Navigating an online bookstore: User experience insights from eye-tracking and think-aloud

Browsing online bookstores and library catalogues with the purpose of finding and selecting books for leisure reading can be difficult, especially when people want to engage in a more exploratory and serendipitous search. Using a combination of screen recordings with eye-tracking and concurrent think aloud, our study examines how users navigate and select a novel in an online bookstore and how user interface elements and information organisation in an online bookstore influence the user experience. Using qualitative analysis, we created path visualisations and mapped the emotions and perceptions expressed by users to different elements and features of the online bookstore tested. Our results show that most negative emotions during the search and selection process were due to insufficient metadata and resulting usability issues, which most affected the user experience and evoked feelings of distrust and frustration, especially in light of previous experiences with more sophisticated systems. This highlights the importance of the quality and consistency of book metadata in meeting user expectations, helping them navigate and select novels, and ensuring that they will use the online bookstore again in the future.