UserTesting had 800 consumers rate eight mobile sites based on use, credibility, aesthetics and “delight.”
And these are the best states to shop them
With m-commerce expected to grow twice as fast as e-commerce this year, it behooves brick-and-mortar retailers to get their mobile houses in order.
To gauge how well they’re doing, UserTesting, an on-demand user research platform, ranked the mobile commerce sites of eight of the top Fortune 100 chains: Best Buy, Costco, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s Target, TJ Maxx and Walmart.
The company’s inaugural Retail Mobile Customer Experience Index is based on the evaluations of 800 consumers who considered the sites’ speed, ease of use, credibility, aesthetics and “delight.” UserTesting described those factors as “key user experience attributes” that it gleaned from 10 years of gathering consumer insights for clients.
Overall, 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, UserTesting said.
“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 marketing VP Brian Smith. “It’s no coincidence that the highest-rated mobile CX [customer experience] leaders in the study are also top retailers invested in omnichannel efforts and successfully battling Amazon.”
The overall highest-rated retailers were Best Buy, The Home Depot and Target, which scored well on all five user-experience factors, especially ease of use and speed.
The overall lowest-rated retailers – whose mobile scores were still relatively high compared to all brick-and-mortar chains – were Costco and Walmart, which stand to improve on pricing and shipping, participants said.
Source: UserTesting
Costco performed particularly poorly on search, while all eight made shipping information hard to come by, the study showed. Delight, perhaps not surprisingly, proved to be the most elusive factor.
A free copy of the full report is available here.
In a related study, our friends at BestBlackFriday.com, the shopping and personal finance site, rated all 50 U.S. states and Washington D.C. on their online shopping ease, based on average shipping time, average shipping fees, and adjusted sales tax (i.e., sales tax plus the odds of having to pay it).
Here’s what they found:
Best States for Online Shopping
1. Delaware
2. Washington D.C.
3. Kentucky
4. West Virginia
5. Maryland
6. Virginia
Worst States for Online Shopping
46. New York
47. Nevada
48. California
49. Alaska
50. Washington State
51. Hawaii
The complete report is available here.
A Complete List of Best and Worst States for Online Shopping in 2017
| Rank | State | Score | Adjusted Sales Tax | Average Shipping Charges | Average Shipping Time |
| 1 | Delaware | 149 | 0.00% | $2.87 | 2.519 Days |
| 2 | Washington D.C. | 137 | 4.52% | $2.86 | 2.519 Days |
| 3 | Kentucky | 135 | 4.93% | $2.87 | 2.445 Days |
| 4 | West Virginia | 131 | 4.04% | $2.87 | 2.701 Days |
| 5 | Maryland | 127 | 4.93% | $2.87 | 2.558 Days |
| 6 | Virginia | 124 | 4.83% | $2.86 | 2.656 Days |
| 7 | Indiana | 124 | 5.75% | $2.86 | 2.477 Days |
| 8 | Wisconsin | 123 | 4.26% | $2.87 | 2.945 Days |
| 9 | South Carolina | 122 | 5.42% | $2.87 | 2.555 Days |
| 10 | New Hampshire | 120 | 0.00% | $2.87 | 3.234 Days |
| 11 | Ohio | 119 | 6.12% | $2.87 | 2.484 Days |
| 12 | Mississippi | 116 | 4.55% | $2.87 | 2.961 Days |
| 13 | Iowa | 116 | 4.86% | $2.87 | 2.909 Days |
| 14 | Michigan | 116 | 5.36% | $2.87 | 2.760 Days |
| 15 | Pennsylvania | 113 | 6.11% | $2.87 | 2.581 Days |
| 16 | Maine | 109 | 4.32% | $2.87 | 3.308 Days |
| 17 | North Carolina | 109 | 6.16% | $2.86 | 2.591 Days |
| 18 | Georgia | 109 | 6.25% | $2.86 | 2.584 Days |
| 19 | New Jersey | 109 | 6.61% | $2.86 | 2.526 Days |
| 20 | Montana | 107 | 0.00% | $2.87 | 2.526 Days |
| 21 | Vermont | 106 | 4.86% | $2.87 | 3.182 Days |
| 22 | Massachusetts | 106 | 5.36% | $2.87 | 3.032 Days |
| 23 | Tennessee | 106 | 7.77% | $2.86 | 2.471 Days |
| 24 | Florida | 105 | 5.83% | $2.87 | 2.864 Days |
| 25 | Oregon | 104 | 0.00% | $2.87 | 4.315 Days |
| 26 | Rhode Island | 104 | 5.00% | $2.87 | 3.104 Days |
| 27 | Connecticut | 104 | 5.67% | $2.87 | 2.948 Days |
| 28 | Wyoming | 102 | 3.28% | $2.87 | 4.045 Days |
| 29 | South Dakota | 101 | 4.80% | $2.87 | 3.578 Days |
| 30 | North Dakota | 100 | 4.36% | $2.87 | 3.753 Days |
| 31 | Alabama | 100 | 7.40% | $2.87 | 2.575 Days |
| 32 | Missouri | 98 | 6.76% | $2.87 | 2.760 Days |
| 33 | Idaho | 96 | 4.31% | $2.87 | 4.273 Days |
| 34 | Nebraska | 94 | 5.41% | $2.87 | 3.376 Days |
| 94 | Arkansas | 94 | 6.98% | $2.87 | 2.851 Days |
| 36 | Oklahoma | 91 | 6.33% | $2.87 | 3.078 Days |
| 37 | Illinois | 90 | 8.02% | $2.87 | 2.617 Days |
| 38 | New Mexico | 88 | 5.66% | $2.87 | 3.672 Days |
| 39 | Louisiana | 86 | 7.84% | $2.87 | 2.899 Days |
| 40 | Kansas | 85 | 7.39% | $2.87 | 2.987 Days |
| 41 | Minnesota | 84 | 6.52% | $2.86 | 3.221 Days |
| 42 | Colorado | 83 | 6.43% | $2.87 | 3.321 Days |
| 43 | Utah | 82 | 5.80% | $2.87 | 3.890 Days |
| 44 | Arizona | 80 | 6.48% | $2.87 | 3.484 Days |
| 45 | Texas | 80 | 7.02% | $2.86 | 3.185 Days |
| 46 | New York | 78 | 7.88% | $2.87 | 3.062 Days |
| 47 | Nevada | 69 | 6.84% | $2.87 | 3.977 Days |
| 48 | California | 68 | 7.66% | $2.86 | 3.672 Days |
| 49 | Alaska | 60 | 0.063% | $9.47 | 3.623 Days |
| 50 | Washington State | 57 | 7.96% | $2.87 | 4.195 Days |
| 51 | Hawaii | 48 | 2.95% | $9.50 | 4.584 Days |
By: Alan Wolf
