User Experience Review - B&Q
15th March 2011
This article was published in March 2011 on Internet Retailing
B&Q operates in a difficult space for online shopping since they sell several thousand different products ranging from electrical fuses to cement mixers. Clearly some items could be available via traditional e-commerce, but others practically impossible to deliver. B&Q also operates a sister site for next day delivery where all products are definitely available for rapid delivery which is actively promoted through the site. Furthermore there is the network of B&Q stores that could be the means of collecting the online purchase.
One of the main challenges of such a multi-channel retailer is to inform the user about when a product is available for delivery and when it is not. Many users expect a website to allow online purchase and delivery, and will need to be actively dispelled of the notion which is based on their previous experience.
The website offers a straight-forward browsing experience to its users. The global navigation is clearly broken down into categories that reflect areas within the home as well as common DIY tasks. With such a content heavy site, the categories – garden, rooms, décor, fix, build, eco and sale – do not overwhelm and the clear sub-categories within each of these sections make specific content easy to find. The faceted left navigation allows users to see progressing subsections and the number of items in each.
The ‘social hub’ section also allows users to connect with B&Q on Facebook, Twitter and watch videos on YouTube. The ‘knowledge centre’ provides guides such as ‘How to plan a kitchen’ and helpful tools such as the project calculator. The Questions & Answers section shows commonly asked questions to help in the decision making process. The site could do with regular maintenance it seems, with display adverts referring to ‘gift ideas for Christmas’ on the site in February.
Typically users pass through category listing pages where several items are shown in a gallery or list view, which can be toggled by the user. The gallery view does not provide a call to action button to add the item to the shopping basket even though space seems to be provided for it. This not only makes it difficult to compare similar items based on price, but leads to the common conversion killer known as pogo-sticking, where the user needs to click back and forth between the overview gallery page and the individual product page to get key information such as price, description and ratings.
Space on the product page could be improved to integrate the description closer to the image, customer ratings and call to action button. Again there is no indication that it cannot be bought online. The call to action suggests this, although sometimes it is labelled “basket” and other times as “shopping list”. The cross-selling ‘you might also like…’ section at the bottom of each product page is helpful without being intrusive.
As shown in image 3, many items are listed as being ‘in store’ with a tick to indicate that the item is available to reserve and collect. Whilst a useful link to select a store to do this is provided, there is no indication that this product is not available to purchase online for home delivery.
Other retailers facing this issue take a more pro-active approach to this problem as shown below.
When clicking on the ‘add to shopping list’ (or Add to Basket) button, users are again shown items they may also like, though the clear option to continue shopping or go to the shopping list make this less intrusive. When choosing to continue shopping, the shopping list is clearly displayed in the top right hand side throughout the site.
Starting the online purchase it becomes clear that it may not be possible to buy the product online after all. As shown on the image below, the only option for buying a simple screwdriver is to “save for later”. A link is presented to check stock in a store, but without inviting the user to enter their postcode to find their nearest store. Whether the product is available on B&Q’s next day site is not specified.
Inevitably this leads to frustration to many users that their expectations were not met, and some of this finds its way onto reviews and Twitter.
Overall, the B&Q main site has many good features such as the categorisation and site navigation. There are some barriers to the typical user journey such as the gallery presentation and inconsistency between the purchase button labels. However the pervading problem is a lack of active notification to the user which can lead to a time-consuming frustration for many. The fact that this is not a true e-commerce site, and even the reserve and collect is often unavailable, will surprise many and limit its overall value to many consumers.
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This article was written by Laurene McCafferty. Laurene is a Usability Consultants at User Vision, a usability and accessibility consultancy that helps clients gain a competitive advantage through improved ease of use.
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