Usability test for gillettevenus.com

Intro To Web Publishing: Usability Analysis Paper Corbett Evans
Usability Test for Gillettevenus.com
Test Preparation: To prepare for the test, I started by walking through the required tasks first,
as if I was the one being tested. To make sure I did not have an unfair advantage, I put myself
into the mindset of someone who has not visited the site before. This means I could not use my
previous knowledge of the site to locate loopholes for the tasks that would shorten the time it
took me to accomplish them. This is something I had to remind myself constantly while taking
the test.
 Task 1: Search for information on razor rash and determine if there is any products
to treat it. I started by going to the help section and searching the articles in “Shaving
Tips”. There, I found a section that deals with sensitive skin, which is what my “friend”
has and quickly found an article that was about Razor Burn. The article mentioned what
causes razor rash and how gillettevenus.com strived to prevent it from happening.
 Task 2: Determine if Venus had any skin care products for razor rash. What are
they and what do they cost? Finding a product for razor burn was much more difficult
than finding information on Razor Rash. The product page was hard to find and would
have been tough for me to find if I didn’t know ahead of time that it was at the bottom of
the page. I scrolled the home page for a long time looking for any products before I
finally reached the page at the bottom of the screen. The center piece was their soothing
lotion which is for sensitive skin. Though there isn’t much else there; indeed it lacks
almost all of the products you can get when building a plan. Luckily, the primary product
mentioned was exactly what I was looking for. However, the price for the lotion is not
mentioned, leaving me questions about what the price for this lotion is and how I will be
able to get it.

 Task 3: Giving the friend a one-year Venus subscription with handle, blades and a
sensitive skin product. Determine total cost. This task is very annoying, since I went
through the entire process of designing a plan before realizing that the plan was for me,
not for a friend. I had to back out and look for a way to gift it. Due to prior knowledge, I
knew the tab for Gifting was at the bottom of the page, but I would have otherwise found
difficulty in locating it. The process of creating the gift was simple and straight forward,
but simpler than the standard “create a plan” system. It lacked most of the variety that he
standard plan offered and felt more restrictive in what you could choose. Also, at the end
of the plan, I found it very annoying that I was required to fill out a subscription to the
website before getting a grand total on the order I was placing.
 Task 4: Determine how the friend will know about the gift and if a note will be sent
in every deliver. It wasn’t very clear if a note would be sent with the package or not.
The text box to write the box was not clearly marked, making me question if it was the
correct box. Also, the page never directly stated the frequency of the note, so I’m
assuming it is only sent the first time the package is sent.
Choosing Participants:
Tester 1 Emily Tillman Tester 2 Jason Yarnell
Gender Female Male
Age 21 43
Hours browsing/week 60 20
Browsing Habits Does her school work online
and on her computer but
spends most of her time
online browsing social media.
Prefers using her phone for
online browsing and rarely
shops online.
Does a lot of work related
activities on his computer.
This takes up over half of his
time spent online, with social
media taking up the next
largest portion. Almost never
shops online but will use
Amazon when he does.

Other observations Emily has looked at online
razor sites before but not
gillettevenus.com
Jason has worked in web
design before and even
designed some websites of
his own.
Tester 1 Details: Emily Tillman
Emily Tillman is a College Senor who is very fond of social media and internet experiences. She
has bought razors online before, though she prefers to buy from the store. She has spent a lot of
time on the internet and is familiar with how they should work. She is the age that Venus’ target
audience seems to be; a young, fun loving woman who enjoys the convenience of the internet.
Because of this, she if familiar with online shopping, including razor shopping, but isn’t biased
towards one site. Most of her online time is spend browsing social media such as Facebook and
Instagram, though she also spends a lot of her time working on school work online.
Environment for Tester 1
 Location of Test: The test was taken in the downstairs social living space at the
Lighthouse. I chose this location because Emily was unable to meet at her House but
will often do schoolwork and the occasional shopping while hanging out at the
Lighthouse. She has done work and shopping in this very location before and is very
comfortable in this location.
 Physical environment: The lighting in this area is dimmer, with only a few lights,
creating a relaxed atmosphere. The doors to the next room was open, allowing noises
from neighboring upstairs room to drift in. Distractions included the sound of people
moving overhead, voices from upstairs as well as several people that came downstairs
to pass through the room or even to get food from the nearby kitchen.
 Technical environment: The computer used was a university issued laptop which
Emily uses for school work as well as media browsing. Connection at the Lighthouse
isn’t great but it’s usable. There was rarely instances of slow loading times or lagging
actions. She used google chrome with a downloaded ad blocking program. She also
had at least 12 tabs open on a secondary page while taking the test.
Tester 2 Details: Jason Yarnell

