Daily deals site Groupon launched in 2008 and quickly became the fastest growing company of all time when it reached $2 billion in revenue in less than two years. However the UK market alone spends nearly £300 million on daily deals every six months, and so Amazon recently launched its UK deals site, Amazon Local.
As such, QuBit has unveiled the results of its study into daily deals websites, pitting Amazon Local against incumbent king of deals, Groupon. It has looked at which of the two sites offers the best user experience and the efforts of each site to maximise its site for mobile.
The customer journey has been divided into three stages: ‘Find’, ‘Choose’ and ‘Buy’
Round 1: Find
New visitors are met with a request to enter their email and subscribe to deals. In this stage, Amazon Local follows best practice, checking the e-mail for errors in real time and also providing the option to skip the subscribe stage. For returning visitors, the site automatically creates a different landing page, remembering their city and deal preferences. However, with no option to search, choose by category, or filter deals, it is hard to get an overview of the deals being offered. Dropdown menus are in use, but most of these do not appear unless you click on the tab.
Groupon starts off with a well-formatted landing page containing clear Calls to Action (CTAs), such as Buy Now! Unlike its competitor, Groupon’s navigation allows the user to view deals by categories such as goods, getaways, all deals or deals by city. The website also provides subcategories for each deal type, making it even easier for the user to find their desired deal. However, the lack of a search facility as well as a hard to locate help centre mean that Groupon fails to achieve a top score in the ‘Find’ section, and scores only 4% more than Amazon Local.