

Ask HN: What is wrong with our UX? - brd

We've created a simple tool for discovering gift ideas and its flopped horribly. I plan on doing some direct observations over the next few days but would love to hear some feedback from HNers.<p>Site is: http://www.giftwell.com/discover/
======
mcintyre1994
As others have, I'll drop in some thoughts. Sorry if they're repeats! No
particular order.

First, the focus on mother/father's day doesn't really seem sensible. I'll
assume it's what your initial products focus on, but I definitely wouldn't
keep it. My guess is it's designed primarily to separate male and female -
doing so with gender options, and then drilling down into personality options
would seem to make a lot more sense.

I can understand that your app doesn't support the back button - but your UI
needs to solve that problem for the user. Done shopping for mum and want to
shop for dad? (Doesn't apply to mother's/father's day, but birthdays?) Refresh
the page and start again.

An obvious issue is that father's day isn't supported. Fair enough that
there's no personality filters, but looking briefly through all the items
available, there are some clearly for men (Personalized Man Cave Doormats was
on the first page). Why not show them?

Okay, so selecting mother's day instead, I can see why that's supported first
since it's mother's day in America soon? Anyway, the options probably
shouldn't be radio - mum could easily be awesome and a wine lover. The family
gardener could easily imply outdoorsy. The hostess could easily imply wine
lover. No need to model such connections, but let users select more than one.

The more serious issue is that the buttons don't work. Ubuntu Firefox 20.0, \-
Click mother's day, next question \- Click 'An awesome mom' (all other buttons
work fine), get gift suggestions Firebug info: POST:
<http://www.giftwell.com/discover/> Result: Internal server error. On your
website, there's no result and I'm left assuming that button is broken. GET:
[http://api.mixpanel.com/track/?data=<snip>&ip=1&...](http://api.mixpanel.com/track/?data=<snip>&ip=1&_=1366747269473)
Result: 1 (appears to be the same as successful requests) \-- \- Click any
radio option button, get gift suggestions No POST request made
[http://api.mixpanel.com/track/?data=<snip>&ip=1&...](http://api.mixpanel.com/track/?data=<snip>&ip=1&_=1366747474381)
Result: 1 (same as above) \-- \- Now, as a user I am left assuming that your
form simply doesn't function. No button will work any more.

\--------------------

Okay, so that's a bug, but it completely breaks the UX on what seems to be the
primary user experience right now.

So going into mother's day, selecting a working button (wine lover), I get
only 5 results. There's tonnes of space below, but no more results shown. I
click show more results, and I get 5 more. How come these weren't shown
before? If there's somewhere infinite scrolling should be used, it's here. Fix
that view gifts button somewhere and just show me everything relevant.

Or, maybe don't. Right now the results simply aren't relevant. They change
every time I visit the page from the same options, but one time I got a sun
towel and then 4 wine products. The next time I got watches, succulents (never
heard of these, from the picture china plantpots?) and 2 wine products. The
filters definitely need work.

When I saw them succulents, I thought I'd click to see what they were.
Fortunately, that opened a modal with a picture and some information.
Unfortunately, when it was fully loaded it scrolled so I could only see the
top (as much as fitted on my screen). I couldn't move the scrollbar in Firefox
for some reason, and the modal didn't have a scrollbar. In short, I could see
a bigger version of the picture, and knew some text was there because I saw it
loading, but it's unusable.

When I closed the modal, I tried again. No luck, it just didn't open this
time. There's a problem with your Javascript - I can only open one modal per
visit.

In the no thanks, show me everything menu, I get, well, everything. There's no
filters and no sorting. It's also a different experience, there's no
consistency. This time there's no weird thing in the top right corner of every
image (what is that by the way, it didn't do anything?), and there's a
buy/save button when I hover over an image. I prefer this layout, not sure why
it's different though. Also, the modal scrolled this time (it was a lot
shorter, that could be the problem), but I could still only open one per
visit.

-

Sorry to be so harsh, but as a user my experience on your website was broken,
fragmented and confusing. I hope my feedback is useful, if you need any more
information about anything I said (user feedback always misses important
information, I doubt mine's an exception), let me know.

