Zappos – Function Over Design?

Zappos is one of my favorite Internet-based companies. The shoe retailer is not only known for its amazing customer service, lenient return policies, rapid logistics but also for its quirky and cluttered user experience. The site’s interface always puzzles me: how come an e-commerce platform that surpassed $1 billion in sales last year, has such a busy and chaotic layout?

Andrew Wilkinson, the founder and Creative Director of Meta Lab, a well-respected interface design agency, posted an open letter to Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, this week venting his complaints with the site’s interface and user experience. The letter is entitled “You’re Killing Me Zappos.” It raises many viable points, albeit snarky at times, that the website should be updated with clearer iconography, a more distinct visual hierarchy, more unified link styles and sharper imagery.

To illustrate his points, Wilkinson attached a mock-up of his suggested changes. In my opinion, contrary to the current design, Wilkinson’s mock-up is clean, concise and uses best practices when it comes to user experience. The main improvements are that the content is:

- More clearly delineated;
- The shopping cart is visually emphasized and flushed right;
- The search box is bigger; and
- Information about Zappos’ company culture is put front and center

These are on-point recommendations. However, I would make a few slight modifications to Wilkinson’s design criteria. For instance, some of the additional search mechanisms such as finding “narrow shoes” and “wide shoes” have been removed from the search function.

Additionally, I do not particularly like the customer testimonials at the top of the page. I think users are more focused on finding shoes rather than reading about what other customers think about their experiences with the shoes/and or company. These customer testimonials can be trickled in other states of the user experience and do not necessarily need to be the first aspect you see.

Wilkinson promoted his article by submitting the link to his post to Hacker News, a renowned news aggregation site. The post sparked a fiery discussion, debating the fundamentals of user interface design and discussing the importance of “design vs. functionality.” Below are quotes from some of the responses that tended to focus on Zappos’ functionality rather than the design.

“Ultimately, customer satisfaction comes from getting the greatest value/deal in the least amount of time”
- jaytee_clone

“What is the point of ‘user experience’ on an ecommerce site if it doesn’t boost sales?”
- japherwocky

“…’clean’ doesn’t always mean ‘better’ – despite many UX people’s unfounded insistence.”
- Potatolicious

To a certain extent, I agree with these statements. Of course, an interface should foremost provide a function. This is especially true for e-commerce websites.

A user has two general objectives when visiting an e-commerce website: 1) to purchase an item(s) or 2) to research about an item(s). Successful e-commerce websites are the ones that provide a user with a clear path to finding what they are looking for and do so fast.

The main issues with Zappos’ site do not relate to the functionality. Rather they relate to the design, which Wilkinson’s mock-up eloquently illustrate.

“the better designed web site (both usability and aesthetics) will always win.”
- jmtame

“Good design and functionality are the same thing. The saying goes form over function, not design over function. If one thing functions better than another, it can be described as better design.”
- wesruv

I could not have said it better myself – “If one thing functions better than another, it can be described as better design.” Function and design go hand in hand. If the functionality is flawed, the design cannot make it better and vice versa. Fortunately, Zappos’ functionality is not flawed: the design can only enhance the experience and I hope that Zappos take some of Wilkinson’s suggestions into consideration. Zappos is number one in customer service, but can it be number one in user experience? I hope so.