Apple
3 clicks to start the buying process.
Selection / Customization process
Product Clarity: High.
Price Clarity: High. Components were priced relatively
Speed: Fast. However, the demand for detailed personal information should be counted against its speed.
Range / Power: High. That is, given that the total range can only be what Apple offers.
Notes
Apple required only three clicks to get to the start of the buying process even though the home page tries to be everything— first of all a full page ad (for servers at the time, not personal computers). Apple at no point advertizes customization, but offers significant options in memory, hard drive, and graphics as a matter of course. Further choices, such as for speakers, are essentially yes-no because of the limitation to Apple-manufactured products. After the basic options, you must go through a page of add-ons and accessories Apple is pushing. It’s literally called the “Do you need anything else?” page. When you finally reach the “Review Your Order” page you must fill out a fairly extensive form to open an account with Apple before you can buy your computer.
If you click on a link to another part of the Apple site while building your order, your choices are lost unless you return to that page using your browser’s back button. You cannot get back to your choices by clicking on Apple Store again. This will be an interesting problem to try to solve.
Using the back button to go back and change options actually added options, in effect adding a whole computer to your order, in a way that was hard to spot, causing rather shocking total prices to suddenly appear on final order page. I would suddenly be at $15,000. A definite usability flaw.
Apple also uses the dominant method of giving pricing information for accessories and options: e.g., “Add $99” or “Subtract $200” listed after the component in question. I find this format somewhat problematic.
A potentially good feature was the prominent button for saving your configuration. A very short information form, including a password. A password may be more security than is really necessary for simply storing a configuration.
Problems
- The “Add $XXX” information for one of the peripherals was not readable because the text was too long for the drop-down list.
- The price listed in bold at the bottom is not updated with selections from the drop-down menus. One must hit “Update Price” to make it correct.
Good Features
- One of the most attractively laid out sites.
- The blurb under each dropdown list seemed informative.