My best suggestion would be to simplify the concept, a lot. I would suggest
infinite scrolling, show me the best stuff you've got as soon as I arrive and
for as long as I want to keep looking. Or at least proper pagination, where I
can go forward as well as backward. Then, add proper filters. Gender and age
are an obvious start (you capture them to some extent in mother/father of
course), and then drill down to personality. I'd use the same personality
types in the same order for each, but adjust their names for gender/age (eg
action man for young boys etc etc..). Or just use the same simple names. Make
them checkboxes too, and have the items shown change as I change them.

That would solve a lot of the problems - inconsistency between filters, broken
filters, not showing enough products, no proper pagination of results. I
expect it'd be a lot more engaging too. I also imagine it would remove a lot
of the requests to your server.

-

Overall, I like the concept, but I think the UX could be drastically improved
by a focus on showing more (this could encourage better curation too?) and
more general purpose, useful filters.

------
mnicole
At the homepage I'm presented with two options that are not relevant to me,
and I have to strain my eyes a bit to find the alternative link (light blue on
a very saturated cream) that just dumps me on a page full of everything. Too
overwhelming.

What if instead of assuming the user is there for two reasons or no reason at
all, give them a list of potential options. I'd assume most people going to
the site are doing so for birthdays, so being able to sort by age, gender or
interest is relevant right off the bat. I can't ever find the site that I felt
did this best.. I want to say it was called "Wanttts"/"Wanted" or something.

As far as that initial selection is concerned, if you decide to keep it, I
should only need to click once on my option to have the filter activated
instead of clicking once on the option and clicking a second time to submit
that option. I'm now two clicks into Father's Day and there are zero options
for me, _and_ I can't click my back button.

As a normal user, I'd be frustrated enough with the site at this point to
leave it and go to Amazon.

Now clicking into Mother's Day gifts, I'm presented with radio options,
despite the fact that my mother could be all of those things. I click on
Stylish & Whimsical (which honestly doesn't even make sense for these two to
be paired together) and get a list of 5 items that are neither stylish nor
whimsical (a knife, a bland sweater, a set of wooden coasters, a rainbow
headwrap and some wine glass lamps). In fact, my mom would probably roll her
eyes at all of those. They are simply not thoughtful gifts.

As a normal user, I'd probably be done with the site at this point.

The star on each image is way too big and insinuates I'd be favoriting the
item for later rather than adding it to my shopping cart. I didn't even read
the text above it because I thought it was a page title (as it's an H3), not
instructions on how to use the site.

So let's say my mom is equally silly and into knives, so I click the star on
the knife in hopes that I'll see other gifts like it. No, instead I'm on a
screen that tells me the price of the knife and would I like to add it to my
cart. I click back because I'm not sure what that page was all about and I'm
taken all the way back to the homepage where I'm being told to start _all over
again_.

As a normal user, I'd definitely be done with the site at this point.

Okay, let's try this again.

I go through the exact same process, clicking the exact same options.. and I
get _different_ results? Where were all these options before? Five random
options is just not enough for me to feel your site is effectively helping me
choose something personalized. Again, under Stylish & Whimsical, I see items
that are neither (perfume, cheap-looking bookstand, tacky seedboxes, a Samurai
umbrella (what?) and a wire cage shaped like a barrel for corks).

Having the notification show up on the "View Gifts" button is the reason I
clicked on it before, because I assumed that was the next action, even though
the header tells me to click on the star to show more options. Progressive
actions should be on the right side, stagnating/reverse options should be on
the left. Likewise, the only time a button should be orange or red (unless
it's notably thematic across the site) is when it is a negative action. A
shopping cart view in particular should be in the top/primary navigation.

In continually clicking through the suggestions, I'm not finding anything that
makes me think that the initial category I selected at the beginning has
anything to do with the gifts I'm being shown, nor does it look to be actively
filtering based on additional things I keep starring. And as noted before, all
of these gifts are pretty bad/cheap-looking.

\- - -

TL;DR

\- The design needs a lot of work (the palette, the UX) and it should be a lot
easier to navigate and understand what is going on. As others have mentioned,
taking control of the back button is a terrible idea.

\- The items you have aren't thoughtful/curated enough and the photography is
weak (not that you can help it necessarily, but a better design would lessen
how much it affects the overall appearance and I'd imagine that the more
luxury the brand, the better the photos). When I'm looking for gifts using
services like this, I'm doing it because I want to find unique items; probably
gifts that cost a little extra to begin with. The items on your site are all
things I could find on Amazon within a few clicks. If I wanted ThinkGeek-
quality gifts, I'd go to Spencer's.

