Baymard: 2021 and 2022

With the end of 2021 nearing, here’s an overview of:

• Baymard’s 10 most popular UX research articles in 2021,
• The 5 new UX research studies added in 2021: SaaS, DTC, Mobile Apps, European, & Accessibility.
• 10 new team members & hiring,
• What new UX research we have planned for 2022.

10 Most Popular Articles in 2021

The most popular UX research articles we published in 2021 were:

• Mobile UX: 18 Common Mobile Best Practices & UX Pitfalls
• E-Commerce Navigation UX: 13 Pitfalls & Best Practices
• Always Use ‘Buttons’ for Size Selection – 28% of Desktop Sites Don’t
• 6 Ways to Improve the Relevance of Cross-Sells in the Cart – 52% of Desktop Sites Don’t Do Enough
• 94% of the Largest E-Commerce Sites Are Not Accessibility Compliant
• Checkout Optimization: 5 Ways to Minimize Form Fields in Checkout
• 12 Common UX Pitfalls ‘Online Grocery’ E-Commerce Sites Suffer From
• Homepage UX: 8 Common Pitfalls & Best Practices
• Payment Method UX: How to Design the Payment Selector
• 10% of E-Commerce Sites Have Product Descriptions That Are Insufficient for Users’ Needs

New UX Research Published in 2021

In 2021 we’ve conducted and published 20,000 hours of new UX research. The six most significant UX research studies added during 2021 were:

1) New ‘SaaS and Digital Services UX’ Research Study

This UX research study focuses on the public sales site for Digital Subscriptions, especially SaaS sites. The test sites spanned B2B digital SaaS including video conferencing (Zoom, GoToMeeting, Webex, and BlueJeans by Verizon), communication/chat (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Chanty, and Flock), and cloud storage (Box, Sync, Microsoft OneDrive, and Egynte).

See the findings for our SaaS UX research study or explore the articles: SaaS UX: 5 Ways to Improve the Scannability of the Plan Matrix and New Research Study on “Digital Subscriptions” (SaaS) UX.

2) New ‘Direct-To-Consumer E-Commerce UX’ Research Study

This UX research study focuses on DTC brands that sell their products on their own site, directly to the end consumer.

Our Direct-To-Consumer UX research includes both testing of larger DTC brands (such as Adidas, Apple, IKEA) but especially focus on smaller niche DTC brands, such as Allbirds, Caraway, Daniel Wellington, Equal Parts, Farer, Great Jones, Greats, Maya Chia, Mahalo Care, Milo, Mirror, mvmt, Monastery Made, Tempo, Tonal, Thousand Fell, etc.

See the findings for our DTC UX research study or explore the articles: Niche Direct-To-Consumer Sites Rarely Need On-Site Search (Should Invest Elsewhere), 5 Effective Ways for DTC Sites to Tell Their ‘Brand’ & ‘Product’ Stories, and New Research Study on Direct-to-Consumer UX.

3) New ‘Native Mobile App E-Commerce UX’ Research Study

This large-scale native mobile app usability test study verified that 98% of product-finding guidelines for mobile websites also apply to native mobile apps.

Read more in our article New UX Research Study on Native Mobile Apps - incl. app usage rates. (If you already have Premium access, then see all the App UX findings.)

4) New ‘Accessibility for E-Commerce’ Study

This research study focuses on accessibility specifically from an e-commerce angle. The study provides highly actionable accessibility guidelines specifically for the page types and UI elements found on e-commerce sites (WCAG 2.1 AA compliance). From this study 300+ of the existing Baymard UX guidelines were updated with accessibility implementation nuances.

See the findings for our E-Commerce Accessibility study or explore the accessibility articles: Accessibility for E-Commerce: 3 Best Practices For Navigational Links – 73% of Sites Fail, How To Make ‘Decorative’ and ‘Functional’ Images Accessible to All Users – 52% of Sites Don’t, Use ‘ALT’ Text to Communicate the Core Content of ‘Informational’ Images – 55% of Sites Don’t, and 94% of the Largest E-Commerce Sites Are Not Accessibility Compliant.

5) New ‘European E-Commerce UX’ Research Study

This research study focus specifically on European E-Commerce sites. We tested 18 large e-commerce sites in the UK, Germany, and Nordic countries - and uncovered over 1,000 medium-to-severe usability issues encountered during 160 participant/site qualitative usability test sessions.

Read more in our European testing article. (If you already have Premium access, then based on this European testing, we’ve updated 150+ existing UX guidelines.)

6) Nine New UX Benchmarks on: Online Groceries, Luxury Goods, Health & Beauty, Telco, B2B, Homepage & Category, PDP, Search, and Checkout.

In 2021 we also conducted 9 new UX benchmarks, adding 31,00+ new best-practice and worst-practice examples illustrating how leading sites stack up against the 590+ UX guidelines available in Baymard Premium.

You can browse parts of this dataset for free in our public E-Commerce UX Benchmark and in the Page Design tool.

You can see the 9 new UX benchmarks in detail here:

• Luxury Goods E-Commerce UX benchmark
• Telco UX benchmark
• B2B E-Commerce UX benchmark
• Online Grocery UX benchmark
• Health & Beauty UX benchmark
• Homepage & Category Nav. UX benchmark
• Product Details Page UX benchmark
• E-Commerce Search UX benchmark
• Cart & Checkout UX benchmark

10 New Team Members & Hiring

In 2021 we welcomed 10 new colleagues to Baymard, all highly dedicated to the UX field – and we have more hiring plans for 2022.

If you want to join Baymard in 2022, then sign up for our job email alert to get notified when Baymard is hiring (max 4 emails per year).

First Half of 2022

Looking ahead to the first half of 2022, we’re finalizing 5 new UX research projects and ramping up another 4:

• 5 new UX research studies coming early 2022 on ‘Travel Accommodations’, ‘Online Food Delivery’, ‘Meal Kit’ websites, ‘Online Grocery’, and ‘Consumables Subscription Services’.
• 4 new UX research studies planned for publication Q2 2022 on ‘Vitamins & Supplements’, ‘Booking Tours & Experiences’, ‘New Checkout Patterns’, and ‘Navigation & Search’

On top of this, we will very soon release our new UX benchmarks on ‘Small Niche DTC e-commerce sites’, ‘SaaS B2B and B2C sales websites,’ ‘Mobile E-Commerce,’ and ‘Customer Accounts’.

Tip: You can see a full breakdown of all changes on our Roadmap & Changelog page, or subscribe to our Quarterly Newsletter to get 4 emails per year summarizing what new UX research we’ve released.

We’re looking forward to 2022.

– Christian, Jamie, and the entire Baymard team