Hermes Test

Emily Landino

9/24/2023

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - 200

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Independence Avenue, S.W. - Washington, D.C. 20201
 Introduction
Hermes.com is a luxury brand that offers high-end, quality products.
Hermes.com is a family-owned and independent artisanal house since 1837.
Hermes promises quality, sustainable products and promises to dedicate itself
to responsible production and development.

The Hermes.com usability test conductors did an onsite usability test using a
live version of Hermes.com on the test administrator’s computer. The test
administrator kept track of comments, navigation choices, and test
participant’s comments. The test administrator was present in the room. The
session captured the participant’s navigational choices, task completion rates,
comments, satisfaction ratings, comments, and feedback.

Executive Summary
The usability test took place in the test administrator’s home early Sunday
afternoon on September 24. While the location was informal, the test was
formally administered using the Steve Krug usability script. There was one
participant of this test, a 25-year-old male. The test lasted about 30 minutes
long. The main purpose of this test was to learn more about the usability of
Hermes.com. The test administrator wanted to see how someone who has
never used the website before could easily work through the website.

The participant of this test is an operations manager, and he spends roughly

3-4 hours a day browsing the internet. He mainly browses on work websites,
his email, Handshake.com, Indeed.com, YouTube.com, and Amazon.com. Of
those websites, YouTube.com is his favorite. Before this test, he had never
visited Hermes.com before.

Before starting the test, the test administrator allowed the participant to
become comfortable with the home page. He looked around, without clicking
anything, and found things that he had liked and disliked. After that, he was
asked to perform two tasks on Hermes.com. The two tasks asked were to find
a gift for a friend for less than $500, and to find the about page for
Hermes.com. Though he did perform the tasks that were asked, he found
things on the website that he did not like.

This test identified a few minor problems including:

 Too large of videos on each page.
 Too many advertised products before the menu pages.
 The home button is not obvious.
 All the “About Hermes” info is on multiple different pages.

This document contains all the feedback, satisfaction rating, task completion
rate, ease or difficulty of completion ratings, time of task, and
recommendations for improvement.

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Independence Avenue, S.W. - Washington, D.C. 20201
 Methodology
Sessions
The test participant was contacted a few days before the test to see if he was
available to participate. The test administrator wanted to pick someone that
they knew had never used the website before. The administrator wanted
honest feedback for the test. The test participant was asked to do the two
following tasks:
 You need to purchase a gift for a friend for less than $500. Go
through the process of selecting and purchasing a product. Please
stop before you enter your credit card information.
 You want to learn more about Hermes as a company. Go through
the process to find that information.

After each task, the participant was asked questions about the usability of the
website. These questions were scaled questions, from 1-5 with 1 being the
lowest and 5 being the highest. The questions asked were:
 How easy was this website to navigate for this task?
 How would you rate finding the task?
 How would you rate the information given from the task?
 How would you rate how easy it was to learn to use the website?

Once all tasks were completed, the final questions of the test were asked.
These questions were to see how the participant felt about the website itself,
and if there were any recommendations that he had to offer. The questions
asked were:
 How would you rate your experience with this website?
 How would you rate this website to a friend?
 How would you rate the look of the website?
 What did you like most about the website?
 What did you like the least about the website?
 If you could make any recommendations for this website, what
would it be?

Participants

Only one participant was scheduled to take the Hermes.com usability test at 1
O’clock PM on September 24th. This participant is a 25-year-old male and is
an operations manager at CVS. He is not an avid shopper, but if he does need
to buy something he looks at Amazon.com first. Because he does not shop for
luxury clothing at all, it would be easier to get an honest response about his
experience during the test.
Role
Federal State / Public Federal Medical Research * Other
Staff/Agency Health Department Grantee Institution Institution Organization

- - - - - -

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 Evaluation Tasks/Scenarios
The test administrator decided what the tasks would be for the participant.
She researched good tasks for clothing websites and then tested the task
itself to see if the task was good for the usability test. The tasks included
were:
 Find a gift for a friend that is under $500.
 Find the About page of the website.

Results
Task Completion Success Rate

The test administrator was the one who had recorded the participant’s ability
to complete the task. The participant passed both task 1 ($500 gift) and task
2 (About page) with 100% completion. The participant had no problems with
any of the tasks given to him.

