{"id":15318,"date":"2023-02-22T12:24:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T10:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/eshop-usability-bathroom-example\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T13:37:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:37:01","slug":"eshop-usability-bathroom-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/eshop-usability-bathroom-example\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with a Beautiful Bathroom and Your E-shop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We recently went on holiday, and our really lovely accommodation had a few problems that got me thinking about the problems we come across in an <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/eshop-care-orchid\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1753\" class=\"rank-math-link\">e-shop <\/a>and how they relate to the otherwise beautiful bathroom in our room. (Yes, I know, I may not be the most normal person \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/what-is-an-eshop-and-how-it-works\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"282\" class=\"rank-math-link\">eshop<\/a> does not need some disastrous problem to fail at its purpose, which is sales. A handful of small problems is enough to put the user off in the end and make them nervous enough not to go ahead with the purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The problem with our bathroom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To help you understand the problem better, I filmed a video of the bathroom&#8217;s 2 main problems (I&#8217;m no Kusturica and I have no talent for film-making \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"\u03a4\u03bf \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03b2\u03bb\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c7\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03bc\u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c0\u03c9\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b4\u03ad\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03bc\u03b5 \u03c4\u03bf e-shop \u03c3\u03b1\u03c2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6-J5eEs_S5s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The towel and toilet paper problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As you saw in the video above, the bathroom is a new-style bathroom with a modern look, modern fittings and a beautiful design.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what happens when I go to hang up my wet towel? I get the toilet paper wet, and because of the water it soaks up, I can&#8217;t use it afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This could easily be solved if the hooks for the towel were higher up or somewhere else.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some might say, fine, that&#8217;s hardly a problem, and it really isn&#8217;t a major one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The bathroom door problem.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As you can see in the video, if I open the bathroom door inwards, everything is fine as long as I am inside the shower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what happens if I open the door outwards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The whole bathroom floods!!!&nbsp; Even if I close the door, if there is enough water, the bathroom still fills with water, though not as much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem could be solved in many ways. The first and simplest would be to stop the user from opening the door outwards. Another would be to keep the water from reaching that height, with the floor sloping towards the inside of the bathroom so that, combined with a drain in that area, all the water would drain away more easily and quickly. Of course there are other solutions I haven&#8217;t thought of, as this isn&#8217;t my line of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Are these problems really that important?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course not, but what if they are combined with others? For example, a sliding fly screen that is hard to open, or noise from a pool that is purely decorative?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is no one big, specific problem, and to be clear, these problems are not so bad that I wouldn&#8217;t go back to the accommodation, but for someone else they will be.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what if the bathroom, fly screen and pool problems didn&#8217;t exist and there was only, say, noise from traffic on the road? Quite simply, next time I would think much less about booking this accommodation, as I would say everything about the room is lovely, relative of course to the money I pay. But if all these problems are there, they will make me think twice and maybe not book a room there again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the problem relates to your e-shop.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Very often I go through small problems with clients we work with, either on social media advertising or when they ask us to write a report on their e<a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/do-i-need-an-eshop\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1507\" class=\"rank-math-link\">-shop<\/a> .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The usual reaction to problems such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>the colour of a button<\/li><li>the size of a&nbsp; button<\/li><li>the wording of a button<\/li><li>whether everything is in the same language (when we address Greeks, for example, everything should be in Greek)<\/li><li>how the checkout is structured<\/li><li>whether a contact phone number is clearly visible<\/li><li>whether there is a clear and simple shipping policy<\/li><li>whether there is a clear hierarchy of headings on the page<\/li><li>whether there are breadcrumbs&nbsp;<\/li><li>the speed of the website, and when we talk about speed, the site doesn&#8217;t need to be extremely slow for it to matter<\/li><li>whether there are links to social media<\/li><li>what the home page contains and how important it is for something to be on the home page or not<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">and many others too numerous to list, is: &#8220;oh come