category, Metal, Size, Price and Stone option and you can start refining your search further. I want to see all the available cocktail rings in size 5:
Amazon doesn’t offer this type of search function. I would have to search for “cocktail rings” from the main search first, then narrow from there. But, I can’t narrow by size. So the Overstock experience is far superior. Take that, Amazon!
Plus, Overstock’s design is also much better. The way Amazon displays filter options is with left-hand menus which requires a lot of scrolling, requires top-down, rather than left-right reading and is harder for the eye to scan. With a compact, above-the-thumbnails design, Overstock’s design is easier on the brain. You can absorb more information with less eye and finger movement. I don’t have eye-tracking studies to prove it, but I believe there is enough classic usability research out there that would support this.
Even the way product results are displayed is more effective. Overstock shows a Free Shipping offer, the % discount as well as reduced price in red, and the average customer review rating. Amazon does not:
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Amazon seems to have a Google like reputation for not being the most feature rich, but being the best.
As far back as I can remember Amazon has been behind the times when it comes to E-commerce functionality, but they continue to be the largest.
This Overstock.com interface reminds me of the iTunes application interface, where you can filter by one or more of Genre, Artist, Album, and a search term in the interface laid out across the top of the window, and the matching results are displayed in the bottom portion of the window.
This is the first time I’ve seen it used in an eCommmerce site. Nice job, Overstock.com! (And Linda, thanks for the pointer!)
Actually, you can do this except for filtering by size.
http://tinyurl.com/6rzphb
Amazon’s jewelry section has consistently had innovations sooner than other departments.
Hi Linda,
The navigation looks a lot like Endeca’s guided navigation search - it’s really a terrific product that allows a commerce site to leverage the product attributes to build this type of refining in navigation. Full disclosure, my company is a partner of Endeca’s and we used this functionality on the new beta site for Borders (http://beta.bordersstores.com). It’s really slick - I am wondering if Overstock.com is using the same function. Other clients of Endeca that have a similar navigation feature are Home Depot and Walmart.
Thanks,
Adam
@CommerceStyle - I hate to disagree, but I’ve found that Amazon is often the innovator of new features rather than the laggard, no?
@Jon Schneider - I’m not familiar with the iTunes interface functionality you’re referring to, perhaps my library is just small :)
The improved experience that Overstock provide is a really good observation and of particular relevance with Amazon.co.uk recently undertaking a user interface and navigation redesign.
In addition to Overstocks multi-faceted navigation facility, if you were able to choose more than 1 facet from a particular attribute, ie. diamond fashion and silver fashion, within the category attribute, this would provide you with even greater browsing flexibility.
Its striking the balance between allowing you to drill down to 1 specific facet to viewing products which share multi facets for a particular attribute.
This would also apply to the price attribute, where there might be products which fall within 2 or more price brackets that you would like to see out of the 5/6 brackets available.
Taking this further, for the pricing, Amazon provide a text entry input so you can specify what is the max and min price you are looking to pay, which provides greater control for the user.
As is the case with e-commerce solutions there are always further user experience and functionality improvements that can be considered, which keeps our industry as vibrant as it is!
Linda, here’s an iTunes screen capture I found that shows the iTunes search/filtering interface that I was referring to (thanks Google Image Search!):
http://www.ejecutive.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/itunes7_4_thumb.jpg
Note the 3 sections of the iTunes window right pane where you can choose one or more Genres, Artists, or Albums (or leave the selection at the default of “all” for each category). The library tracks that match the selection, plus the search term entered at top right (if any) are displayed in the bottom portion of the window.
If you have iTunes on your machine but don’t see that search interface when viewing your library, you can open the interface by clicking on the “eye” button in the lower-right corner of the window.
Nice the way the overstock filters update as you drill down. We’re trying a vertical nav on the left hand side at webtogs.co.uk - the jury’s out on which is better!
@Linda Bustos - you need to change your view in iTunes using the icons at the top to be “list view” - 1st icon, then click the “eye” icon at the bottom of the interface on the right - weird, but true. Must be something to be said about a bad usability experience in order to launch a feature with better usability!
@Adam Cohen, sorry I missed your comment there, we must have been writing comments at the same time.
You’re bang on, I did a search for “overstock endeca” and that is the technology they are using. Powerful stuff.
Thanks for all the iTunes help, I was wondering what the eye was for, and hadn’t clicked it to find out :)
I saw this built in search feature for Overstock.com, awhile back. For some reason I did not like it that much. To me it got in the way of what i want to do. For a really large site that has 1000s of items I think it is a good way to get people looking and thinking about others items beside what they originally came looking for. For a site like mine with 100 items, it is a bit over kill I think.
Our navigation team is blushing from all this positive feedback. We have been working a long time to straighten out our navigation and it’s nice to see people appreciate it! Just to clear up one point of discussion, our search and navigation vendor is Mercado and not Endeca.
@Geoff, there’s proof Google can be wrong ;)
The fact that you have a “navigation team” is notable, keep up the good work.