Hi Emily,

I'd recommend you implement a test to check how different presentations of your products convert.

There are a number of ways you can structure tests to measure which form of presentation converts best, I'm sure there are more ideas you have rather than just matrix vs. drop-down.

Without know your site, sector and industry initimately, it's very difficult to offer useful advice on how best to structure your catalogue, product pages and checkout. But that is something we do quite a lot of, so if you're looking for an agency to provide support on improving your conversion on-site, then get in touch...

The software to perform this sort of testing is now very affordable (even free from some suppliers), and implementing the testing parameters can be relatively straightforward.

If you'd like to chat about what we can do to help, my contact details are on our website: www.bplmarketing.com

Good luck,

Stephen Foxworthy

Thanks Andrew!

The argument for drop downs, is however that they are much more intuitive ie. grids can be hard to understand what to do, and generally require some explanation eg. To buy this item click a box on the grid below.  Have you tested it?

On 13:02:29 16 April 2008 Andrew_Allfrey wrote:

Hi Emily,

Generally speaking a grid works better because online shoppers are on the whole quite lazy and want information to be readily accessible. With a grid they have all the product options shown to them, clearly displayed. With a drop down this is not the case and requires several more steps to get the same information.

For more information have a look at e-Consultancys' Retail Checkout Guide. Although not completely relevant to your question it does give a good overview of how to display products etc. http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/online-retail-checkout-2007/

Hope that's of help

Andrew Allfrey
www.aspirica.com
etail conversion specialists

On 14:08:37 16 April 2008 EmilyMinett wrote:

>The argument for drop downs, is however that they are much
>more intuitive

Hi Emily

Dropdowns are not necessarily "intuitive"! Like most usability questions it is a case of where and how they are used... that's not to say they won't work for your site though.

I would suggest thinking carefully about the task your user is performing.
Break that down into smaller and smaller chunks, and then design the functionality and screen layout around that "mental model" of what they are trying to achieve.

If you can then mock this up as a prototype and test with users, and compare with other similar sites, great. But just thinking through the task while having some empathy for what your user is doing can provide some quick wins at no cost.

Re your original question:
> I was wondering if anyone had done any testing on using
> dropdowns to select products compared with a grid for
> size/colour/availability options?

1. If you can at all avoid it, you should never present an option that is not actually available to buy.

2. Size (from the user's pov) is fairly fixed given that your customers know how your clothes measure up. Once a user has selected a size for a type of product this should be retained by the site and be pre-selected on any further product pages of a similar type. (Can be done with cookies for example).

3. Size should drive which colours are available, and therefore availability should slot into place, so users can select quantity of the item.

On that basis, I think the M&S site does this pretty well (although they haven't cracked the availability problem)
http://www.marksandspencer.com

Hope this helps.

Regards
DJ