Jason is a 43 year old man who uses the internet every day for his job as a youth minister. He
studied web design in college and is therefore familiar with how a successful website would be
designed as well as being familiar with what makes a webpage easy to navigate. As a 43 year old
man, he has seen many websites but is not familiar with the process used for buying razors
online, since he does not buy razors of his own. In fact he rarely buys anything online, preferring
to buy things in person instead. He only ever buys things for himself on occasion, usually using
Amazon when he does. Most of his time online is spent working on his messages and
researching for them as well, with less time being spent on social media talking with other
people.
Environment for Tester 2:
 Location of test: The social area of the building we were staying in. We were
both with a large group that had gone to Texas for spring break and Jason felt
more natural doing the test in the social area instead of secluded in his room. I
agreed, feeling the distractions of the social area would make the test more
interesting and natural as well.
 Physical environment: The room was well lit and warm, with two simply tables
surrounded by chairs. At the table next to ours was a large group of students who
were speaking loudly. Next door was the larger social area and it was filled with
even more students who were laughing and playing games. People were
constantly walking past and talking loudly.
 Technical Environment: The test was done on Jason’s personal laptop, using the
spotty Wi-Fi that the Texan House provided. However, the connection itself
seemed far better then what I would have guessed for this Wi-Fi. The browser
used was Google Chrome, with no add on that’s I could see.
TestResults
Initial Site Thoughts: Tester1: Tester 1 immediately upon opening the site commented on how
it definitely looked made for women. The pictures of so many young women shaving and the
bright coloration were all things that she found appealing about the site. Scrolling through the
page, she was impressed to see so many awards that the site had been given and she liked that

fact. She said it made the site seem more official and reliable. Overall, she was impressed by the
site and thought she’d enjoy using it
Initial Site Thoughts: Tester2: Tester 2’s immediate thought upon seeing the site is that it is
definitely made for and directed at women. He then commented on how he did not like the
design. All the photos of women shaving made him uncomfortable and he hated that the page
was designed for scrolling, with a large part of the information requiring you to scroll through
the page to find. He finds it distracting that the images were separated into “sections” that forced
your eyes to continually move down towards different sections that had nothing to do with what
came before. The fact that the sections were not the same size bothered him greatly and made
him view the site as sloppy and unprofessional.
Similarities and Differences: The only similarity between the two testers was how they both
quickly determined that the site was directed at women. Other than that, they were radically
different. Tester 1 enjoyed the look of the site, did not mind the scrolling and photos and found
all the awards sprinkled throughout the page to be a sign of professionalism. Tester 2 meanwhile
despised the scrolling and all the close up photos, finding them distracting and uncomfortable.
He said that the mismatched size of the photos and the “sections” seemed to provide no
information aside from pulling the eyes downward to be a sign of sloppiness and poor design.
Task 1: Determine whether there is any information available at gillettevenus.com that explains
what razor rash is and how to prevent it. You want to learn details here, not just superficial
information.
Summery for both testers.
Tester 1 Tester 2 Average

