Users Experience Higher Levels of Difficulty on Product Customization Sites

While overall success is a good indicator of a site’s effectiveness, it doesn’t illustrate the complete story. Users may ultimately complete a task, but experience difficulty doing so. To measure the level of difficulty in achieving task success, we assigned the following designations for each user’s task completion:

• No difficulty

• Minor difficulty: Person spends an extra few seconds pondering the category names, but completes most of the task without any other issues. For example, the person clicks the wrong link, goes back right away and fixes it, but completes most of the task without any other issues. Interface creates a few small problems, but the user did not seem bothered by them.

• Moderate difficulty: Person makes several mistakes (could be several minor mistakes) while completing the task, but completes the task within a reasonable amount of time without coming close to quitting. Comments on the annoyance.

• Major difficulty: One click sends person down the wrong path and it takes him a long time to recover. Struggles with something for a long time. Seems frustrated. Comments on quitting.