The Experience Design Scout

From: Tim at EDS

To: US – Webdesign usa.canon.com – All, US – Product Managers – All

CC: 

Subject: a quick customer experience review

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Hi all,

Did you know that amazon.com has 813 customer reviews about your PowerShot SD1000 camera? And did you know these can be used as additional insight for some of your design decisions when improving your online experience, which, by the looks of it, seems necessary? Relative to insight from surveys, field research, and testing, they are actually very cheap as well. On your behalf I first went through these comments to see what consumers care about when buying this type of camera. After that I went to your website to see how well it allows customers to find the right product. Customers seem to like:

1. the price. “Given the size and price of this digital camera, it takes amazingly good pictures.”
2. the brightness and quality of the LCD screen. “LCD Screen is really top-notch, accurate color display, fast refresh rate, and the resolution is higher than most other digital cameras of it’s class”.
3. the size. “fits perfectly in a tight jeans pocket.”
4. the battery life. “The battery lasts forever too!”

…and they dislike:

1. the small size of memory card. “The only complaint, if you can call it that, is that the memory card it comes with is pretty much useless!”
2. the low-light shooting/ tiny flash. “As others have indicated the flash is a bit weak for indoor pictures that are over around 12-15 feet.”
3. the poor optical zoom. “I wish it had higher optical zoom.”
4. the camera’s menu. “The icons are not very intuitive. I still don’t know what many of them are…”
5. the video format. “Third, the movie mode uses a raw format, and a 10-seconds clip gets 20Mb in size. This is ridiculous!”

To summarize, 1) price, 2) size, 3) optical zoom, 4) quality of LCD screen, 5) flash strength, and 6) battery life seem important camera characteristics that consumers consider when choosing a camera.

The problem is that your website doesn’t talk the same language, and doesn’t actually help customers find the right product. Even worse, it is almost like your site behaves similar to unfriendly, bored staff in a store who can’t be bothered to help customers. Here’s why.

• The welcome is not very ‘warm’. On the main camera page product photos are small and don’t help me understand the differences between the cameras (see picture). It is not clear to me either how big the cameras are – they all look the same -, or what the optical zoom options are. I can only read more about a camera by selecting based on price. Oh I see, you’re fingerpointing to use the comparison tool and recommendation engine…
• Shy geeks help me compare. The comparison tool doesn’t include three of six product features that people express as important, namely price, size, and battery life (see picture). And for the three that are included - flash strength, quality of LCD, and optical zoom – the descriptions are hard to understand as if I’m overhearing a conversation between two geeks talking to each other: Evaluative*, center weighted average Spot**… And on memory cards they say: SD/SDHC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard, MMC Plus Card, HC MMC Plus Card. Why can’t you tell me how many pictures I can take in normal mode? And as the text legibility is poor, it feels like you are mumbling.
• The product advisor has the flu and needs a doctor. Simply put, the recommendation engine is suggesting products that don’t exist. In a store the conversion between advisor and client would go something like this (see picture): “Hello sir, I’m the Camera Advisor from Canon, what type of camera are you looking for? We have SLR, compact film, and compact digital cameras”. > Hmm, I’m not sure what the difference is but I heard good things about compact film so I choose this for now. “Great – we have 35mm cameras and APS cameras. Which one do you want?” > Ok, I go for APS. “Great – we have them in 2x Mid range zoom, or in 1x Fixed Focal Length. Which one do you prefer?” > I think I want the 2x Mid Range zoom. “No, these we don’t have, try something else.”

Just to summarize, your website definitely has some good elements, but overall we can’t really call it a good experience. The experience would improve a lot if you understand who your target customers are, know what their goals and needs are, and be able design an experience accordingly.

Hope this helps,

T @ EDS