‘Automotive Parts & Specialty’ E-Commerce UX Audit
What are the top 40 UX improvements for your Automotive Parts & Specialty website? How does your UX performance compare to CarParts.com, RevZilla, Advance Auto Parts, TireRack.com, ECS Tuning, Inter Cars, Demon Tweeks, AutoDoc, J&P Cycles, and Pep Boys?
Based on the findings from Baymard Institute’s 150,000+ hours of User Experience (UX) research, Baymard will conduct a UX audit of your Automotive Parts & Specialty e-commerce site.
The in-depth Automotive Parts & Specialty UX audit will be based on 500+ weighted UX parameters uncovered during our large-scale UX testing – and are those we observe to be most relevant for Automotive Parts & Specialty websites. This will provide you with:
- a detailed 120+ page audit report outlining 40 prioritized and research-backed user experience improvements for your Automotive Parts & Specialty site,
- provide best practice implementation examples and inspiration from other Automotive Parts & Specialty sites, for each of the 40 identified UX improvements to your site,
- a detailed unbiased UX performance analysis across the 500+ UX parameters to document your current state and identify the best areas to improve,
- compare your site’s UX performance directy to the performance of 10 other Automotive Parts & Specialty sites: CarParts.com, RevZilla, Advance Auto Parts, TireRack.com, ECS Tuning, Inter Cars, Demon Tweeks, AutoDoc, J&P Cycles, and Pep Boys.
Learn more about our Automotive Parts & Specialty UX audit analysis, deliverables, and costs in the 5 sections below:
“We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.”
What’s Included in a Automotive Parts & Specialty E-Commerce Audit?
A full UX analysis and assessment of your desktop and mobile websites — conducted every year by lead UX researchers at Baymard Institute, utilizing Baymard’s more than 150,000+ hours of large-scale UX research.
6 detailed UX scorecards with a total of 500+ UX performance scoring parameters, used for direct UX performance comparison against other Automotive Parts & Specialty websites (CarParts.com, RevZilla, Advance Auto Parts, TireRack.com, ECS Tuning, Inter Cars, Demon Tweeks, AutoDoc, J&P Cycles, and Pep Boys). In addition, you will also get a UX comparison to 251 leading US and European e-commerce sites, to benchmark how your site stacks up to general user expectations.
The auditors will write a detailed 120+ page report with 40 suggestions for UX improvement. Each suggestion includes a description of the identified user experience issue along with a proposed solution and 2–4 best practice examples from other Automotive Parts & Specialty sites, and occationally examples outside the Automotive Parts & Specialty industry for cross-industry inspiration.
A 2-hour video conference where we go over the audit results with you and your team, to discuss the findings and suggestions for improvements.
12 follow-up calls with your UX auditor after delivering the UX audit findings. For feedback on any redesigns you create, a light review of prototypes, questions, etc.
A detailed Year-Over-Year UX performance comparison to past audits – documenting your UX progress, and showing how you stack up to the competition and to user’s increasing expectations, every year.
Your whole organization gets annual complimentary access to Baymard Premium with full access to Baymard’s 150,000+ hours of UX research findings, UX certification, etc. (normally $2600/year).
“Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!”
UX Audit Focus
The audit will cover the following areas of your online user experience:
Homepage — The homepage structure, design, carousels, personalization, and promotions.
Main Navigation — The visual design of an e-commerce site’s taxonomy, including mega drop-down menus, the visual hierarchy, and courtesy navigation.
Site Taxonomy — The structural component of a site’s product categories, including information architecture, catalog breadth, and category naming. Guide users toward better-defined categories and products using featured products, inspirational paths, and curated content on the intermediary category pages.
Search Query Types — Understand the different types of search queries that users typically submit on e-commerce sites that your site’s search engine needs to support.
Search Form & Logic — Search form design and function, both pre- and post-search, including the design and behavior of the search field, query persistence, and scope selection.
