By: Lalit Jamnal
Introduction:
In the past few decades, the world around us has been revolving around the computers and the internet and with this change, we deal with several software systems and websites in our day to day life. This ecosystem has also led to many issues faced by the consumers of products. Software usability is one of the key concerns which deals with the ease of use and learnability of the product. With a highly usable software system, users can achieve effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction while performing their relevant tasks. This report presents an evaluation of Walmart [1] which is an American multinational store and the evaluation is based on the usability of the system.
Walmart is one of the leading multinational stores with more than 11300 stores worldwide spread in 27 countries. It has more than 275 million customers each week and has 2.2 million associates worldwide. It works on the concept of one-stop shopping and provides choices from grocery and entertainment to sporting goods and crafts as shown in figure 1. The users can shop at Walmart by going to a physical store, through its e-commerce website and its mobile application.
Figure 1. Homepage of Walmart.com
The analysis was done using heuristic evaluation and user testing. For conducting the heuristic evaluation, 10 usability heuristics by Jacob Nielsen [2] were used. User testing was done by using 2 users with no past experience of using this website.
Major issues & suggestions:
1. Navigation menus are not intuitive
This is one of the major issues in the Walmart website, in almost all the pages. In the homepage of the website, the navigation menus are not self-explanatory, and the users need to click or hover on the icons to understand the menu as shown in Figure 2. As the navigation menus are part of every page on the website, it becomes very frustrating for the users to operate and requires user attention to remember what these icons mean.
Figure 2. Navigational issues in Walmart
Suggestion to fix:
The navigation menus should not have only icons and an appropriate text should be used in place. Many major e-commerce websites like Amazon are using the text-based navigation menus to its best use. Navigation menus with text are very intuitive and easily understandable to the user, not requiring much thinking.
2. Unconventional menu items with no description on hover
This issue is related to the menu items. There are a number of menu items in the navigation bar that are not universal and hard to understand. For example, in the Account menu, we have menu items such as Reorder items, Registry, Pharmacy and Lists which could have a different meaning in different context as shown in Figure 3. There is no information given on those items, so the user needs to open the particular link to have an understanding of the feature
Figure 3. Unconventional menu items in Navigation bar with no description
Suggestion to fix:
The features of the above-mentioned menu items are not universally known, so it should be dealt with by adding a short description of the items on hover. It will greatly help in making the system more understandable and less ambiguous. The text on hover should be able to give the contextual understanding to the user.
3. Filtering of the search results needs unnecessary scrolling
This is one of the most irritating usability issues for customers. When we are searching for any product such as Laptop, the filtering on the basis of the specification is available only after scrolling the page as shown in Figure 4. The filters are in expand mode which makes it more cumbersome for the users. The filtering on RAM or hard disk for laptops needs scrolling the page 2-3 times.
Figure 4. Search results page on Walmart
Suggestion to fix:
To fix the issue, the filtering options should be minimized so that the option remains visible in the top part of the page needing less scrolling of the page and in addition to this, it also gives some degree of freedom to the users to choose the filtering type as per their choice. Users may need to filter on only a few options so the users will have a choice to use the desired options only, leaving other options in minimized mode.
4. No error message shown for no search results
This issue is related to the search feature in the help page. When we search for a particular query say “vegetables” on the help page, it has no results to show. It should be showing a message denoting that there are no search results for the particular query, but it loads the page with no message as shown in figure 5 which may confuse the user that the query has been fired or not.
Figure 5. Search results page in help with no search result and no message
Suggestion to fix:
An error message should be included on the search results page for the case where there is no result found for the query. The message should properly explain that the query has no match in the system. The message could be in the following format: "Your query has no match in our system. Please contact us to receive the required information."
5. The user interface is confusing on the help page
This issue is related to the help centre page on Walmart. This is a user interface issue as the elements on the page are very congested and not properly used as shown in Figure 6. The functionalities Search box, Contact Walmart.com link and Contact Walmart stores are placed in a very congested manner and the size of the components is not efficiently used. The user interface seems overwhelming in the short space to the users and the users may gets confused on the different functionalities and may also miss them due to their odd design choice.
Figure 6. Help centre page on Walmart
Suggestion to fix:
The functionalities should not be in a congested space. The features should be placed at an appropriate space between them signifying the different functionalities. In addition, the size of the components should be decreased to not make it overwhelming to the users.
6. Time slot page on Grocery has no way to return to Walmart home page
When the user opens the time slot page for Walmart Grocery to select the time of the delivery, there is no link available to go back to the home page of Walmart.com as shown in figure 7. This link is available on all the other pages of Grocery except this one. In addition, there is no navigation of any kind available to the user limiting the activity of the user to go to the Walmart grocery page only.
Figure 7. Reserve time slot page on Walmart-Grocery
Suggestion to fix:
A link to home page of Walmart.com should be available on the time slot page at the top alongside Walmart Grocery logo. In addition to that, the navigation pane should also be added at the top like other pages on Walmart Grocery such as Shop by Department and Account. It will enhance the number of activities available, giving more freedom to the user.
7. Weekly ads page needs scrolling to see the ads, not present at the top
This issue is related to the weekly ads page on the website. When we visit the weekly ads page, we can see our local store at the top of the page as shown in figure 8. Local store information takes up full page space on Weekly Ad page. Hence to access the Weekly ads, the users need to scroll down. The weekly ads should be given priority and should not be at the bottom of the page.
Figure 8. Weekly ad page on Walmart
Suggestion to fix:
On the Weekly Ad page, the latest offers and deals should have a higher priority than the local store information. So, the details of the offers and deals should be present at the top of the page and local store information should be placed below the Weekly Ad information.
8. Store pickup page shows the details of the feature at the bottom
This issue is related to the store pickup functionality. Store pickup is a common functionality which is used by many users nowadays. Although it is a universal feature now, the conditions of doing store pickup are different for different e-commerce websites. Hence, it is very important to know the terms and conditions of store pickup for Walmart. The store pickup page explains all the conditions such as 1-day delivery, 2-day shipping and the procedure to be followed when the users do store pickup. But all of those details are present at the bottom of the page instead of the top as shown in figure 9.
Figure 9. Store pickup page on Walmart
Suggestion to fix:
The conditions and procedures regarding Store pickup hold very important information of the feature and should be placed in a way that is more accessible to the users. The information should be kept at the top of the page and should be the first information read by the users making the conditions and procedure clear.
CONCLUSION:
Walmart is one of the leading multinational stores in the world with a vast consumer base. Millions of users visit the Walmart website every week and still, there are a number of usability issues present on the website. According to this usability evaluation, the issues are present in Navigation menus, Search functionality, Help Centre page, filtering on the search results page, time slot feature, Store pickup, product page and Weekly Ad page. Many of the above features are frequently used by the users, so these issues should be rectified soon to give the users a better user experience and satisfaction. It will also build up trust towards the corporation and may result in an increased customer base.
References:
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