on, these aren&#8217;t that important, let&#8217;s run ads on <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/how-to-run-sponsored-facebook-instagram-ads\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1586\" class=\"rank-math-link\">facebook<\/a> and on <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/what-is-google-ads\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1315\" class=\"rank-math-link\">google ads<\/a> and we&#8217;ll fix them some day&#8221; (probably never)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it&#8217;s true that on their own they may not be that important (they are, but for the sake of argument let&#8217;s accept it), but all together they will stop a percentage of users from making a purchase. That percentage could be 20%, it could be 40%, it could even be 70%, depending on how many problems there are and how serious they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Add to basket&#8221; doesn&#8217;t have to be broken for you to lose sales; two or three of the problems above are enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A borrowed but good saying, a kind of Japanese proverb that I use often, goes like this: To die, you don&#8217;t need to be shot in the head, though then of course you will die. You can also be cut with a knife in 20 places, maybe fewer, and bleed to death. From this we can see that for an e-shop to fail at its goal, the checkout or &#8220;add to basket&#8221; doesn&#8217;t need to be broken, or the site doesn&#8217;t need to take 20 seconds to load. It can also be a combination of the things mentioned above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Run ads, but set aside a budget to fix your website or e-shop&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before you start any advertising, try to get your website or <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/why-my-eshop-isnt-selling\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1409\" class=\"rank-math-link\">e-shop<\/a> as ready as possible. Nobody can have their website or e-shop completely ready, or find all its bugs or its right and best form from the start. That comes after testing and after looking at the analytics results, but a lot of small basic things should already have been fixed and optimised.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There should also be an ongoing willingness, and the ability, to change things on your website or <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/how-to-start-an-eshop-in-greece\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"210\" class=\"rank-math-link\">eshop<\/a> based on the results of test measurements or the problems your customers run into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tests you can run to improve your e-shop<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ask your customers on a large scale whether they would like an extra feature or whether they had any problems while buying. By large scale we mean 500+ people, so you can make a decision based on the results. If 2-3 of them tell you they struggled at checkout and the rest say they had no problem, you can see there is nothing you need to change, as that is an acceptable share of people who couldn&#8217;t use your e-shop.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another test is to ask 20 of your customers to buy 3-4 specific items through your e-shop. Did they easily find what they were looking for? Did they manage to buy it?&nbsp; Do they get lost in the <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/eshop-product-categories\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1824\" class=\"rank-math-link\">far too many categories<\/a> you have?&nbsp; Have you set up <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/eshop-product-categories\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1824\" class=\"rank-math-link\">your e-shop&#8217;s categories correctly<\/a> ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are many more tests you can run, but these are some basic ones that every e-shop owner should do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Value the so-called user experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Invest time and money in the user&#8217;s journey and you will be rewarded with more sales. Think about how much <a href=\"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/smart-social-media-advertising-ideas\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1809\" class=\"rank-math-link\">advertising budget<\/a> you would have to spend to get a 10-15% increase in sales, and how much budget you would spend to make some of the changes above.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Don&#8217;t waste time or lose sales over simple issues that you can solve straight away and at relatively low cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<div class=\"button-code\">\n\t<a href=\"\/epikoinwnia\"><div class=\"default-button type-comp2 animate theme-white undefined\"><div class=\"button-background\"><div class=\"left\"><\/div><div class=\"center\"><\/div><div class=\"right\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"text\">\u039c\u0399\u039b\u0397\u03a3\u03a4\u0395 \u039c\u0391\u0396\u0399 \u039c\u0391\u03a3<\/div><div class=\"plus-icon\"><\/div><\/div><\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We recently went on holiday, and our really lovely accommodation had a few problems that got me thinking about the problems we come across in an e-shop and how they relate to the otherwise beautiful bathroom in our room. (Yes, I know, I may not be the most normal person \ud83d\ude42 ) An eshop does [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","rank_math_title":"E-shop Usability: Lessons from a Bathroom | WebMate","rank_math_description":"Small usability problems add up and cost an e-shop sales. Learn from the example of a badly designed bathroom and fix your shop before you advertise.","rank_math_focus_keyword":"eshop usability"},"categories":[247,238,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-shop-en-2","category-web-mate-en","category-website-design-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15482,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions\/15482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-mate.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}