UI Design Newsletter – February, 2008

The sneezing, sniffling, achy, head fever so you can rest easier with your decision

The Web has absolutely improved the world for shopping. With a few minutes effort, you can get almost anything... from almost anywhere. The opportunities are endless.

On the flip side, e-commerce companies can now attract customers from almost anywhere at any time. With a solid, usable site, the world is their customer base, right? Maybe. Organizations struggle with globalization-localization issues. Can one site fit all? Can parts of the design be standardized? Which parts need to be localized?

Barnes and colleagues (2006) report the findings that provide the beginning of an answer. They conducted a psychographic survey and cluster analysis of Internet users that segments Internet shoppers into three groups:

Risk-averse doubters – About 15 % of the overall population, risk-averse doubters are careful and suspicious. They don't particularly like new experiences and tend not to use the Internet to shop – either for information or purchase.

Open-minded shoppers – This group likes new and exciting experiences. They don't consider the Web to be a particularly risky place to shop and generally trust their online vendors. They like to shop and they like the fact that the Internet widens their choices dramatically. About 40% of the survey respondents overall fit into this type.

Reserved information seekers – The rest of the respondents (about 45%) are open to online shopping but tend to use the Web more for research and pre-purchase evaluations. They use the Web, but they go to the store to buy.

These segments that emerged aren't all that surprising. We've known for (Internet) ages that there are basically early adopters, cautious lurkers and nay-sayers. The interesting part of the study is how these groups distribute within the three countries that they studied: Germany, France, and the US.

Most of the open-minded shoppers (45%) were from the US. In contrast, most of the risk-averse doubters are French (66%). Germans are very open to online shopping, but tend toward using the Web for research and comparison. The relative distribution of the three types of Internet shoppers within each country is shown below.

Little facts like this always make great conversation starters. But they also provide critical input for designers creating multi-national e-commerce sites. The design elements that elicit trust for the typical open-minded American Internet shopper will not be the right ones to engage and persuade a French consumer. One site does not fit all.

References

Barnes, S.J., Bauer, H.H., Neumann, M.M., and Huber, F. (2007). Segmenting cyberspace: a customer typology for the internet. European Journal of Marketing Vol. 41 No. 1/2, pp. 71-93.

This shows a HUGE difference between cultures, even between Western developed countries. Now imagine the differences between these countries and emerging markets! In America, the design team barely needs to worry about the risk-averse population. In France, it is a third of the market. In China and India, the risk-averse make up even more of the market. But the concerns are different. In India, there is a worry about fraud: "Will the product be delivered?" In China, the question is more about whether the product will be real or fake.

Increasingly we are designing for the world. This requires specialized skills and methods. Even if you are a master user experience expert in America, when you are faced with an international design issue it is time to bring in cross-cultural specialists.