Baymard Institute just posted an interesting article about the importance of UX on product listing pages based on their e-commerce usability research.
Users select and reject products in the product listing pages based on the information available about each item. We’ve previously documented that 46% of e-commerce site have severe usability issues because they display too few product attributes in the product listings.
TL;DR – In essence the findings can be summarized quite simply: First, e-commerce sites must ensure their product list items include all Essential Attributes (price, thumbnail, product title or type, variations, and user ratings) along with 1-3 Category-Specific Attributes. Second, with the right list item information in place, e-commerce sites must ensure that the design of this information allows for:
- Comparison through Information Consistency – both in terms of what information is included and the sequence in which it is displayed.
- Scannability through Separate Entities – avoid embedding specs in titles; instead style attributes as separate entities.
- Overview through Progressive Disclosure – consider utilizing mouse hover to show additional (secondary) item information and possible a new thumbnail (e.g. different product angle).
Read the entire article at Baymard Institute.