I love it when coworkers share websites or apps with me because of either great or horrible experiences. I love it when they proclaim, out loud, “WTF?” It’s the siren song for a UX person in an interactive agency. It’s also an affirmation because their reactions tell me I’m not the only one that notices kooky or poorly designed experiences that make a website difficult to use.
Case in point, Microsoft Surface website. Specifically, the product pages. At first glance, there is a fairly innocuous navigation panel on the right-side of the screen. A common website navigation element, the menu is a list of links that anchor or “jump” the visitor to a corresponding section of the page.
Location, location, location
The first thing that caught my attention was the location of the navigation panel itself in relation to the page. I generally encounter this type of navigation on the left side of a web page. My working assumption is that the navigation panel was placed on the right side in order to replicate, to some extent, the Charms bar in Windows 8 in order to familiarize potential customers with Windows 8/8.1 OS features. (For those unfamiliar with the Charms bar, it contains search, access to settings and contextual app menus. And it appears from the right side of the OS when activated by a swipe or click on the right.)
Granted, I don’t have to use the navigation panel menu items to access the information on the page. I can scroll up and down. But like any good navigation labeling, the labels give me clues into the section contents and the information. Not too mention, it’s faster to use the menu if I want to skip around. Also, the panel location in relation to content (and vice versa) changes depending on the width of my browser window because it’s a responsive site. Which means that my mom is not going to know she can expand the width of her browser window to see the information or access the calls to action, and will call me to complain.
Label System
The first item at the top of the navigation is a single house icon with no descriptive label. I’m assuming that since it’s a house, it means “Home.” But which “Home?” Surface.com? Microsoft.com? Additionally, both the “House” icon and the first link in the navigation, “Surface Pro 2” go to the same anchor at the top of the page. So, the Home icon is unnecessary if there’s a better link to do the job and the use of the Home icon is misleading. The visitor isn’t going Home, they’re going to the top of the page.
Not to get too nit-picky, but whatever.
The label system is inconsistent. I prefer navigation labels on any site or app be similar, such as all descriptive or all actionable. The navigation across all three product pages is a combination of descriptive labels and actions.
Additionally there are two different navigation labels for buying the product, “Buy Now” and “Get it now,” even though all the buy buttons on the page are labeled “Buy Now.” Sure, it’s a minor discrepancy, but like paper cuts, they add up to one big painful experience.
Obscuring Content and Calls to Action
Moving into the page itself, using the nav menu, it becomes clear that the placement is not ideal. In fact, it’s questionable. The panel partially covers written content, details and primary imagery placed on the right side of the page, as well as the almighty “Buy now” buttons. Responsive or not, information on the screen is there for a reason and if it’s not accessible, then what’s the point?
I can’t believe that someone didn’t say, “woah, hang on” before the site went live. This is after all, the flagship website for Surface products. Every word and image of the product on the page is critical to influencing potential customers and selling the product.
And it isn’t just one instance of the navigation covering critical information and CTAs (calls-to-action) on the Surface Pro 2 product page, all three of the product pages suffer from this debilitation.
For example, “New Kickstand” is hidden by the navigation panel. In order for the visitor to see it, she has to move her mouse out of the panel in order to close the panel (or expand the browser, if she’s savvy enough). If she wants to continue using the panel to navigate the page, she has to position her mouse back over the closed panel to open it, then click on the next menu item she wants to see. A lot of unnecessary actions and movements.
Additional Content
Each product page has a content section not included and therefore not accessible via the navigation panel. For example, in the screenshot below for Surface 2, the section about the new touch and type covers is not in the navigation menu. In the screenshot for Surface 2 Pro, the section for the docking station is not evident in the menu either.
This “approach” is implemented across all three product sites. As mentioned previously, since visitors will often look for keywords or phrases in navigation to determine if what they’re looking is on the page or in a section (aka “information scent“), why are these sections not included? Yet, there are two different ways to get to the top of the page and two different versions of Buy Now? I’m at a loss.
E-commerce
From a make-it-super-easy-to-purchase-the-product-and-feel-confident-about-it perspective, two no-no’s that would bring Amazon.com’s KPI’s to their knees: Obscuring price and ability to purchase. In the screenshot below the price for the Surface Pro 2 is obscured by the navigation panel in the “Buy Now” section of the page, and in the second screenshot “Get It Now” is also hidden by the panel. These, in addition to the differently labeled Buy Now CTA’s mentioned in the above Navigation section.
So what does it say about Surface when information is obstructed by navigation and by a potentially poor implementation of responsive design intended to help the customer learn about their product offering?
Putting on my black hat here, this is not how you design an e-commerce experience and expect to sell product. Nor is this the best example of an responsive, information-based website intended to generate interest, shift perception, and be accessible.
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