Usability: eCommerce Wishlists
Wishlists are becoming increasingly popular on ecommerce Web sites. This is due in great deal to the fact that we like to be able to personalize our online shopping experiences. Plus, what happens when you see something you like, but can’t buy right now? With ecommerce wishlists, it is possible to save something you like for later purchasing without having to look all over the Web site to find it again.
As usual, Amazon.com manages to steal the show with its awesome wishlist capability. As you can see below, Amazon offers a variety of different list options in addition to the generically named “wishlist.”
You can see some of the great features highlighted on the Amazon wishlist:
- Ability to add to cart from the wishlist.
- Images of items in the wishlist.
- Option to email list to friends, providing them with gift ideas.
- Ability to make the wishlist private, so only invitees can look at the list.
- Possibility to set priority for items in wishlist.
- Option to create a new wishlist and name it (multiple wishlists).
- Navigate to other parts of the ecommerce Web site.
- Allows you to choose number desired.
- Keeps track of whether the item has been purchased.
Amazon does not, however, remove items from the wishlist when they have been purchased; hardly any of the wishlists do this.
Skechers is another good example of a wishlist. This ecommerce Web site also allows you to name your wishlist and create multiple lists. The drop-down menu makes it easy to switch between lists.
Another interesting ecommerce wishlist page is the Coach page. This combines the wishlist with the gift registry, and allows you to specify which event you would like certain items for.
Blue Nile increases the social media aspect of sharing wishlists by allowing you to use Facebook to post your wishlist.
Some ecommerce Web sites, like PacSun, have you create a wishlist account. This means that you have a separate account for your wishlist, in addition to the account you set up with the Web site.
Here are some more ecommerce wishlists. Which do you think allow the best online shopping and customer usability?
Tags: eCommerce, ecommerce Web sites, ecommerce wishlists, online shopping, usability ecommerce, wishlist pages, wishlists
Posted by Miranda | March 4, 2008
Nathan March 5th, 2008
This is great! You should do one with error and validation messages.
Nathan
Adam Creare March 5th, 2008
I’ve never used wishlists, I’ve never really seen the point in them and I don’t ever think to use them while I’m shopping online. If I sees something i want to go back to I’ll just bookmark the page. E commerce shops don’t really tend to promote them as useful resources meaning they often get forgotten about. Pacsun’s idea of requiring an extra account is not very good - customers don;t want to have to go to extra effort just to use something which isn’t essential to their purchase.
betterretail March 5th, 2008
Innocent question: whats the fascination with Abt? You always use them in your examples.
Chris March 5th, 2008
Nathan - Great Idea and we will put this in the queue.
Adam - I agree with you on Pacsun, this is bad usability. However, if implemented and promoted correctly I think the benefits of wishlists for both customers (ability to send these items to family and friends) and for store owners (cut down on false abandoned carts and see what customers are interested in, but unwilling to buy) can be great.
betterretail - We find that ABT generally does a great job with their usability, and that other sites can learn from what they do. They are also #156 in the Internet Retailer top 500 online retailers, which seems to validate the usability decisions they make.
betterretail March 5th, 2008
Hi Chris: You know this stuff better than I. If you like Abt I can learn to like them too. But being someone who thrives on my gut feeling I have to say Abt makes me uneasy; just how Sharper Image and Wilsons Leather made me uneasy
Chris March 5th, 2008
betterretail - I can’t really speak to their profit/loss margins, but we’re just concentrating on the usability of the sites here. There is a lot of risk in retail, but in ABT’s case, if they go under it won’t be the fault of a poorly constructed site.
Anthony March 5th, 2008
Our family has really taken to the idea of using wishlists during the holidays. I find them to be absolutely great for us since our family is spread throughout the world. I had a website dedicated to my two boys and put their Amazon wish lists up. Everyone but my wife thought this was a cute idea for Christmas and their birthdays. She thought it was a bit pretentious to put out there on the Internet what they wanted. I thought it was cool. Only problem was that items bought using the Amazon widgets for wish lists did not remove the items from the wishlists.
Miranda March 6th, 2008
Thanks for all the comments. Yes, ABT is used a lot. And you will find plenty of repeats, since we choose off the list of top sites (as Chris explained). I like the idea of having a wishlist that you can pass around as well, but not separate registration. What I would like is a sort of wishlist social bookmarking scheme that you could use to mark items from different Web sites to share with your friends. Then you could have one centralized wishlist…
James March 7th, 2008
Hi Miranda, I too think that wish lists are a good thing, I buy a lot of things from play.com. Throughout the month I would pick out items for my wishlist, then at the end of the month I would see which things I wanted to buy once I had been paid. Then Play.com about 12 months ago, got rid of the wish list. I still use play.com but, I definatly don’t spend as much on their any more.
Miranda March 7th, 2008
That’s a bummer when everything gets wiped out. I wonder how many other lists have a time limit…