Search Autocomplete — How the autocomplete feature should be designed and function, the types of suggestions it should make (products vs queries), keyboard input behavior, etc.
Results Logic & Guidance — How the autocomplete feature should be designed and function, the types of suggestions it should make (products vs queries), keyboard input behavior, etc.
Results Layout & Filtering — Layout and design of search results and filtering, including dynamic list layouts, search snippets, loading more results, faceted search filters, value truncation, filter naming, dynamic sorting, etc.
List Layout & Loading — The design and features of the overall product list layout, including grid and list layouts, breadcrumbs, how to approach novel navigation methods, avoiding the subdivision of product lists, and how to load items in a product list.
List Items: Product Info & Thumbnails — What product information and thumbnails to include in each List Item, how to format and display it, indicating product type and variations, and more.
List Items: Interface & Hit Areas — Visual presentation of information and arrangement of interface elements within List Items, including showcasing unique product features, proper labels for numeric specs, etc.
Filtering & Sorting: Filter & Sort Types — Filtering types users need to narrow product lists to a manageable selection, including thematic filters, user-defined ranges for numeric filtering values, compatibility filters, ‘New Arrivals’, etc. Also, the sorting interface and scope, including the sort types needed by users, default sort type, sorting directions, why most alphabetical sorting should be avoided, how to implement sorting by “User Ratings”, and more.
Filtering: Scope & Logic — Common pitfalls and optimizations such as avoiding filter attributes as category scopes, explaining industry-specific filters, and allowing multiple filter values of the same filter type to be combined.
Filtering: Interface & Layout — Layout and interface styling details that can influence the discoverability of filters, how to visually nest sidebar categories, when to truncate filters, and why sites should consider a horizontal unified sorting and filtering tool.
Product Page Layout — How the 4 predominant PDP layouts (“Horizontal Tabs”, “Sticky TOCs”, “Collapsed Sections”, “One Long Page”) perform, and which layouts to avoid.
Product Images & Gallery UI — The 3 different product image types users generally need, the number of images needed, and how large sites can approach some of the image sourcing. Optimizing the imagery gallery UI, including image navigation, how to zoom images, overlays, default image size, etc.
The ‘Buy’ Section, Shipping & Returns — Design and position of elements such as the “Add to Cart” button, prices & discounts, the quantity field, “Out of Stock” items, “Save” features, etc. What shipping and return info to include on the PDP and how to display it, how to best present “Free Shipping” and “Find in Store” features.
Product Description & Specification Sheet — How do users engage with and rely on product information and descriptions, the type of content needed, product headlines, sub-titles, etc. Also, the spec sheets, what features to include, and the importance of post-processing of vendor data.
User Reviews — How to implement the user review submission form, as well as review filtering, sorting and navigation, rating distribution summaries, and more.
Cross-Sells & Cross-Navigation — Cross-sell design, placement, and logic, as well as cross-navigation elements such as breadcrumbs, ‘Recently Viewed’, parent category links, etc.
Shopping Cart & “Added to Cart” Behavior — Implementation of the shopping cart page and “Added to cart” confirmation ((drop-down cart, overlay, etc.), including item information, quantity selectors, “Save” features, and navigation to the shopping cart.
Account Selection & Creation — The ability for users to sign in, create an account, or continue as a guest during checkout, including account selection designs and communication, “Delayed Account Creation”, password rules, etc.
Customer & Address Information — Form fields for all personal user data, including privacy concerns, shipping and billing addresses, international addresses, phone fields, address auto-detection techniques, etc.
Shipping & Store Pickup — Everything related to delivery selection, including the shipping method UI, shipping descriptions and costs, order cut-off times, ‘Free Shipping’ tiers, how to integrate and display ‘Store Pickup’ and ‘Store Availability’.
Payment Flow & Credit Card Form — The payment methods interface integrating and displaying third-party payment methods, charging in international currencies, coupon code form fields, and more. Also, credit card field design, card validation logic and formatting, expiration date, security code, cardholder name inputs, field sequence, and card type selection.