Average Satisfaction 4 2 3
Success Rate 85% 70% 78%
Tester 1 Task Completion Process: The task took around 5 minutes. She started by
going straight to the search bar and typing in “razor rash”. This brought up several
articles that she didn’t think were directly related. After scrolling for a while, she
clicked on the article for “How to choose the best razor for women” which mentioned
sensitive skin and how having poor quality, dull, or too few blades can lead to razor
rash. If the blade is bad, you have to go over multiple times, which can cause razor
rash. The information was not surprising to her and seemed familiar.
Tester 2 Task Completion Process: The task took around 8 minutes. Tester 2 started
by scrolling through the front page and wasn’t surprised when he found nothing. He
then admitted to me that he would have preferred to go somewhere else to find this
information before going to the search bar and typed in “razor rash”. Scrolls more
and is annoyed he’s not finding anything. Doesn’t think he’s going to find anything.
One second search page finds articles about sensitive skin. When he clicks on it an ad
pops up, annoying him more. He searched through the entire page before finding at
the bottom “best Razor”; He learns what razor is best for preventing razor rash, but
couldn’t find info on what exactly causes it.

Biggest Problem:
I believe that the
biggest problem
with this task is
the ineffective
search bar.
In the search bars
defense, there was
no article that directly spoke about razor rash, what caused it and how to prevent it.
However, the results that the search bar pulled up never has the term “razor rash” in
the title or even in the small description. Along with this, the articles that did have the
information were never near the top, requiring the customer to scroll before they
could find a useful article and to scroll even more to find the information once they
found the article.
Alignment to Heuristic: Constancy and Standards. Gillettevenus.com failed to
provide a definitive article to cover a major issue that the users of razors face and an
articles explaining clearly what caused it and how to prevent it. Constancy and
Standards mean that the users do not need to guess what things mean and that what
they are looking for will be where they expect. In both situations, the testers
scrambled a bit before finding what they were looking for and in both cases the
information was not where they were expecting it to be.

Task 2: Determine if Venus has any skin-care products available that can prevent razor rash.
What are the products and how much do they cost?
Summery for both Testers:
Tester 1 Task Completion Process: This task took almost 12 minutes to complete. She
started by browsing the razor rash page she was on for any links to products. After
finding nothing, she scrolls down to the bottom and notices a products tab. After clicking
on it, she is brought to the page talking about sensitive skin shaving lotion. She is
surprised to see that this lotion is the only product on the page but is glad it’s the product
she’s looking for. Scrolling down, she sees that Venus’ razor options can be seen and
learns that some of the razor heads are specially made for sensitive skin. However, she
was unable to find prices. She decides to return to “Explore Products” and after browsing
for longer, realizes she has to set up a plan in order to find prices. She is confused by this,
exiting out of the “create a plan” twice in order to double check for information.
After setting up a razor plan, she is confused about why she can’t find the lotion. She
decides to go back to the search bar to find prices. She types in “Shave Cream Prices” but
the results come back with nothing. Annoyed, she returns to the shopping plan again and
realizes that at the end it has an option to add the shaving lotion into the package for $6
dollars. She is surprised by the larger number of products displayed her, shocked that it
wasn’t on the original product page.
Tester 2 Completion Process: This task took tester 2 only 2 minutes to do. He started by
returning to the search bar and typing in “Preventing Razor Rash”. He is shown similar

articles to the time that he entered simply “razor rash”. He spends around 2 minutes
browsing the articles before returning to the homepage and scanning over it. However, he
does not look for very long before he tells me he does not believe that they have any
products he. He says he cannot continue on and that he would have left the website long
ago to search for products on another site. He was convinced that they do not have what
he was looking for and that he would be on a completely different website to get what he
needed.
Biggest Problem: I believe that the biggest problem for this task is that the Products
page on gillettevenus.com is down at the bottom of the page and is difficult to spot.
It’s as if the page was an afterthought that Gillette had forgotten about until the end of the
website creation and decided to stick it down at the bottom, almost as if to hide it. And
once users had found the site, it barely showed a fraction all the products that were
offered. On top of that, the handful of products that were shown had tiny descriptions that
barely contained any information. There was no price listing to be found either. The only
way to find out prices was to sign up for a plan.
Alignment to Heuristic. Consistency and Heuristic. Both testers struggled with locating
the products offered by the site, with one being convinced that they did not have a
products page at all. They expected a website dedicated to selling products would have an
easy to find/accessible products page. Instead, it is located at the bottom of the page
where one would expect to find contact information and other “less important” web info.

