OREO Website Usability Test – Liam Ettere

Introduction
Oreo.com is a premier e-commerce platform for consumers to learn more about
and purchase the World’s favorite cookie. It brings interest by showing products not
typically found in stores, personalized products, as well as showing recipes using Oreo
cookies.

This test was conducted by Liam Ettere, a digital marketing student who has been
tasked with studying marketing tactics of Oreo. He asked a middle-aged family member
to complete tasks on the Oreo website to find common pain-points in the user interface.
Through the ease or difficulty of task completion, the tester will be able to determine the
website’s usability.
Executive Summary
Objective – Evaluate the ease of navigation of Oreo’s website, tasked with
scheduling a business order of 200 custom Oreo’s and finding the year the first Oreo was
sold.

This usability test was done in the home of the participant, on the one day per
week she is not working 9-6. The test was done on her home PC, of which she has an
average amount of experience navigating and using. The total test took around 20
minutes for this single participant.

While most of the website was easy for the participant to navigate, there was
slight confusion when it came to distinguishing whether a custom order was for personal
use, event use, or business use. The participant had complaints that all the options
looked very similar on the page, and there weren’t many distinct customization options
other than a personal picture on the cookie.
Pain Points Observed:
 Not enough customization on filling or dip of cookie
 Confusion between personal/wedding custom orders compared to business
orders
 Confusion on timeline layout of Oreo “Our Story” page
 Lack of premade custom cookie stock
 Confusion on what forms of Oreo cookie can be customized (thins, double stuff,
etc.)
 Confusion on integration and navigation of OreoID in terms of how to save a
design
Most of the problems the participant faced was with the customization of cookies,
however she did have problems navigating the history of Oreo. “Our Journey” section has
an easy to miss instructional button that says how to access the history of the company,
and it blended in well with the image right next to it.
Methodology

Participant
The participant for this test was a 49-year Hispanic single mother. She works full
time as a pharmaceutical project manager and spends around 60 hours online between
work and recreation. Most of her personal time on the internet is through social media,
most commonly Facebook and Pinterest. The test took place on February 10, 2024.
 Sessions
The participant was chosen as she had never accessed the website for Oreo and
has only interacted with the company in-store. In total, navigation of the site took about
15 minutes, with another 5 minutes being for rating ease of tasks and discussion.
The two tasks the participant was asked to complete were:
 Booking (without finalizing payment) 200 custom Oreos for a business
event
 Finding which year the first Oreo sold

After the tasks were completed, the participant was asked to rate the ease of
navigation through the website on a 1-5 Likert Scale, 1 being very hard and 5 being very
easy.
Questions Asked:
 How easy was it to access and navigate the “Our Story” page
 How easy it was to customize a set of cookies
 How easy it was to access the right quantity of cookies for the order
 How easy it was to upload a picture for the customization of cookies
 How easy it was to check out (without putting card info in)

The participant was then asked both the easiest/hardest task, as well as
best/worst thing on the website.

Results

Task Completion Success Rate

The participant was able to complete both tasks within 10 minutes (with 4
minutes at the start to look at the home page, without clicking), so the task completion
rate is 100%. On a scale of 1-5, she rated the ease of the two tasks as follows:
 Finding the year that the first Oreo was sold – 2.9 (2 minutes, 39 seconds)
 Custom ordering 200 cookies for a business – 3.1 (7 minutes, 14 seconds)
Ease in Finding Information
While there were only two tasks involved in the test, the participant spent
time learning more about the history of the company. She found once you can
access the slideshow, it was intuitive to maneuver through and very informative.
However, she had difficulty finding where to start the slideshow to see Oreo’s
history, as the button in the middle of the screen that says “Drag to Explore Our
History” blended in with the image next to it as well as the background. She has a
slight vision impairment, and it was very easy to skip over where to see the
information timeline. Along with this, she found it difficult to locate the right
quantity of cookies for the task, and she was overwhelmed with the assortment of
premade designs.
 Keeping Track of Location in Site
The participant said that once she found her way into the information
timeline, it was very easy to keep her place and move on to the next point. When
customizing, she had no problems going back if she changed her mind.

Predicting Information Section

The participant stated that she could have a reasonably easy time
predicting which information would be on which tab, after her time spent on her
tasks. After completing the tasks, she spent a few more minutes on the website
and looked much more comfortable navigating. However, at the beginning, she
was having difficulty figuring out whether she could use personal customization
for businesses, and she had trouble continuing to the business side after she
already worked on the personal OreoID.

Recommendations
The participant stated that the website seemed jumbled in some areas, not only due
to how many CTA buttons there were at any given space, but also due to the background
colors and imagery. Due to her slight vision impairment, she didn’t realize some buttons
were actionable buttons, and got stuck in some spots. She stated that fewer buttons and
darker contrasting buttons would make navigating the site much easier.
Most Liked Aspect of Site – The participant stated she liked browsing through the
“Shop” tab and seeing all different models of cookies. The overlay was very simple and
clearly showed all different variations of cookie that Oreo makes, even ones out of stock.
Least Liked Aspect of Site – The participant disliked how many moving pictures and
slides were on the home page, as it jumbled the information and made it hard to navigate.

Conclusion
The participant was overall satisfied with the website’s layout, and she even
learned about the concept of custom Oreo from this test. Since she has only ever
interacted with the company on the store shelves, she had no idea how deep the
customization could be, even allowing you to put a custom picture on the cookie. While
confused and agitated at certain points, many of her problems on the site were due to
her vision, and she believes that a regular person viewing the site would have slightly
less trouble. She didn’t have many recommendations for the site, focusing solely on the
color contrast and overreliance on imagery.