Artefact 3

The first aim of the artefact was to see how long it takes to find a particular item using just the websites navigation, rather than the search bar and whether each site’s navigation contains aspects that would encourage the users to use this rather than the search bar.

The initial thoughts within the focus group were that the main aims of the navigation in an e-commerce website would be for customers who are just browsing, rather than looking for any specific product.

Due to Amazon selling the largest selection of products, the initial navigation is split into different departments, with more specific items shown when hovering over. Play.com also goes for the drop-down list, however separates the list into many more items, including a ‘Music Offers’ section. Within the focus group, people thought this was a good addition as when the user is just generally browsing, they will more than likely be interested in finding any bargains.

HMVs navigation, which is a simple, horizontal navigation without any drop-down function came across as the least popular. The main problem with this would be that the user would have much more waiting time with new pages having to open up every time.

The next process was to look at the second page after the user has made their initial decision on which section of the site to visit. All three of the websites display this in a vertical side navigation with different areas to refine the items.

When browsing for music, each website has a section which refines the results from the genre of the music. The results of how many options this is split into are. . .

Amazon – 18
Play – 21
HMV – 10

The main conclusion from the focus group was that the more genres it was split into, the better. However HMV may have split the items into less sub-sections due to it being difficult to catergorise certain items and this could be the best way to enable more customers to find the correct item in the correct section.

As well as the splitting the items up into genre, each website has a selection of other ways to browse through products.



Although HMV had the least options on the initial navigation on the homepage, it was concluded that the sidebar navigation on HMVs site was the most useful and provided the most options for effective item refinement. One thing that was pointed out was that HMV was the only site that offered a ‘Price Search’, which people within the focus group thought was something that many customers would want and may encourage them to potentially buy more than they initially would if they could find a bargain.

The mind findings from the focus group were that the user would be looking for minimal mouse clicking and website loading time as well as a large selection of navigation options on each page in order to refine items and give the customer many different ways of finding particular items.