\- Have users search by more specific keywords/interests instead of trying to
lump people into categories they either don't fit into at all or that multiple
could apply to.

There are a lot of gift-searching sites out there, and a lot of them have
these same issues. What problem were you trying to solve with site? Why would
people use a specialty service to find the same types of things that show up
on Google Shopping or incentivized Bing Shopping searches? I guess I don't
understand why already-popular vendors are listed at all. Gift-finding
services should be about highlighting unique gifts that are handmade or
crafted by specialists, curated by tastemakers. You don't need to advertise
for Nordstrom's.

------
DanBC
I clicky the link.

I see a nice, clean, site. I wouldn't have chosen that orange with that blue,
but it's not hideous. I clicky [FATHERS DAY] and next question.

It says "Coming soon, sign up to get notified", and I can go no further.

So, this is something that I would be interested in. I don't care if you use
skim links and affiliate links. I really do want to find gifts for people and
would welcome some kind of service that helps me discover stuff. But I'm not
going to sign up until I've been able to see something.

Good Luck though!

EDIT: I clicky the browse all products link. There's a nice selection. I can
see how it could be expanded to a huge range and provide really great
suggestions.

I dislike the bold of the font - the bold white on grey doesn't look nice in
my browser. (Chrome on Windows Vista).

I usually browse with a narrow window. Doing this makes the pop up happen in a
weird place. here's a screen shot. (<http://imgur.com/PIEkFai>)

I don't mean to be negative, I mean to be constructive, but sometimes I have
problems with tone.

It looks like a good site!

~~~
brd
We curate the initial set of gifts, the father's day set isn't quite done yet
but will be in the next few days. Thanks for the feedback!

edit: Fixed that popup. We rushed to rip out some bootstrap transition code
recently, missed that media query.

And I didn't consider your tone negative at all, the feedback is much
appreciated.

------
acesubido
First thoughts:

As a visitor, there's a lack of focus of what you want me to do here.

The "Find the perfect gift" wizard seems to be overpowered by that toolbar. Do
you want me to sign up? Do I need to know "About"? Do you want me to "Add a
gift"? What am I suppose to do? Search? Do I really want to "search" or
"browse"? How does it "work"? Is it the main thing you offer? If it's the main
thing, I guess it would do best to emphasize it by putting it as a big search
bar on the center.

1) Rethink that toolbar, go easy on it. Just a tip: It'd do best to put the
"About" section at the footer.

2) Focus on what you want your visitor to accomplish. Emphasize on that,
remove focus on everything else. Make it easy on them, consumer-type visitors
have short attention spans. Respect that 10 second hold you have on them by
making it easy to expose your main feature to them.

3) All advice are just 'words' unless it's tested. You can hold to the truth
that any advice given are currently considered worse than your current
assumption, given that your assumption is on the server and being tested by
people while advice is just on a persons head.

~~~
brd
Thank you. I think hiding the toolbar with a small "show navbar" button will
be far more appropriate for us moving forward. We knew it could be a bit of
distracting but after the feedback we've gotten its clearly something to be
fixed.

------
doylemc
My thoughts:

The colours don't work for me. Changing the blue on the title bar may help,
make it darker. Have you ever used Adobe Kuler?

The Green colour doesn't add anything

The search placeholder text is not centered (vertically) and spoils the flow
when reading from left to right

Try and get your font sizes consistent.

Make the margins of the title bar consistent with the in-page gifts.

Centre the login/password boxes

On Find the Perfect Gift, all the options are buttons making me think that
when I click them, I'll move onto the next section.

I like the wizard aspect, just needs to be improved. Perhaps the title bar
should appear once the wizard has been completed, or cancelled, so my eyes are
not all over the place on first visit.

Try improving how the bookmarklet works.

When I click 'Save It' a new tab opens (in Chrome) and prompts me for my
username and password. How about an in-page popup instead?

One for the future, how about some localization? I'm in the UK and want to buy
things off Amazon.co.uk.

