Tackling ‘Findability’ on a Mobile Site

"I like your shirt. Where did you get it?"

To a retailer, that conversation is "viral" marketing at its finest, and should in many cases result in a new customer. And if that would-be customer enters your brick-and-mortar storefront, they'll likely find the product on their own or with the help of a sales associate.

But what about on a mobile site? Can a shopper with a specific item in mind find it on your mobile site? In other words, what's the "findability" of your mobile site? Given the increase of mobile traffic and the revenue impact of mobile and mobile-influenced sales, the concept of findability is critical.

Exploring this concept, BloomReach worked with UserTesting.com to run a findability study of five retailers’ websites with a panel of every-day consumers. Each panelist was given an image of a product carried by a specific retailer and the retailer's mobile site. Take a look at the images and brands provided in the photo box in the upper right-hand corner (images are listed in the following order: Bed Bath & Beyond, Chico's, J.C. Penney, J.Crew, Gap).

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Each product was selected because it seemed fairly simple for a person to describe. Examining each, I'm sure you could easily explain what you're looking for to another person, especially to a familiar sales associate. If that's the case, it seems logical that you could also "explain" what you're looking for on the retailer's mobile site.

It's the same language after all, so shouldn't the same bank of product attributes work? In addition, many retailers claim that their mobile sites or apps are meant to emulate the role of personal shopper for customers. People have their phones with them constantly, and the most common site they visit while in-store is the mobile site for that very store.

Sadly, our study revealed that many of our panelists’ experiences were pretty frustrating and discouraging. First, shoppers had to guess whether to search for the item, which turned into an exercise in futility as they guessed how the retailer may have described the product. Those who searched were often disappointed with the search results, demonstrating a disconnect between their own query and the product tags or descriptions. As marketers, it shouldn't take a translator to go from merchant/marketing lingo to consumer language.

The panelists, who painstakingly navigated their way through category trees (which were clearly designed for desktop computers with full-size screens) to the actual product, didn't seem much happier. Winding your way through a maze of subcategories without a clear name of the product is like trying to find a house in a crowded suburban neighborhood without knowing the address. There's a reason we all use Google Maps — on our smartphones. Conversely, it stands to reason that finding a specific item on a mobile site with thousands of products should be as intuitive, seamless and well … smart.

Let's highlight one example. Chico's "highlight reel" provides a good example of common mobile site experiences:

UserTesting.com's research team summed up the problems users faced on Chico's site:

• Too many places to sort/filter products leads to users failing to find the tools they want.
• Even after properly filtering the products, the results don't include the product that users are shopping for, presumably due to poor metadata."
• Likewise, search results don't produce the product that users are shopping for.

Clearly, findability on this site is a concern for what seemed like a simple item — a pair of red pants. While findability and overall satisfaction with the mobile experience are somewhat subjective analyses, the mobile sites tested didn't perform well with the simplest queries. The point is that discovery tools, including search, navigation and filters, shouldn't be a major contributing factor to high bounce rates.

I encourage you to try this exercise yourself. Spend one minute on each of the five mobile sites trying to find the above products.

To help retailers test their mobile site findability, we created a Mobile Site Experience Audit to self-assess experiences qualitatively and quantitatively. The audit provides a methodology for analyzing a mobile site from a consumer's perspective, ultimately answering the question, "Is it effortless for consumers to search, navigate and discover products on my mobile site?" I encourage all Retail Online Integration's readers to download the audit and see how your site stacks up.

Justin Fogarty is marketing manager at BloomReach, a cloud-based marketing platform for online retailers.