Constancy and Heuristic means that information can be found in a recognizable location
where users expect it to be found. In most websites, the products page is right at the top,
easy to see and find. But gillettevenus.com instead has there’s buried at the bottom of the
webpage.
Task 3: You’ve decided you want to give your friend a one-year Venus subscription including
handle, blades and at least one razor-rash or sensitive-skin related product. Determine the total
cost, including tax and shipping.
Summery for both Testers
Tester 1 Task Completion Process: This task took around 5 minutes to complete. Tester
returned to the “customize plan” page and proceeded to create a plan. While looking at the
razors head, she scrolls through all the options, reading what all the razor heads do and
their costs. She chooses the $17 “smooth sensitive” razor head and a blue handle. When
asked how often the person shaves, she is confused at first but then chooses the “once a
week” option. At the end, she adds the standard shaving lotion onto the plan. After finishing
the plan, she realizes that this will be and order for her, not a gift. She returns to the
homepages and scrolls through it looking for a “gifting page”. She finds it at the bottom
after searching for a little while. Annoyed, she retraces her steps, rebuilding the plan, but
eventually completes it. She will need to pay $25 dollars today in order to gift the plan.
Tester 2 Task Completion Process: This task took the tester around 12 minutes to
complete. He starts by clicking the “create a plan” option at the top of the homepage. He

selects the standard razor head and blue color without looking at the other options available
for razor heads. Once he arrives at the “choose additional products” page, he is shocked to
see such a wide variety of products available. He would not have guessed that so many
options were there from the homepage. Now curious, he looks through the products to try
and read about them. However, whenever he clicks on a product, nothing happens and
almost no information is provided on the page he is on. He is not sure what all of them do
and is disappointed that he cannot find out more about the products he could be buying.
After finishing the plan, he notices the gifting tab at the bottom of the page, realizing that
he was doing the task wrong. He is again annoyed and disappointed that the tab is down at
the bottom of the page and is surprised even more to see that the products page he was
originally looking for in the previous task is down there next to gifting. Out of curiosity,
he goes to the product page and is again shocked by it. However this time, he is shocked
by the lack of information. Leaving the products page, he clicks on gifting and begin the
process of creating a plan there. While creating the page, he finds it strange that the gifting
plan is different from the standard “create a plan”, lacking the variety and options that the
other creation process offered. Wanting to go back and double check the cost of the plan,
he it’s the back button and is completely thrown out of the plan creation process. He is
greatly frustrated by this and has to start over from the beginning. While creating the plan
a second time, he is confused by the low cost and how adding things to it doesn’t seem to
change the “total cost”. After adding the standard shaving lotion into the package, he
realizes that the cost is a “pay now and later” option and he immediately grows
uncomfortable about the idea of being charged “over time” to buy razors for someone else.

The entire process feels wrong to him, as if Venus is trying to hide something from him
and get him to spend more money than he thinks.
BiggestProblem: I believe that the biggest problem with this task is similar to the previous
task. The page necessary for completing the task was buried at the bottom of the homepage;
difficult to find and placed where you normally wouldn’t look.
Also, there was no option in the standard “create a plan” section to make the plan a gift.
You instead had to find the separate gifting tab and go through a different process that
provided less variety and options. Both testers went all the way through the process before
realizing their mistake and having to back out and redo the entire process again using a
different system. This wastes the users time and frustrates them, making them feel foolish
and that they may be missing something. No user likes to feel like they’re missing
information or having their time wasted.
Alignment to Heuristic: Consistency and Standards. Again, the users expect a page that
is so important for a shopping website to be easy to find and use. However, like the products
page, the gifting page is buried at the bottom of the page far from where users would expect
a page like this to be placed. Also, the fact that gifting is an entirely different product page
then the standard “create a plan” and that there is no option to simply make the plan a gift
is unusual. The users expect a gifting option to be simply another choose to make while
designing a product plan, not something that they need to exit out of creating a plan to find