Form Fields & Page Design — Layout and design of checkout process steps, including the design and position of the cart link in the site-wide header and the primary button throughout checkout; minimizing form intimidation, avoiding multi-column layouts, using “Enclosed Checkout” designs, etc.
User Interactions & Distractions — Common interactive components, including load indicators, providing feedback on user actions, where to avoid “Apply” buttons, embedding content from third-parties, and more.
Validation Errors & Data Persistence — Error recovery and address validation, how to improve users’ ability to locate, understand, and resolve errors, design and logic of ‘address validators’.
Field Design & Input Optimization — Form elements, inputs, and selections, choosing the right type of interface, which types of field masking and character restrictions to avoid, pitfalls of drop-downs and radio buttons, custom designed input fields, and more.
Order Review & Confirmation — How to design the final Review step, including the “Place Order” button placement, necessary review data, along with the editing flow for those users who need to change data. Also, the implementation of post-purchase confirmations, including the information and actions needed on the confirmation page and order confirmation email.
Mobile Basics — Content and structure of mobile site vs. desktop site, size and spacing of of hit areas, multiple hit-areas within the same visual element, font-sizes, landscape mode, bugs and quirks vulnerable to the mobile platform, auto-zoom, etc.
Mobile Site Homepage & Main Navigation — Main navigation design and logic, double-hit area issues, homepage structure and design, auto-rotating carousels, etc.
Mobile Search — User’s crossover from category navigation to search, search scopes, misspellings and synonyms, search query support, “No results” pages, Faceted Search filters, etc.
Mobile Product Lists — List item size, product thumbnail size relative to product type, amount of product attributes in list items, hit areas within the product list, separation of list items, pagination vs. load more vs. endless scrolling, visual indicators, product variations, list item interactions on a touch screen, etc.
Mobile Filtering & Sorting — Styling and position of both “filter” and “Sort” options, sort types, “apply” buttons vs. auto-applying filtering values, the display of applied filters, information scent, product status, filtering interface, etc.
Mobile Cross-Navigation & Compatibility — Interlinking of compatibility-dependent products, cross-sells, list item consistency, etc.
Mobile Product Page Layouts — Product page structure, sub–product pages, collapsed product page sections, user reviews, “add to cart” button placement, “Store Pickup”, etc.
Mobile Product Images — Product image size, product image zoom levels, image ambiguity, touch gestures in the image gallery, etc.
Mobile Product Descriptions, Specs, & Compatibility — Division of product info between description and spec list, styling of product description, amount and level of specs included, product compatibility information and relationships, etc.
Mobile Shopping Cart — Cost estimates, number and placement of “checkout” buttons, saving mobile carts, picking up mobile carts on desktop devices, etc.
Mobile Checkout Steps — Account selection and guest checkout, shipping and billing addresses, shipping methods, “Store Pickup”, payment, order review, linear checkout flows, mobile process steps, etc.
Mobile Checkout UX — Optional vs. required fields, minimizing number of fields, form field label placement in smartphone portrait and landscape modes, inline labels, floating labels, grouping checkout info for mobile overview, field context, location detection, touch keyboard auto-correct, optimized keyboards, auto-capitalization, etc.
Custom Automotive Parts & Specialty Competitors
In addition to auditing your site UX and comparing it to CarParts.com, RevZilla, Advance Auto Parts, TireRack.com, ECS Tuning, Inter Cars, Demon Tweeks, AutoDoc, J&P Cycles, and Pep Boys , we can also expand the project scope to include a custom competitive UX audit against any local or direct Automotive Parts & Specialty competitor(s) you’d like. This is available for sites in most countries and languages.
“Thank you very much for your time and the presentation. It was super useful, comprehensive and most importantly very concrete, so that we know exactly what to do next. We will definitely recommend you to other divisions within Bosch.”
What Are Audits For?
