For many shoppers, site search is no longer just a gateway to product detail pages. Search has become a place where they can take a closer look at products, read detailed descriptions, see available colors and sizes, and add items to their shopping cart. Much of this capability is due to the evolution of the Quick View window.
The Quick View window (a.k.a. Quick Look) is still a relatively rare feature of retail websites although it is rapidly gaining in popularity. It basically works like this. Quick View buttons appear as shoppers hover over product images on search or category pages. When they click, a pop-up windows appears that displays more details about that product. For some, the usability of this approach can be a bit cumbersome since the user must hover over an image to get the button to appear and then they must click on the button and not just the product photo which many often do. To overcome these challenges, some retailers have placed their Quick View button below the product image so that it is always visible.
The Quick View window is designed to improve the online shopping experience by making it faster for customers to shop. Anything to reduce the number of clicks to get an item into the cart is generally a good thing. If a Quick View window can satisfy a curious shopper, it will save them a full page load of the product detail page and the click of a back button and another page load to return to their search results. This can save a bunch of time and actually foster more curiosity in customers.
The simplest and perhaps earliest implementation of a Quick View window was likely designed to provide the shopper with a larger image of the product. This is currently the experience that you find at Century Novelty in the example below. The hover-over button that appears reads, “Larger view” and when clicked that’s exactly what you get.
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The next level of Quick View introduces a full product description. In this example from Snow and Rock, you see a much larger product image and an embedded frame of product detail that you can scroll through.
In both of the examples above you are also presented with a link that will take you to the full product detail page. However, what if your curiosity was satisfied enough at this point to make a purchase decision? Wouldn’t you want the ability to add the item to the cart right there? Well, if you were shopping at Harry and David, you would be able to do just that. You would also be able to select more than one if you like.
Now, if we hit the fast forward on functionality button we arrive at the Australia’s #1 site for surf and fashion, SurfStitch. The Quick View window you see below is one of the most advanced I have seen. In addition to all of the above, it gives shoppers the ability to see multiple views of a product, zoom in, see the available sizes, share on Facebook or Twitter, and look at related items. There is so much content that they had to place the full product details behind a separate tab.
At this point, you may be wondering how else Quick View windows can satisfy a shopper’s curiosity. Some of the other content you might want to include would be product ratings and reviews, views of available colors, and videos. I have even seen “print this page” functionality and upsell promotions. In this last example from Dr. David Williams, shoppers are presented with the options to increase their quantity to get a discount.
With everything you can do now in a Quick View window, is there really any reason to visit a product detail page? What do you think? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
