Audible.com
Audible.com wanted to update their user experience. Their timeline was extraordinarily tight, which limited the technical, “under the hood” changes that could be made. Their prior site was crowded and visitors couldn’t easily focus on how to find or download their content. The new site is easier to navigate, resulting in more sales for the digital content distributor.
The client has a huge selection of downloadable digital content. Not just audiobooks, but periodicals like the The Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, and other spoken word material as well. Because the content on offer spans many genres, it was daunting for the Audible.com subscriber to find what they wanted. To fix this, a new navigation scheme was designed to show the subscriber where they were in the site, and what options were available. Other elements of the page were also enhanced, like the “flickswitch” widget that allows the member to view many items without refreshing the entire page. Various calls to action were made distinct based on function and context, alerting the subscriber to their next step in the browsing experience. Content areas were clarified, better segregating editorial and up-sell content from the primary audio content, resulting in a less distracting experience.
While those changes were very important, an online merchant lives and dies by their shopping cart. If the cart is difficult to use, slow, or broken, it will result in lost sales. While we didn’t have time to totally overhaul the cart experience, we were able to spread the shopping cart checkout process into several pages. Each page has a single purpose making it easy to understand what to do, and what still needed to be done. While it is too early to empirically say the new cart is a success, it has proved useful to our limited test audience.
While this assignment was quick, it was only the first step in a larger vision to overhaul the Audible.com website. We were able to outline a roadmap for the client. Each stage paves the way for the next, enhancing the site’s value to the subscriber, resulting in increased revenue while decreasing maintenance costs.
Launch Date
December 2005