Jared Spool is one of the most revered usability professionals in the business today. He is a top-rated speaker, faculty at the Tufts University Gordon Institute and founded the very popular usability firm, User Interface Engineering. Of of his many articles the one that stands out the most is his story of “The $300 Million Button.”
In this article he tells of a major retailer that used his company to conduct usability testing. With testing they found that in the checkout process after the user click “checkout” they were met with a simple form that asked them to login if they were a returning customer or register if they were a new customer. The forms design was very simple yet when they tested it the users found it to be obtrusive. It caused them to bailout of their purchase because of the added steps.
So the designers made a simple change taking away the “register” button and adding a “continue” button with the instructional test: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.
With the change of this page and adding the “continue” button the number of customers went up by 45%. It also, resulted in an extra $15 million the first month and by the end of the major retailer saw an additional $300 million.
If only every button we designers design could give us the return like this button.
