Xpress Site Report

Xpress Buy Report Testing the Office Xpress Supply Website.

Alexander Orihuela Ricardo Heredero Maegan Chewning

Group 3 Spring 2012

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Table of Contents 1. Cover Page (Page 1)

2. Table of Contents (Page 2)

3. Executive Summary (Page 3)

4. Test Preparation (Page 4)

5. Data Analysis (Pages 5 - 8)

6. Recommendations (Page 9)

7. Appendix A (Page 10)

8. Appendix B (Pages 11 - 36 )

9. Notes (Page 37)

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Executive Summary A series of test were conducted to ensure the reliability and functionality of a small businesses website. The company, Office Xpress Supply was established in 1988 and its founders had a business model for selling office products to local business at a competitive price point. We set out to test the company's ordering system to find if it was easy enough for users to get what they needed while maintaining a high enough level of efficiency for placing an order.

Our test facilitators pulled 4 individuals to administer entrance and exit surveys at the start and end of each test. The users signed release forms that granted us permission to take notes and quote some on their comments throughout the tests. We wanted to determine what was and wasn't working on the Xpress website and we were looking to answer various questions that assessed the overall effectiveness of the site.

We compiled the data and noted what each user found to be strong or weak points for the site. After, we compared the data between all the users to find any repeat answers that gave us clues for any recommended improvements to their site.

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Test Preparation We understand that planning and preparation is important to executing a successful test so we took some time to assess what we wanted from our users and compiled a series of documents that we needed prior to testing. We began by making a consent form that granted us permission to test.

The illustration to the left shows consent for our experiment and was signed by Lilmary Modrigal on April 4, 2012.

We used a script to help give our participant information about what we were testing along with a brief explanation on what our role was as facilitators. The script included information on the participants role and some things they should keep in mind throughout the tests. We wanted to ensure our participants knew everything they needed to know prior to testing so we included it all on our script.

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Data Analysis We asked users demographic information within a questionnaire intended to provide us with details of our participants and their background. With the obtained data we made a chart to see our results side by side.

Illustration contains data obtained on the "Demographics Information Questionnaire"

As illustrated above all of our test subjects are 18-24 year old females, with an average of 9 years of internet experience. All of them stated that they were exposed to the internet daily and half of them were willing to be contacted after our test. With the exception of Maria Dieguez (general public), all of our test subjects were students.

Name Lilmary Modrigal

Karen Cespedes

Maria Dieguez

Maria Carreras

Type Student Student General Public

Student

Grade Level College College College College

Years Using The Web

9 8 8 10

Experience Intermediate Intermediate Intermediate Intermediate

Age Group 18-24 18-24 18-24 18-24

Gender Female Female Female Female

Frequency of Internet

Usage

Daily Daily Daily Daily

Willing to be contacted

Yes Yes No No

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Data Analysis cont. The meat of our data was assessed by our test facilitator Ricardo Heredero throughout the tests. He rated our participants on how difficult it was for them to complete the assigned tasks designed by our test document preparation member, Maegan Chewning.

The tasks were listed as follows:

1. To combat the dust problem plaguing your office, your boss has given you the task to buy several items to protect the keyboards and office monitors. Your budget is $100 and there are a total of 25 computers including your own. Use the keyword search to complete your task.

2. Your department needs to order white printing paper. You will need 2 packets of paper containing 500 sheets. Your task is to find the most cost effective way to purchase these items. You will also like to the current items to your favorites list for easier access the next time you purchase. Note that all the printers in your office are laser.

3. Due to the local art fair in town, you want to purchase the art department 100 colored papers, 10 bottles of glue, 15 boxes of colored pencils, and 15 scissors. Please select the most preferable items. At checkout you notice you have a surplus of $30. You decide to save e purchase and choose another item that might benefit the children in the art department.

4. After recent success of the company you decide to upgrade all the printers, scanners, file cabinets, and paper shredders. There are a total of 1 printer, 1 scanner, 1 file cabinet, and 1 paper shredder. The price range for items are between $500-$700. You can choose any brand you'd like.

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Data Analysis cont. Task Results

We broke down our assessed difficulty of the assigned tasks and displayed them graphically. Lilmary seemed to have the least difficulty while Maria Carreras ran into the most issues.

Additionally, we assessed the data by difficulty. We found that the keyword search was the hardest thing to use for our participants to use.

Name Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4 Totals (Person)

Lilmary Modrigal

0 0 0 1 1

Karen Cespedes

1 1 0 1 3

Maria Dieguez

2 1 0 1 4

Maria Carreras

4 1 0 2 7

Totals (Task)

7 3 0 5 15

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Task Difficulty by Participant

0

1.75

3.5

5.25

7

Totals (Participant)

Lilmary Modrigal Karen CespedesMaria Dieguez Maria Carreras

Task Difficulty

0

1.75

3.5

5.25

7

Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4

Totals (By Task)

Data Analysis cont. We created a page for our participants to give us some general feedback about their overall experience. We learned that a majority of participants found the websites features to be simple. Although some responses indicated difficulty in finding products like printers and shredders. All of our participants agreed that navigating through the site was a simple task.

User suggestions for site improvements include an enhanced checkout for adding and removing items, a favorites menu bar, and more specific products.

According to survey answers, our participants generally liked the menu layout, availability of products, and product range.

Our participants didn't like the length of product labels, the overall organization of the site, and the left pane menu system. The participants had mixed answers when they addressed problems with the site. Half thought that others wouldn't have issues searching for items while the other half believed that it might be difficult for some users.

When we asked for closing comments on the Xpress site, we received favorable responses about the overall design and functionality of the site. This data helped tremendously to make recommendations for site improvement.

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Recommendations After reviewing all the data we obtained we began to think of recommendations to improving the Office Xpress Supply website. Referring back to the difficulty of each task, we found that using the search feature in Task 1 was the hardest for our participants. With that said, we began our research for other websites that had better search functionality.

We found that Amazon, Google, and other popular search engines included a feature that would correct mistakes on users input. It's the famous "Did you mean" feature and we're confident that this would increase the efficiency in placing orders through the Office Xpress Supply website.

During Task 4 our participants found it was difficult to find multiple products in a short range of time. We thought that have a listing of the most popular products would help to alleviate this particular issue. Although the left pane is designed to help users narrow their search, the organization of listings needs some graphical improvement to assist customers in streamlining their results.

Other than the issues listed above, we believe the Office Xpress Supply website is an overall functional one. The ordering process was accepted to be very simple by a majority of our participants. We agree that minor adjustments in search functionality and the organization of the left pane would drastically increase the productivity to the customers that are ordering on the website.

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Task Difficulty

0

1.75

3.5

5.25

7

Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4

Totals (By Task)

Appendix A

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Appendix B

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Notes

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