Download to read offline
Uploaded bySharon Harper
Competitive analysis heavy equipment manufacturers
This document discusses evaluating the interfaces of three heavy equipment manufacturers' homepages. It outlines criteria for analyzing aesthetics, information architecture, usability, and navigation. Key aspects of the analysis include task flows, content organization, terminology consistency, and web analytics metrics like top pages visited and search terms used. The goal is a competitive analysis of how effectively each site meets customer needs and supports business goals.
Competitive analysis heavy equipment manufacturers
- 1. INTERFACE EVALUATION Competitive Analysis of Three Heavy Equipment Manufacturer’s Homepage
- 2. User Experience CompetitiveAnalysis Definition
- 3. Competitive Analysis Elements HeavyEquipment Manufacturers Aesthetics Information Architecture Usability Search
- 4. Information Architecture Content Groups About Us Brand Image Content to support goals mission Engines, earth-moving product specification, comparison statements, sustainabili and agriculture product availability, distributors ty equipment images product pricing and financing statements, links to Power generation annual reports, equipment images parts and service financial Brand colors news, history, stocks, n ews Which content will customers return for?
- 5. Information Architecture Content Area Measure Area of Content Brand • colors Image • images • financial About Us • news Client • products Goals • distributors
- 6. Information Architecture Content Area Homepage
- 7. Aesthetics Criteria Clearness (labels, redundancy) Design ( Bullet consistency, Column width consistency Images (interestingness, social awareness) Eleni Michailidou, Simon Harper, and Sean Bechhofer. 2008. Visual complexity and aesthetic perception of web pages. In Proceedings of the 26th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication (SIGDOC '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 215-224. DOI=10.1145/1456536.1456581 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1456536.1456581 David Robins and Jason Holmes. 2008. Aesthetics and credibility in web site design. Inf. Process. Manage. 44, 1 (January 2008), 386-399. DOI=10.1016/j.ipm.2007.02.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2007.02.003
- 8. Usability - SubjectiveHeuristics Criteria Consistency and standards Meaningful grouping of content Uncertainty & Redundancy Minimal design Help and documentation •ISO 9241-110:2006 Ergonomics of human-system interaction -- Part 110: Dialogue principles •http://www.usability.gov/methods/test_refine/heuristic.html
- 9. Information Architecture • Task Flow Navigation • Complexity Vocabulary • Consistent, Clear Control Terminology • Content Availability Organization • Findability
- 10. Information Architecture Navigation Task: Find
- 11. Web Analytics Web Site Visitors What are most people doing – top 20 most-visited pages? top search terms: what are people looking for in your site “Why did you visit the site today” – Intercept survey Search Ranking
Editor's Notes
- #2 A user experience comparison across three heavy machinery vendors (of their homepage). A good user experience is necessary to maintain a good brand. A bad experience influences the brand. It is clear that of these three vendors (Cummins, CAT, John Deere) two have not converted their sites to a positive user experience. These large vendors expect their networks of sales representatives and distributors to maintain sales without an improved web experience. Sales reps and distributors are essential, but so is DEVELOPING the online brand. And forget about including social media in the customers experience! Real competitive advantage is possible with a social experience for the manufacturers’ clients, but it is absent
- #3 Positive site experience builds brandNegative site experience reduces brand statue
- #5 I looked at the homepage content of one of the vendors, the red brand. I grouped the homepage into three groups of related information. Then I measured the approximate area of each of these content groupings
- #7 It is striking that the red brand devotes so little to the customers (user) goals. The green (&yellow) brand reverses the amount of space devoted to the ‘users goals’ and ‘about us’ with the red brand. The blue brand (actually black and yellow) also places much less ‘about us’ and more ‘user goals’ space. Developing site structure is all about content and information strategy determining how to organize information so that site users can find it quickly and easily.
- #8 The visual design, the look and feel, the graphic interface it's the first experience the user has with the site. Even before users know if the site is easy to use, they see what it looks like. Robins paper
- #9 Consistency and standards - Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.Group data in consistently meaningful ways to decrease search time.Practice judicious redundancy.Reduce uncertainty; display data in a manner that is clear and obvious.Aesthetic and minimalist design -
- #10 Developing site structure is all about navigation, content and information strategy determining how to organize information so that site users can find it quickly and easily.