Most commonly, our UX audit services are used by:
- Sites that would like to benchmark their UX performance to see how they stack up against major competitors and “State of the Art” sites, to know where resources are best spent on further UX improvements.
- Sites that would like inspiration and verification of their new redesign. For example, before spending resources on the final production code — auditing prototype designs are cheaper than re-coding.
- Optimized sites that need a pair of external and unbiased eyes to identify the last tweaks and improvements.
- Sites that would like to track their UX performance year-over-year, to measure and document UX progress towards stakeholders and over time.
Return on Investment
Even the smallest improvement in conversion rate for any site with significant sales will lead to a notable return on investment. For example, an improvement from 3.1% to 3.6% in conversion rate for a site with $50,000,000 annual sales will yield $8,060,000 extra sales every year.
“The Baymard UX audit has been a revelation for our organisation and will likely become a vital tool in our process moving forward.”
How Will the Audit Be Delivered?
What Will It Cost?
An annual Automotive Parts & Specialty desktop and mobile website UX audit across all 6 audit focus areas costs $13,100 (USD) per year.
An annual ‘Automotive Parts & Specialty Full-Site UX audit’ includes:
A full UX review and analysis by Baymard’s team of UX researchers of both your desktop and mobile websites.
6 detailed UX performance scorecards with a total of 500+ review parameters, and with performance comparison against CarParts.com, RevZilla, Advance Auto Parts, TireRack.com, ECS Tuning, Inter Cars, Demon Tweeks, AutoDoc, J&P Cycles, and Pep Boys, along with a general comparison to 251 leading US, European, and International online retail sites.
A 120+ page audit report with 40 prioritized suggestions for UX improvements. Each explain the identified UX issue, the suggested change, and show 2–4 best practice implementation examples from other Automotive Parts & Specialty sites and leading online retail sites.
A 2-hour video conference with you and your team to discuss the audit results.
12 follow-up calls with your UX auditor. Useful for follow-up questions or feedback on your redesigns or prototypes.
- 12 months of complimentary access to a Baymard Premium ‘Specialty’ plan with full access to Baymard’s 150,000+ hours of UX research findings (normally $2600/year).
Reach out below to discuss your needs or request a UX audit of your Automotive Parts & Specialty site.
Talk to UX auditor Laura about your goals and discuss Baymard’s UX research methodology.
Automotive Parts & Specialty Audit Price
$13,100
per audit
Refund Policy: In the event that we’re unable to provide 40 suggestions for improvements we’ll still complete the audit and leave it up to you if you want a refund.
Lead time: A typical full site audit takes around 17-25 work days - depending on time of year, project scope and auditor availability.
Confidential: All client-specific audits and UX scorecards are strictly confidential; they are not included in Baymard’s public benchmark databases or shared with anyone else (NDA is possible).
Unbiased: As Baymard does not offer any kind of design or development services or sell e-commerce technology, the UX audit will always be a completely unbiased analysis of your site, and not an indirect “sales pitch” for other services. At Baymard our specialization is the UX audit.
What Our Clients Say About the UX Audit
“We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.”
“Thank you very much for your time and the presentation. It was super useful, comprehensive and most importantly very concrete, so that we know exactly what to do next. We will definitely recommend you to other divisions within Bosch.”
“Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!”
“The Baymard UX audit has been a revelation for our organisation and will likely become a vital tool in our process moving forward.”
“I’m reviewing the report this morning and I am delighted. The recommendations are detailed and our resulting actions are clear. I’m excited to share this with the rest of the team!”
“I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the amazing work on this audit. You should know that this has been very well received internally and there’s a lot of excitement around adopting the ideas you have shared.”
“A big thanks to you and the Baymard team for such an informative and valuable session. The Ace Hardware team truly appreciated the Baymard teams feedback, diligence and the overall presentation. We are looking forward to using the excellent information provided to improve the acehardware.com user journey.”
“Thank you for the UX audit presentation, it was FANTASTIC. People here are quite pleased and amazed by the amount of work that was put into this.”
