One of the ways the e-commerce can raise sales revenue is to attract more visitors. The useful information to the users has direct tie to product sales or revenue from the running ads. Simple effective relaying information means to provide user-friendly connections. Having said that, importance of effective user interface (UI) cannot be stressed enough.

The success behind Vodafone’s ‘Simply’ marketing strategy was in offering simple straightforward, uncomplicated service features and user-friendly phones to mid to senior citizen age groups with easy to read displays. Its LCD displays simple texts only without any icons and that caught on popularity from 45 and older age group especially in Europe.

Another good overseas case is with a company that purchased a fix-upper building and converted it over to the shopping mall. Unfortunately, the building had only one elevator and that always was an issue from their customers. They considered for adding a secondary elevator but the building’s existing layout made that an impossible option. But after giving it a much thought, they came up with a temporary but cost effective solution. They simply added numerous mirrors on surrounding adjacent walls to change the perception of the customers. When all else failed, they used the old psychology method.

Likewise, these cases above, the E-commerce websites also need to consider both options by tailoring the UI to meet their needs. This would be the first step to increasing the revenue.

Winning UI is one that can satisfy 4 golden rules and psychology of the human nature
Professor Tae-Yong Kim of Kyung Hee University Communication Research Center explained about the importance of the UI in websites from ‘User Space Conference 2006’ (sponsored by rankey.com) on the 20th.

In process of developing UI, the developer needs to understand both website and its user’s common needs that can address both objectivity and subjectivity to bring mutual benefits.
For example, when looking at a mail icon signified by an envelope symbol can be easily understood by anyone. This is the basic concept of start of UI development.

Professor Kim said, “To come up with superior UI, there are four basic rules we need to apply; perception, objective, consistency and a charm. For instance, if someone points out that an instruction manual did not explain in coherent, in a most obvious clear illustrations, just send a letter of apology to the user.”

The 4 rules are ▲ Intuitive Perception: UI that is most obvious with out need for any instruction. ▲ Objective Method: widely known and so popular, there is no need for further instruction. ▲ Consistency: coherent basic system integrity, frequent design change that requires subsequent instruction is not effective. ▲ Fine Visibility: UI that is attractive

What’s more, effectiveness of UI can be raised with built in human psychology factor. When designing a website from a scratch or modifying one with different contents and sitemap, Bio and psychological instincts must be considered before hand.

Consider power of visual effect by appropriate content placement
UI that is built around human nature in mind naturally put emphases on visual effectiveness. Portals usually place their most important contents (icons) on upper left corner or on middle of top page to bring out the natural instincts we all have.

Even price for running an ad banner on website differ greatly on whether it will be placed on top or bottom. Same with shopping mall sites, they charge most premiums for running an ad at the top/middle spot on the web page.

When we analyze the visual reactions from the user on a browser, ▲ 73 percent of the time the users begin by looking at the left side of the page versus only 27 percent on right side, ▲ 69 percent look at the top side first versus only 23 percent for the bottom side, ▲ even when viewers look at corner to corner, the top side was picked first on most of the time.

The result of the visual movement analysis on the web browser reveals that most ideal method to construct a website is first, begin by placing menu icons on upper left corner then toward right downward (clockwise) is most effective and placing the icons in the top middle of the page first then to the left side will be the second most effective method according to explanation from professor Kim.

Science over feeling
Location and placement of contents has direct relation to the sales revenue in internet commerce and its gate point (load page) is most important factor in UI. In a long run, rise and fall of the sales revenue can greatly depend on effectiveness of the UI upgrades.

Knowing that importance of UI, major internet portals are already forming internal departments for that reason. An example case is with Naver. The Naver is currently operating UX (User Experience) Center with over 100 personnel and Daum also has UI team based around the major services and same time offering new member services with TFT (task Force Team).

An affiliate from Naver said, “Whenever we update the browser we also run numerous tests to measure the affect from it. With slight change in UI there are huge differences in number of clicks thus we ought to have a scientific systematic management rather than relying on our senses.”

EastWest UI research lab result shows in head to head comparison between Joongang newspaper(joins.com) and Chosun newspaper, where Chosun newspaper site had the better grade for having the menu icons in the top center rather than Joongang newspaper’s upper left corner the above mentioned theory isn’t always right.

However knowing that UI is the front gate to the all e-commerce sites, the industry should come up with a systematic approach to the UI concept. Now, simply concentrating on design alone cannot do the job. Rather, overall systematic management system and UI related process should be constructed.

In addition, just like running ROI (Return On Investment) analysis on existing off-line ads or on public relation ads, there is a need for the systematic ROI analysis after reshuffling the UI.