ux-journal-Atlas-Artemis

Tracking Products with HotStock.io

By Neil McAuliffe

Recently my college class on User experience and design was looking at different competitor’s applications to analyze their designs. Through it I came across HotStock.io, a site that lets you set notification for stock alerts for a product. I thought to myself in class that it may be something I need for buying gifts for the holidays soon. That’s when I started to use it and realized how simple yet useful it is to make alerts for products you would like to buy.

Like most shopping sites I started at a main page that gave me the usual format with a way to sign up/in, browse products and search for them too. Ther first thing I noticed was the instructions due to their hierarchy placement, being right at the top of the page, I felt like it was uncommon to have the instructions right out there in the open like that. But thinking to myself for a moment made me think it was smart as someone coming across this site randomly would not have a clue what its truly for without that. It also makes sense that it felt uncommon as most other sites people use are popular enough to know what they are for before going on them.

After that just like any other shopping site I have used, I started straight off with browsing to find something that piques my interest. By scrolling through the popular and new sections I saw many items I would like to track. It makes total sense to have them right there past the instructions as those items are what the site would be mainly used for. Popular for things people still want and keep going out of stock and new for the things that may not even have a stock up online yet. It really meets the expected mental model, or predicted way a site works from prior experience, making it quite easily accessible to me and most likely other users to. Once I signed up and logged, just like any other site, I wanted to find something specific so I could buy it for myself.

Unfortunately, that’s where I found my first hiccup, I tried to search for a specific switch 2 bundle so I could buy it. However, the sites search feature doesn’t allow people to click enter on the search bar and put you on a new page that shows the search results with their image, names, and other info about it. This feels like huge disconnect to what I thought it would do as most other shopping sites also have that feature. It felt like the sites simplicity in this case just made it feel rudimentary and cumbersome. Especially when trying to look through the search menu of products that dropped down as it was so small and I could barely tell the difference between similar products. A good fix for it would be to just add the search results page itself.

At the very least I was able to find the exact item I wanted to track after a second try clicking through the search results. At this point I got back to feeling good about the site as it showed how use it easily through the emphasis on the big alert me button with its size and color. It felt satisfying to use especially after clicking the button when it gave me some feedback, or in this case visual cues from an interaction. The button switched over to a check mark that said watching, it gave a good reassurance that I did something correct. There is also a little reassurance e that the site is working because of the spinning circular dots that say it is constantly checking the products. It even further gave me more ways to use it through those customizations on the notification that let me set what stores I like to use and a max price to look for in case I want a sale. Overall, the site even with some bumps gave a very satisfying, or my needs in the site were well met, user experience with tracking a product.