“Within a very short time Baymard Institute provided 15 clear, useful improvement suggestions for our checkout process. We intend to implement all of them. It’s easy to find companies that offer website improvement suggestions. But, most companies don’t do their homework and don’t provide specific examples of how best to make the improvements. With Baymard Institute, the checkout process suggestions they made were intuitive, specific, and actionable. I highly recommend their audit service.”
“A great presentation, and the results were very eye-opening. It’s really helpful.”
“Baymard recently did a UX audit of our new e-commerce Website. We were very pleased with the results. The report and live review of the findings validated our approach to user experience, and also, we learned a lot about best practices for e-commerce UX. We believe Baymard’s work will help us increase revenue and user satisfaction.”
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
“I found the UX audit a very comprehensive evaluation, with clear reports and actionable recommendations. Baymard's commitment to excellence in user experience shines through its thorough approach!”
“Thank you. This was an excellent piece of work: professional, thorough, and actionable for the team. We’re very happy with the work Baymard has done for us.”
“Baymard recently did a UX audit of our new e-commerce Website. We were very pleased with the results. The report and live review of the findings validated our approach to user experience, and also, we learned a lot about best practices for e-commerce UX. We believe Baymard’s work will help us increase revenue and user satisfaction.”
“I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it’s doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.”
“[Wanted to] say thanks, because we had a meeting yesterday everyone’s really excited about this. It’s really got everyone motivated and interested in what we’re going to tackle next so it’s been really invaluable, I think.”
“I wanted to begin by saying how incredibly impressed I have been with the degree/depth of content shared on UX/UI best practices for eCommerce experiences. This has by far been one of the most valuable workshops I have ever attended in my professional career.”
“This was indeed very helpful guidance and a very well-documented roadmap for us to fix, validate, organize, collectively understand and continually improve our ecommerce foundation.”
“We implemented this [1 of the 15 audit suggestions] and since then we’ve had a 20% increase in warranties added and a pretty healthy average order increase because of that. That was a great suggestion, it hit our bottom line immediately.”
“The Baymard team has been a delight to work with on the JohnLewis digital platform audit. They responded to the brief very well, have been very accessible for ongoing clarification and queries and Rebecca was excellent in the recent team share, articulately presenting findings in an engaging walk-through with the wider team which will really support driving engagement and a robust response. Many thanks for all the effort and focus folks.”
“Thanks for this audit and your good work. This was exactly what I was aiming for. Also thanks for the very, very professional presentation, and answering all our countless questions. Very good work.”
“Thank you very much for the 7 usability audits of our country-specific sites. The audits have provided us with specific and actionable advice, allowed us to prioritize development resources, and enabled us to compare UX performance between the 7 different country-specific sites, and against State of the Art implementations. The audit itself is done really professionally, and the recommendations contain actionable and insightful information.”
“We’ve received some awesome feedback from our Merchant Success team as well as our merchants about all of the UX Audits we’ve had thus far with Baymard. Thank you so much to you and your team for all of your hard work. The pilot with Baymard has been going fantastic and I’m really excited with all that we’re learning! You have an amazing platform, team and super helpful data base for us to work with.”
“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”
“We have recently tested some of your recommendations for the Avast checkout and got some great wins!”
“We are very excited to finally proceed with the UX improvements, and I truly believe your audit report will be super helpful to put us ahead of the wave. If you ever need a reference, please do not hesitate to share my contact.”
“Thanks for everything. The audit was extremely useful, I think we have gained valuable insight.”
“This was…mind-blowing. We’ve been having conversations on the side as you’ve been presenting the audit findings. There’s so much to do!”
“The walkthrough today was great. The report was very, very well done and loaded with great opportunities for us to improve our business. I wanted to again express my appreciation for working with us on such a condensed time frame last month. You and your team have been amazing partners to us and we very much appreciate the work, expertise and partnership.”