Good luck with it!

~~~
brd
Wow, thanks for the thorough review!

Excellent points about the title bar, will look into making those changes.

Our font choices definitely need to be revisited and made more consistent.

I absolutely see your point about the buttons/coloring. Its setup that way to
eventually allow multiple options but I will make sure it has more of a
checkbox feel moving forward.

The entire bookmarklet process definitely needs work. We rolled out the site
as a simple gift bookmarklet originally and came to the conclusion the average
person has zero interest in bookmarklets. For the time being we've sidelined
out efforts to make that experience more pleasant.

We moved away from modals, for now, because of issues with mobile. We plan on
eventually incorporating them everywhere but at this point we're more
concerned about interaction with the wizard/browse than we are less frequent
activities like login and contact.

Funnily enough, we're still not seeing anyone actually press the "star" on
gifts in the wizard so clearly there is something about such a passive (and
from the users perspective unnecessary) interaction that fails miserably. At
this point its clear we'll need to do a major overhaul of the wizard itself
which was the thing I was most concerned about when posting this.

------
powatom
Your website feels clunky and confusing.

Why can I click 'Next Question' before I've actually chosen an answer?

Why are you telling me that something is 'coming soon' after displaying its
intro question so prominently?

Why is 'coming soon' a button?

Your default user experience is broken: I can't actually do anything using the
prominently displayed buttons / suggested workflow. I don't know what this
thing is until I click the 'Browse' button.

Additionally, in another comment you mention that saving an item is important
for your analysis / feedback mechanisms. Why, then, am I only invited to save
something if I hover over it? Suggest the potential interaction to me, don't
force me to discover it.

In general your website isn't all that well designed. It screams bootstrap,
and the 'familiarality' excuse is just that - an excuse. It doesn't feel
familiar, because I don't know what your service is. It just feels confusing
and unexciting.

------
stevejalim
Don't break the back button. Like DanBC hit the annoying 'Coming soon' dead
end, but couldn't go back to browse all. You may not use the back button, but
_enough_ newcomers exploring your site will. Even more so when you brick-wall
them with a signup box.

~~~
brd
Woah, great point. I'm amazed that we never realized how terrible the back
button experience is for the discovery process. Definitely something that
needs immediately attention.

I'm really disappointed in that miss since we put in effort to use the history
api to make the back button more pleasant for modals.

------
brd
Clickable link: <http://www.giftwell.com/discover/>

We've seen ok numbers of "more suggestions" but we've seen virtually no users
"star" gifts. Our tool gets smarter as you star gifts and it will get smarter
with use but with no interaction the tool is hosed.

We intentionally went with a very tame, vanilla UI because we figured it would
convert better with the average online user. We've got a few ideas for more
radical user experiences but I was hoping to hear some additional opinions on
why this fails so hard before venturing down another dead-end.

Thanks in advance!

------
gjhiggins
You mean UI not UX, the difference will be crucially important to you.

When inviting informed review of an app, it's useful to outline the design
brief.

Given the number and nature of the UI issues reported by other HNers, you
might be interested in making use of the resources offered by
<http://www.usability.gov>.

Lastly, I'm a little surprised that your prior user tests didn't give you any
hint of the degree of failure, you might want to take a closer look at your
user testing process.

------
duiker101
I don't suppose this is meant to happen and might be that you are getting some
unexpected traffic or else but there is something a little off...

<http://i.imgur.com/PXKfrAQ.png>

Happens on Chrome and Firefox latest on Win 7. And Chrome on android, on
different connections so I think it's something on your side, the page
actually load fast enough but it's rendered like that.

------
mflindell
For starters, you're using the font awesome gift icon. Theres not really much
thought in the UX at all. Invest a few hundred dollars in a 99 designs contest
and you might be able to remove the bootstrap stigma and stop your website
looking like an administrative panel

~~~
brd
Thanks for the feedback, harsh but totally fair.

Like I said, we tried to keep it as vanilla as possible to cultivate a sense
of familiarity. We actually did look into getting a better logo but have yet
to see a designer produce something we like better than the basic font-awesome
gift. We genuinely want something we could eventually trademark but we're not
going to rush into something just because its not a stock image.

As far as the bootstrap stigma, I may be mistaken but from my experience it
seems to only exist in technical circles.

------
isleyaardvark
When I look for Mother's Day gift ideas for "An Awesome Mom" or "Wine Lover",
nothing happens in Chrome 26 on Mountain Lion, just FYI.

------
kohanz
How do you know your UX is the reason that the site "flopped horribly"?

