As we continue to expand our HPX practice at Manifesto, we never tire of reminding our audience (or anyone else that’s willing to listen), of the value of good user experience (UX). It simply cannot be understated. Every business, brand or company that offers a digital interaction of any kind to its customers – be it via a website, an app, an interactive screen or any other digital channel imaginable – must prioritise investing in UX. 

After all, we are ultimately all users, aren’t we? Regardless of our day jobs, we have all felt the all too rare joy of a seamless digital experience – and of course, the much more common frustration of a cumbersome one. 

But what does good really look like?

To help you add a bit of clarity, we’re pleased to introduce the Manifesto UX Derby, a monthly series where we briefly compare the UX approach adopted by two companies operating in the same industry. Using visual cues, we will provide a view on the good, the bad and the ugly of digital UX design, and invite you to share any opinions and join our conversation around the value of getting it right. 

This week we’ll be looking at two of the UK’s biggest fashion retailers – ASOS and Zara. Specifically, we want to examine the different ways each brand has designed the product page on their websites. Both have successful digital offerings according to Statista reports. Asos.com was the UK’s 3rd largest fashion retailer with a revenue of US2.8 billion in 2021 while Zara was the second most valuable clothing brand worldwide with a brand value of about 25.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.

Our review will assess both platforms across 3 pillars: 

• Aesthetics 
• Usability
• Content and Transparency

ZARA 

Aesthetics

Clean and minimal. These two words summarise the design language Zara has applied to the website. It’s a prime example of a brand successfully employing a visual style that matches its physical and digital customer experience, echoing the sharp design of its products and retail stores. Unfortunately, this might be good from a branding perspective, but it doesn’t translate to good usability.

Usability 

In the usability stakes, Zara has thrown the rulebook out of the window. In an effort to preserve its minimalistic brand design approach, Zara has disregarded a lot of established UX good practices. While the website is certainly usable, it is not #UXgoals. It suffers from poor visual hierarchy, low contrast, iffy text padding and use of whitespace that borders on excessive. And the less said about the tiny microfont, the better! 

All of this adds up to a user journey riddled with pain points. With the amount of real estate available on a 16×9 screen, why should a user have to scroll to access primary information on a product page, or squint to read product descriptions? A great deal of the functionality is not intuitive for the user. Execution of cross-selling is also poor, with no similar product suggestions offered on the product page. Zara.com is essentially a website that is designed for people who have – through sheer grit and determination – worked out how it’s supposed to work, and have returned for more punishment. It feels more like a high fashion editorial magazine than a website designed to support and incentivise browsing and purchasing. It is unintuitive and doesn’t adopt standard layout and navigation patterns – so the user experience is improved only with familiarity. If good UX is intuitive and does not place a mental burden on the user, this is, regrettably, bad UX. 

Content and transparency

On this front, we can give Zara a relatively clean bill of health. While it is not always easy to find, the website does offer detailed product information, design, care, material and fit information is provided. There is sufficient information present to inform purchase decisions.

ASOS

Aesthetics

Youthful, Vibrant and Clean. These, in a nutshell, are the best words to describe the Asos aesthetic. Unlike Zara, Asos is an entirely digital brand, with no high-street presence. The entire brand aesthetic is therefore defined by their digital channels. The website feels inviting and balanced, colour, imagery and copy, all feel well deployed.

Usability

In contrast to the Zara website where components all blend together, on Asos.com, icons and clear calls to action (CTAs) are used to encourage exploratory browsing and ease users into making a purchase. Descriptions use creative copy that leans into the brand’s young and trendy aesthetic. Space has been cleverly exploited to provide relevant imagery and video to compensate for the lack of physical retail experience. Significant page real estate is given to sale and discount banners, but this aligns with the brand business model of using flash sales and premium club perks to drive sales. The fit assistant tool is also particularly helpful to support personalised product sizing, which is often a primary issue on fashion retail sites. Customer product reviews are cleverly used to provide more context, this is however erratically deployed with many products missing a review section altogether. A more detailed comb through the site certainly does reveal some more UX inconsistencies, however, a broad pass for the purpose of this review suggests a good, usable website.

Content and transparency

Although not as robust as the information available on Zara.com, Asos does present enough information on fit, care and materiality to support a purchase decision. Notably, unlike Zara which sells entirely own-brand products, Asos sells a mix of its own brand and external brands’ products, and this inevitably means some inconsistencies in the level of tertiary product details provided across the site.

Summary

Zara and Asos are clearly two very different brands with different business models and a vastly different approach to website UX. While Zara.com is able to get away with a bullish dedication to an established and recognisable brand language (and has even begun to lean into this criticism as an ‘all press is good press’ sales tactic), sacrificing usability for brand consistency is absolutely not advisable see here.

Asos.com on the other hand adopts a more agreeable approach. Using established UX patterns within the context of the brand aesthetic and language is the user-first lens through which UX should be approached. 

We certainly cannot speak to the quality of clothing on offer, but as far as this UX derby is concerned, we think Asos.com is the clear winner.

Wonder how we’d assess your site?

Why not get in touch and we’ll let you know…