RETAIL MOBILE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) INDEX BY USERTESTING FINDS BEST BUY, THE HOME DEPOT, AND TARGET HIGHEST-RATED IN MOBILE CX

CHICAGO, June 6, 2017 – IRCE 2017 – As consumers spend an increasing amount of time shopping on smartphones, their expectations for mobile experiences are rising sharply. While mobile sales topped $60 billion in 2016, mobile interactions influenced $1.05 trillion in offline sales. Successful retailers will provide mobile sites with a frictionless path to purchase that also seamlessly integrate into omnichannel shopping experiences.

In its inaugural RETAIL Mobile Customer Experience Index published today, UserTesting, the most advanced on-demand user research platform, conducted a competitive benchmarking study comparing the mobile web user experiences (UX) of eight of the top Fortune 100 retailers: Best Buy, Costco, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Target, TJ Maxx, and Walmart.

800 consumers evaluated the mobile websites based on five factors—Ease of Use, Speed, Credibility, Aesthetics, and Delight—which UserTesting has identified as key user experience attributes through 10 years of helping companies gain customer insights that improve ROI and increase loyalty. Retailers that performed well provided an appropriate amount of information throughout the shopper journey without requiring much effort from the customer. Companies that made the buyer journey more frustrating were rated lower.

Key findings from the report include:

• Overall highest-rated retailers were Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Target. All scored high on all five UX factors, especially Ease of Use and Speed.
• Overall lowest-rated retailers (noting overall scores for these top-performing retailers were all fairly high) were Costco and Walmart. Opportunities for improvement included better transparency around pricing and shipping.
• Reviewing shipping information was the lowest-scoring task, and the most difficult task for mobile shoppers on all of the websites (with the exception of Costco where finding a product was the most difficult task).
• Credibility was the highest-scoring factor, due in part to the retailers’ status as well-established, easily recognizable household names.
• Delight was the lowest-scoring, most elusive factor. Scores for this attribute were lower across the board compared to the other four factors.

“We have entered what Forrester calls “the age of the customer,” in which retailers must develop a deep understanding of what their customers value most and deliver superior digital experiences—or risk becoming irrelevant,” said Brian Smith, VP of Marketing at UserTesting. “It’s no coincidence that the highest-rated mobile CX leaders in the study are also top retailers invested in omnichannel efforts and successfully battling Amazon.”

UserTesting makes this announcement from booth #2009 at the Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE). Press and attendees are invited to visit the booth and attend the session “Unpredictability: Don’t Count on Shoppers Using Your Site or App the Way You Expect” presented by Jet.com’s Ben Babcock and UserTesting’s Michael Mace at IRCE on Thursday, June 8 at 3:15 pm (Ballroom B).

Research Methodology

For the inaugural RETAIL Mobile Customer Experience Index, UserTesting ran a competitive benchmarking study – from April 19, 2017 to May 5, 2017 – of eight of the top Fortune 100 retailers with both an online and a brick-and-mortar presence. 800 consumers (100 per retailer) evaluated the retailers’ mobile websites based on five key user experience factors (see above). Each shopper attempted to complete a series of standard online shopping tasks on the mobile site and then responded to rating-scale questions about their perception of the site.