"Reaction [beta]"
The 7-11 milk experiment 17 Nov 2006
What's the 7-11 milk experiment? UIE's Christine Perfetti explains:
"Imagine I had a way to identify when someone has run out of milk. I pick them up in my car and drive them to the nearest 7-11. And just to make sure everything goes well, I give them the money to buy milk. How likely is it that the store can sell milk in this scenario? When I've asked people this question, almost all respond that it's close to 100%. If the store does not end up selling to the user, there's clearly something wrong with their experience on the site.
"In our research, we mirror this type of experiment online. We find people who need products, bring them to sites that have the products they want, and give them money to buy the products. What did we find? In our latest study, users only purchased 30% of the time!"
Christine's article is more than a year old, yet we're still seeing similar results in the tests we're running today.
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1 comment so far
Adrian Howard 20 Nov 2006 03:21 PM
God yes. This always amazes me. I did some competitor related usability testing for a Large Job Hunting company a couple of years back. I was utterly stunned when I found that with one site only 1 in 4 people were able to register! The same company was spending god knows how much in TV advertising at the time. Goodness knows how many users they lost to their competitor (my client :-).