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phasel
High-demand items such as limited-release clothing, Pokémon cards, and concert tickets often sell out within seconds because scalper bots check out faster than any human can. QuickCop aims to level the playing field with an app that monitors product pages for restocks, sends instant alerts the moment an item goes live, and pre-fills checkout fields so a purchase can be completed in one click. This phase focused on understanding who needs such a product and how well existing alternatives work. This was done through a competitive analysis, creation of personas and user stories, along with a heuristic evaluation of the most relevant competitor.
Purpose: To identify the alternatives people already use to solve the problem, and to find gaps that QuickCop can fill.
Procedure:
- Made a table with the categories Product(s), Strengths, Weaknesses, Quality Level (low-high), Price/Cost, and Platform
- We selected three methods people could resolve the problem we are trying to fix which were the retailers own email notification system, HotStock.io, and TrackaLacker
- For each of these we reviewed the website. We navigated around them along with testing out different features that they had. Along with reading the terms and service of them.
- From the information gained during that we filled in the table we had made earlier.
Purpose: To find usability strengths and problems in what was deemed the biggest competitor to what we were making, so that we can avoid the problems it has and add features to our product that we deem missing from the competitor.
Procedure:
- As a team we reviewed what the first sprint MVP should deliver along with defined user goals.
- Alerts: when an item is restocked, as a reminder to buy an item, and when a sale reaches a certain threshold
- A browser extension version (this was the plan when the evaluation was done before the pivot to it being an app)
- An account
- The ability to see the price of items I can get alerts for
- The team decided on HotStock.io from our competitive analysis to be the competitor most likely to achieve those goals
- Independently the team (n = 3) revaluated this site using Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics.
- After everyone had evaluated the site there was team discussion to see what everyone gave the competitor to see if any differences needed to be resolved in the scores.
| Product | Key Findings |
|---|---|
| Retailer's own email notifications | Strengths: alerts come directly from the seller, so they should arrive promptly. Accessible to basically any user. Weaknesses: lack of customization (such as choosing the price that triggers a notification). Cost: free, though giving the retailer your email will probably mean more spam. Platform: web |
| HotStock.io | Strengths: users can track categories (e.g. all 5090s) instead of one version. Tracks multiple sellers. Has a history feature. The whole product catalog is searchable. Website and app are both rated highly. Weaknesses: only available for the UK, US, and Canada. Search is limited (searching "Legos" take you to a page with all Lego products it instead lists everything as a dropdown from the search bar). Some features are tied to a subscription. Cost: free tier. Though there are paid tiers for higher priority notifications. Highest tier has an auto-buy feature. Platform: web and app |
| TrackaLacker | Strengths: well organized and easy to find deals. Deals can be viewed by the store. Users can request that products be tracked. Higher paid tiers give priority alerts. Weaknesses: Paying more buys priority on who is first notified and in the terms and services it states that the priority can not be guaranteed. No autofill for payment information. Cost: free tier plus paid versions. Platform: web and app |
Needs Revealed: Users want alerts that are fast and customizable (by price and by product category), a record of past stock and price activity, tacking across multiple sellers, smoother path from alert to purchase.
Scores (1-10)
| Heuristic | Score |
|---|---|
| Visibility of system status | 8 |
| Match between system and real world | 9 |
| User control and freedom | 5 |
| Consistency and standards | 7 |
| Error Prevention | 8 |
| Recognition rather than recall | 9 |
| Flexibility and efficiency of use | 2 |
| Aesthetic and minimalist design | 8 |
| Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors | 5 |
| Help and documentation | 8 |
| Average | 6.9 |
Key Findings:
- Visibility of system status (8): The site responds quickly when clicking products. A spinning "constantly checking for stock" indicator shows when you're signed in and receiving alerts, and the Alert Me button becomes a greyed-out Watched button with a checkmark. Problem: it's inconsistent, since clicking a related product sends the user to an Amazon page instead of a HotStock product page.
- Match with the real world (9): The wording ("in stock," "out of stock," "alert me," "watched," "tracked stores") is plain and familiar, and the homepage grid with a sidebar of popular items mirrors window shopping.
- User control and freedom (5): Problem: there is no back or cancel option within the site; users must rely on the browser's back button.
- Consistency and standards (7): Pages look consistent. Problem: the search bar doesn't respond to the Enter key and only shows a dropdown of similarly named items with very small preview images, making it hard to identify the right product, especially within a series.
- Error prevention (8): The site prevents registering a username or email that already exists.
- Recognition rather than recall (9): Everything is labeled, and the minimal feature set keeps users from getting lost.
- Flexibility and efficiency (2): Problem: setting up one alert is easy, but setting up many means searching for each product, clicking alert, and entering criteria each time. There are no shortcuts or bulk tools for advanced users.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design (8): Minimal and uncluttered; not especially attractive, but nothing competes for attention.
- Error recovery (5): Problem: the signup error is vague (it says the username or email is taken or the password could be incorrect) and the login error doesn't say whether the email or password is wrong.
- Help and documentation (8): A usage explanation appears at the top of the main page and an FAQ is linked in the footer.
Needs revealed: Users need a fast, low effort way to set up multiple alerts, clear feedback about what is being watched, and easy way to back out of or undo actions, reliable search that finds the correct product and takes you to a page not a hard to read dropdown, and specific error messages.
From our competitive analysis and heuristic evaluation, we found the that the current tools are useful for notifying the users but they still have a few issues. Setting up alerts takes too many steps, not much control over the alerts, and finding the right product can be hard. Based on the issues given and the needs of our personas, we came up with the following recommendations.
- Customizable quick alerts
- Different users want different kinds of alerts
- Carson wants restock and drop alerts
- Corbin and Collins wants sales and price drop alerts
- Clarence wants upcoming releases alerts
- QuickCop should allow users to choose the type of alert they want and which stores.
- Make setting up alerts faster
- HotStock.io scored 2/10 for flexibility and efficiency because users have to repeat the same steps for every alert
- QuickCop should allow users to set up multiple alerts at once or reuse settings from previous alerts
- Users like Carson and Clarence may want to track a lot of products
- Better search and browsing
- Hotstock.io's search is limited and doesn't show a full page when pressing enter
- Users like Chloe and Corbin may also want to browse instead of searching for a certain item
- QuickCop should have a search results page, categories, and filters to make finding items/products you want easier and faster.
- Clear feedback and navigation
- Hotstock.io didn't have the best user control and freedom because back and cancel options weren't always available.
- QuickCop should clearly show when an action is completed and make it easy and easily noticeable to go back, cancel, or undo something.
- Direct and clear error message
- Hotstock.io had vague signup and login errors. It didn't specify what was wrong but included that email, password, or user name may be wrong. With that the user may not know what exactly was wrong.
- QuickCop should make it quick and easy to know what went wrong.
- Fast Purchasing
- QuickCop should make it quick and easy to go from getting a notification to purchasing the product.
- Honest alert speed
- QuickCop should be clear and honest about alert speed and how fast they are expected to arrive. Avoid promising speeds that can't be guaranteed.
- Only one competitor was fully evaluated
The heuristic evaluation was only fully done on Hotstock.io. Trackalacker was looked at and partly evaluated but not fully evaluated.
- Small evaluation team
Only three team members evaluated the site. More evaluators may have helped finding problems we may have missed
- Project changes
Evaluation was done during the time where the project was initially supposed to be a browser extension. Now, QuickCop has changed to an app so some of our findings might not apply
- Limited Testing
While evaluating, we only tested the free version. No paid or higher tier subscription was tested