Apple.com is well known for creating incredible computers such as the one I’ve used to write this. While their products get high marks, what do people think of their website, Apple.com? According to Quantcast, Apple.com receives ~17.8 million visitors / month, so even small usability improvements could lead to big impacts on sales figures.

Apple.com on Jan 6, 2009

We’ve run Apple.com through our introductory tests to find out. The results are below:

What Does This Site Do?

1. This website sells, advertises, and supports Apple products.
2. Apps for the Mac. One for “life” and one for “work”. Also ads for other Mac products, especially that gorgeous laptop. Also a demo for the new battery.
3. The website is for music downloads. We can purchase our favorite music through this website.
4. It’s Apple, a well-known computer company that sells computers, software, and other gadgets.
5. This site sells Apple IPods, MAC notebooks and desktops, software exclusive to the Apple products, external hardrives, and accessories for Ipods, MAC notebooks and desktops. A customer can custom build a desktop or laptop and apply for financing.
6. This website provides information about Apple computer and their products.
7. It’s the main website for Apple, so, it advertises their various products and links to support info for customers.
8. It sells Apple computer products.
9. It is a site to buy apple products
10. This website is designed to advertise and tell you about all of Apple’s products. It also looks like it Promotes iTunes and song/other downloads. Also, this website is used to provide technical support for all of Apple’s products.

It sounds like people get what the site is all about. The site is a major sales channel for Apple, so it’s not surprising that they’ve invested in making sure the site clearly explains to users what they sell.

What is This Website’s Best Feature?

1. Ilife and Iwork box pictures.
2. The toolbar at the top makes it easy to find whatever you’re looking for.
3. Great graphics and a wonderfully clean page. One sees everything. Super.
4. the itune window is the best i think.
5. The current splash page when you first get to the site introducing a new product.
6. Well organized product categories at the top of the home page.
7. I like the overall design: it’s very clean, uncluttered, attractive, and easy to understand. I also like the bar at the top that makes all the features easy to access right away.
8. I think the graphics are the nicest feature on the site.
9. The ilife 09 guided tour
10. The store is my favorite part of the website. I love the way they have everything laid out, and the clean simple nature of the graphics makes it that much more appealing in my opinion. It makes it easier to focus on the products you want to look at.

It’s interesting that so many different features stood out to users as their favorite. This is very rare. Typically, sites do one thing well while missing in other areas. The features on Apple’s site is consistently good.

What is 1 Thing This Site Could Do Better?
1. Describe something more as to what these two do. It’s more like just an advertisement page, no explanation. Who has the time to keep reading.
2. It should describe itunes plus and what makes it better on the first page.
3. The iLife and iWork promos take up way too much of the homepage. I’d like to see more space dedicated to navigational links so you can see a larger overview of what’s available and get to what you want with fewer clicks.
4. Having the store button there is redundant for the site. It should be taken off and everything subcategorized so someone could just go to where they want to go. I think looking at Sonystyle.com would be a great template on how to organize the site better.
5. Less images on the page; they cause the website to load slowly.
6. Right now I have to scroll down to see everything even though I have a fairly big monitor, and I imagine it’s worse for those with smaller screen resolutions. I would scale down the large images in the main body of the page so that it only takes up one screen.
7. It needs a tab on the left to select options. Having it at the top of the page is not very instinctive. The store option needs to be bigger than the rest, also, since after all sales is the primary goal.
8. You can explain more what can be done with downloads. And for people not good with a computer explain that they can use DSL or Cable to download software and songs.
9. Add a find a retail store link at the top of the page to make it more easier to locate
10. I wish the website had more free things, I know that sounds silly considering they want you to BUY products, but if they gave me something for free it would draw me in to want to buy something. Also, more photos of the products would be good – I like to have a lot of photos to look at when I’m purchasing something. Also, I’d like to see more customer reviews on the products.

Interesting feedback. Quite a few ideas came to light that may be worth considering. While Apple made a conscious decision to heavily promote some new product launches, leading to some negative feedback about overdoing that, they’re probably find with that. Making the store locator and online store links easier for users to find (and testing moving the navigation to locations other than the very top of the page) may help discover more intuitive layouts.