something else to do. Most other websites have “make a gift” as an option at the end, not
a separate page buried at the bottom of the homepage.
Task 4: Determine how your friend will be notified of your gift. Do you have the option to include
a gift note? Will that note be sent with each shipment?
Summery for Both Testers
Tester 1 Task Completion Process: This final task took around 8 minutes to complete.
After finishing the gifting plan, she clicked the “checkout” button and was immediately
prompted to create a gillettevenus.com subscription. While filling out the subscription, she
was disappointed that the boxes did not have an “auto-fill” feature for states and other
categories. While trying to create a subscription, the website refuses to accept her personal
email address, confusing her and forcing her to start over using a different address. Luckily,
the site accepts her secondary address, though she is annoyed that she is unable to use her
primary address. Once she created a subscription, she spend a lot of time scrolling up and
down the checkout page searching for anything about a gift note. It takes her about 3 full
checks of the entire page before she found the section for sending a gift note.
The section had two empty boxes with the words “enter your gift receipent email” above
it. However, the boxes themselves are unlabeled. She is confused by this, not sure if the
blank second box is the one where you write your actual message or if you only use the
first box. She decided to write her note in the second box, hoping that it is the correct

method. She looks over the section again but is unable to find any information about
whether or not the recipient will receive the note every time or only the first time.
Tester2 Task Completion Process: This task took about 5 minutes to complete. To start,
the test clicked the checkout button and was prompted to create a gillettevenus.com
subscription. He became very uncomfortable with the idea of having to fill out a
subscription in order to send a gift and found it to be an unnecessary feature. Once he
finished filling out his subscription without difficulty, he scrolls through the checkout page
and quickly finds the “send a note” section. However, he notices that the website
misspelled recipient as “receipent” and is immediately put off. He says that this is a sign
of unprofessional and sloppy design and is something that one would expect to find on a
scam website. He says that if he hadn’t already left the website then this would have
definitely driven him away.
After he writes the note, he is unsure if the order will deliver the note every time a deliver
is made or only the first time. He looks over the checkout page, but finds nothing. Finally,
when he sees the grand total for the order at the bottom he is confused by the total, not
understand where the $75 additional dollars was going and what was causing such a high
price. He pack tracked to the previous page and learned this was due to the “pay over time”
system that Gillettevenus.com uses for gifting purposes. He is once again put off and
confused by such a system for paying and isn’t comfortable buying in such a way.

Biggest Problem: The biggest problem for this task is the lack of information when it
comes to creating a note for the gift package.
There is no text to inform you that this box is for leaving a note and neither is there any
information about the frequency of the notes delivery. This lead to confusion from both
the testers about whether or not they were leaving a note correctly and the frequency of the
notes delivery. Also, while the first tester did not notice it, the second tester pointed out the
misspelling of the word “recipient”. This is a childish and unprofessional mistake that
seems to further support the idea that the “gifting” tab was an afterthought, quickly put on
the site by the creators when they realized that they should probably include such an option.
Alignment to Heuristic: Flexibility and efficiency of use. While this heuristic is about the
ease by which a user can complete a task and also includes customization options provided.
The problem with this task is being able to clearly and confidently provide a note in a gift
package and see how often the note is sent. Both of these are difficult if not impossible to
complete. The users have difficult locating the option to leave a note and even when they
find it they have trouble knowing if they are doing it right. This is not an easy process that
is easy to understand. Even testers who are familiar with shopping sites find it difficult to
understand the process fully. This wastes time and confuses the user, making them dislike
using the feature or maybe even the entire website.

