A few things I learned in retail e-commerce this year:
- Physical store design can teach you a lot about e-commerce information architectures
- Physical store design can teach you a lot about e-commerce information architectures
- The most trivial AB test such as changing colours can unearth ridiculous amounts of hidden value. Test the unexpected
- Search logs are your finger on the pulse. They'll tell you what your popular product display should be as well as the things people are looking for that you should be stocking
- "No results" is an opportunity rather than a point of failure. Try achieving the real world equivalent of "No results" in any local business - the good ones cross-sell or help you on your way
- Test-Driven DESIGN reduces uncertainty in new feature development and creates easy internal buy-in
- Remove feature conjecture and guesswork by validating early with safe amounts of traffic
- Build upon areas of user innovation - areas where users hack a system to fit needs and behaviours (eg carts being used as wishlists)
- Design for behaviours beyond your product (such as searching for promo codes) by filling in behavioural gaps (i.e give people the codes)
- Product cards typically follow a power law in that if you fix them the majority of your experience (storefront, product listings, search results, related products, conversion rates) will benefit
- Ugly & obvious > fancy & ambiguous