“Thanks again for the great work on our checkout project. Our whole group found it incredibly insightful. We’re applying the suggestions you provided to our new checkout design which launches at the end of the month! One of my colleagues was also interested in your group’s competitive expertise with regard to responsive web and native apps.”
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
“We like what we are reviewing from the audit - great analysis and feedback.”
“Let me say that it was exceptionally well done, and we are super excited to implement every one of the recommendations there. Everything you said has usually been a case of discussion in the past, but having them recommended in a deck like this will allow us to move forward.”
“The recommendations in our audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. Thank you!”
“Wow, this is great! Just reviewed it with the team. It’s a huge help and we’re excited to fix these issues.”
“We have worked with a number of third party companies before on various projects/audits, and I can certainly say that working with Baymard was not only a pleasure; but you delivered on time; to the level of depth we wanted; addressing important issues; and answering all our questions; and you did all this for a great price. A big THANK YOU on behalf of N11.”
“Wanted to thank you again for the checkout audit and walking us through the process. It was super helpful and we can’t wait to apply the changes to our checkout for a better user experience.”
“Given the tricky science of conversion rate optimization, it is great to know that you are dealing with professionals whose advice is based on solid research. It was a pleasure collaborating with the Baymard team.”
“I just wanted to thank you guys for all of the time that you’ve put into this, and for a great presentation. We don’t have anyone at the company that has formal UX/UI experience, so being able to tap into Baymard’s resources/expertise is an immediate win for us. Some of the things you pointed out, we’ve already identified as areas for improvement (which was validating), but a lot of the recommendations are things that we hadn’t identified and are for the most part immediately actionable.”
“I’m very impressed! Not about our site’s performance, quite the opposite, but about your work. Very detailed and packed with great and tangible advice. This was exactly what I dreamt about, but sometimes you just have to be careful dreaming.”
“First off, thank you. This was the most engrossed I’ve ever been in a 2-hour meeting. This [audit presentation] was incredibly insightful and very helpful. Many, many thanks.”
“This has been fantastic: really good recommendations, really comprehensive.”
“Thank you, this was really insightful!”
“This is awesome so far. Everyone wants to know what's going on – you just got everyone's attention here. Everything that you've called out is definitely eye-opening for us over here.”
“I was able to bring these designed solutions home with me and kickoff multiple optimization projects that I am confident will affect the site in a positive way, both in usability and conversion.”
“Very thorough and professional UX review of our website, based on an extensive amount of previous UX research insights within the industry, and specifically targeted to our needs. We received both critical and, most importantly, constructive feedback, along with actionable, prioritized suggestions and best-practice examples. This will allow us to address the areas of improvement and significantly help ameliorate the experience users have on our website, which in turn is expected to drive conversion rates and reduce the number of customer service requests. We can highly recommend Baymard's UX audit.”
“This UX audit has been very helpful, not just for our design and product teams, but even for the UX research team, because we can reference back to the audit, either in the design of a user research session or when we analyze findings. Thank you very much; this has been incredibly valuable.”
“I thought it was great. A lot of it is things that we've either known or called out to each other in the past, but the important part is putting a weight on it, or a score on it. To then actually have a true impact of how much each issue is hurting. It's nice to see some implementations that are good, too. Thank you so much.”
“Fantastic delivery and very clear breakdown of findings.”
“Clear, concise, actionable, data-driven insights!”
“Working with Baymard for our UX audit was an exceptional experience from start to finish. Their attention to detail, depth of analysis, and clear communication throughout the process truly exceeded our expectations. The insights they provided were not only actionable but profoundly insightful. I highly recommend Baymard for their expertise, professionalism, and commitment to elevating user experiences.”
“Baymard's audit services give us a detailed view of usability improvements across our entire site. This is so much more comprehensive than running individual usability studies.”
“Having Baymard is like having access to a magical UX super power. I can't believe how helpful and easy to use it is, given the vast array of tools and information they provide!”
“The audit opened our eyes once again, as we are often blind to our own operations. The comparison with competitors' best practices was particularly helpful.”