Final Site Thoughts
Tester 1: Tester one enjoyed the site, finding is mostly straight forward and easy
to use. She felt it was tailored more towards her and other women and found most
of the tasks simple enough to complete. However, she finds a few of the features
such as the search bar and the gifting feature to be annoying and confusing to use.
She admits that she would have enjoyed the experience more if she had simply been
shopping for herself instead of for a friend. Her opinions of the site have changed
very little since she began the test. Overall, she gave it a 4 out of 5 satisfaction
rating.
Tester 2: Tester 2 was not a fan of the website. He feels his initial thought about
the site being tailored directly and solely towards young women to be correct, and
he felt uncomfortable shopping on the site. He feels the entire site is difficult to
navigate with features and pages sloppily put together and difficult to use. The
search bar should work, but it doesn’t. The product page should be easy to find and
it should provide information. But unlike Walmart or Amazon, almost no
information about the products is provided. He felt that the gifting option was
completely stupid and shouldn’t be on the website at all. It feels like an afterthought
that nobody likes and that the creators expect no on to use. Along with being sloppy,
he feels that the entire website is designed for the sole purpose of “buy a razor” and
nothing else. His view of the website has dropped significantly to a much lower
opinion then when he started. He dislikes it even more then when he begin. He rated
the overall experience a 2 out of 5 satisfaction.

Similarities and Differences: The only similarity that both testers shared is that
the site is tailored to young women. Tester 1 enjoyed this, finding it fun and simple
to use and even enjoyable most of the time. Tester 2 meanwhile felt uncomfortable
throughout the entire shopping experience and felt like he should not be on the
website. Beyond this observation, the two testers view the website from almost
completely opposite perspectives. Tester 1 enjoyed the website, only finding minor
flaws with it and overall enjoying the shopping experience. Tester 2 meanwhile
feels that the site is sloppy and poorly made, with unusable features and design
philosophies that make no sense in his eyes. Perhaps these views are rooted in the
fact that Tester 1 would be considered the target audience while Tester 2 is someone
who would normally never visit this site, but the information gained is insightful
none the less.
Recommendations to improve user experience
Single Problem Being Fixed
A single problem to gillettevenus.com that I believe should be fixed is the Products page. While
trying to complete tasks 2 and 3 both users had difficulty finding the product page and once they
found it, it had an underwhelming amount of information that barely answered the questions they
had. On top of that, the product failed to display all of the products that they offered. I would like
to make the page easier to find as well as make the page itself more in depth and useful.
Problem Improvement
Before

After
The first step in correcting this problem is to move the Products page off the bottom of the
website. Why is it buried down at the bottom while so many other product selling sites display
their products right at the top. By moving the page up to the top, it will be much easier to find
and will be right where the users expect it to be. I would put the page between “Design your
Plan” and “Reviews”. While designing a plan is clearly what Venus wants you to do, offering the
products is incredibly important as well. Therefor it should be placed immediately after to show
its importance.
Along with this, I would like to fix the arrangement of the product page itself. The shaving
cream section of the Product page only displays a single product and it doesn’t describe what it
does or how much it costs.
Before

After
The improved design does a much better job at showing the full scope of offered products,
letting people look before designing their plan. Along with this, clicking on the individual
products should bring you to a specific page designed to explain the product. This will take some
major reworking to fix, since the current products page only has a single item for Shaving Cream
and the other pages for other products only lead to other pages, not providing the information the
user is looking for. Buy integrating not only more products but also pages that describe the
individual product would be much more benefical.

Having a design like this not only makes the users job of finding out information about the
product so much easier, but it also brings the quality of Gillettevenus.com up to the level of other
online shoppings sites such as Walmart or Amazon. Making the design famillair and
recongnizable will meet the requirments for the Heuritistic of Consitency and Standards,
ensuring greater customer satisfaction and an overall more effective shopping experience.

Usability test for gillettevenus.com

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