Task Completion Rates

Participant Task 1 Task 2

1 √ √

Completion
100% 100%
Rates

Task Ratings
After the completion of each task, participants rated the ease or difficult of
completing the task for three factors on a 5-point scale ranged 1 (strongly
disagree) to 5 (strongly agree):
 It was easy to find the task on this website.
 The information was easy to understand on this website.
 It was easy to learn how to do the task on this website.

Ease in Finding Task

The participant rated a 5 for both times completing a task. He stated that this
website was very easy to navigate around and complete the task.

Ease in Understanding Information

The participant rated a 5 for both tasks. He understood what each product
was offering and what was being shown on the website very easily.

Ease in Learning the Website

The participant rated a 5 for both tasks. He stated that this website is similar
to other websites, and all the information and tabs were where they would be
on other websites.

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 Test 1 – Mean Task Ratings & Percent Agree
Ease –
Task Information Learning Overall
Finding Task
1 – Find $500 gift 5 5 5 5

2 – Find About page 5 5 5 5

*Percent Agree (%) = Agree & Strongly Agree Responses combined

Time on Task
The testing software recorded the time on task for each participant. Some
tasks were inherently more difficult to complete than others and is reflected
by the average time on task.

Task 1 required the participant to find a gift and that took the longest time to
complete. The participant took 1 minute and 52 seconds to complete. Task 2
required the participant to find the about page and was not supposed to take
as long. For the participant, it took him 1 minute and 39 seconds to complete.

For example:
Time on Task (in seconds)
P1 Avg. TOT*
Task 1 112 112

Task 2 99 99

Overall Metrics
Overall Ratings
After task session completion, participants rated the site for seven overall
measures. These measures include:
 Ease of navigation
 Ease of finding task
 Ease of information
 Ease of learning
 Experience on site
 Recommend to friend
 Site organization

The participant agreed 100% with ease of navigation, ease of finding task,
ease of information, ease of learning. The participant rated 80% for his
experience on the site. The participant rated 60% for recommending the site
to a friend. The participant rated 40% for site organization.

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 Post-Task Overall Questionnaire

Strongly Strongly Mean Percent

Disagree Neutral Agree
Disagree Agree Rating Agree
Thought Website
was easy to 1 5 100%
navigate
Thought tasks
1 5 100%
were easy to find
Though
information was 1 5 100%
easy to find
Thought it was
easy to learn the 1 5 100%
website
Enjoyed their
experience on the 1 4 80%
site
Would recommend
1 3 60%
this site to a friend

Liked how the site

1 2 40%
was organized
*Percent Agree (%) = Agree & Strongly Agree Responses combined

4.6.2 Likes, Dislikes, Participant Recommendations

Upon completion of the tasks, participants provided feedback for what they
liked most and least about the website, and recommendations for improving
the website.

Liked Most
The following comments capture what the participants liked most:
 The website was easy to navigate.
 All the information was like how other websites look.
 Easily knew where to go immediately.

Liked Least
The following comments capture what the participants liked the least:
 Too many pictures on home screen.
 The pictures distracted him from the actual products.
 Did not like the videos on each screen.
 Did not think the videos were relevant to the website.

Recommendations for Improvement

 Remove the videos.
 Make the About page on one page instead of 4 different pages.

Recommendations
The recommendations section provides recommended changes and
justifications driven by the participant success rate, behaviors, and
comments. Each recommendation includes a severity rating. The following
recommendations will improve the overall ease of use and address the areas
where participants experienced problems or found the interface/information
architecture unclear.

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 Find a gift less than $500 (Task 1)
Change Justification Severity

 Add less pictures.
 Remove the videos
To the participant, the pictures were distractors High
as he was trying to find a gift for a friend.
Instead of showing products of gifts, they were
showing products of anything that was a popular
item.
The videos were also distractors. They took up
majority of the page and he had to scroll past
them in order to actually find products.

Conclusion
The participant of this test found Hermes.com to be easy to navigate,
informative website. Though there were some things that he did not enjoy, he
overall had a good experience exploring the website for this test. The only
reason he would not recommend this website is solely due to the prices of the
products.

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - 200

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Independence Avenue, S.W. - Washington, D.C. 20201