Client’s Profile:
Three decades ago, in 1983, Manhattan Portage was born out of the challenging and gritty landscape of New York City streets. Today, a forerunner in its league, the company has changed the face of fashion forever with its authentic messenger bags. Beyond the fashion statement, these stylish bags, backpacks, and briefcases have matured into an indispensable part of the busy lifestyle.
Background:
With the iconic, red label of the Manhattan skyline sewn on every backpack, briefcase, and bag, Manhattan Portage has outgrown its local roots and become more than an urban lifestyle icon over the years. It aimed at making its products accessible to all users, including people with disabilities.
From a business standpoint, their website needs to be accessible to all because turning away physically challenged visitors means lost conversions and revenue. Therefore, Manhattan Portage chose to go ADA compliant and be ever available to everyone.
The Challenge:
Manhattan Portage wanted to ensure that its eCommerce website was usable for people with disabilities and thereby wanted to integrate accessibility and ADA compliance into their agile development process. TheCommerceShop ADA Compliance experts had to work closely with the online retailer to assess their website redesign processes and evolve professional best practices that could be integrated into their transitioning process. Firstly, we prepared the list of things that will be covered, the client appreciated the attention to detail, professionalism, effective integration with management, and value we brought to the project.
Our Findings & Recommendations:
Findings On Visually impaired and blind
According to WHO, some 35 plus million people are blind on our planet. As for the visually impaired people with some sight in general, the number reaches 280 million-plus across the globe.
Recommendation:
Enhancing accessibility for blind users made sense for the Business to grow at a rapid pace.
Colorblind users
According to a survey, approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are affected by colorblindness.
Recommendation:
Addressing this is vital to growing the Business.
Deaf and have hearing loss
According to WHO, 350 million-plus people all over the world have hearing loss. World Federation of the Deaf says that some 65 million-plus people are partially deaf.
Recommendation:
Imagine the number of users who can visit your site and convert into real leads and conversions. Addressing the grey area made a lot of sense.
Elderly
Even if the elderly are not blind or deaf, they still have their own unique accessibility needs.
Recommendation:
There is a considerable number of senior persons who love to explore online shopping sites and buy stuff after performing significant research. Fine-tuning the site based on their requirements would drive more traffic.
Our Approach:
Findings On Visually impaired and blind Solution:
- We ensured that the site design supports the latest browser versions.
- Sticking onto the minimalist design helped to tone down the flashiness of the site in terms of graphics.
- Obtaining high-contrast color schemes when choosing the colors for the site was on top of our action plans.
Colorblind users Solution:
We chose colors with higher contrast. It stands out to colorblind users since users find it a bit difficult to see different page elements without some additional cues.
We added a few textures, shapes, and even images to offer differently colored page elements to users with disabilities.
Deaf and hearing loss Solution:
Sign-language videos for each part of the written content were created.
Elderly Solution:
We had the pages designed correctly, and thereby, the elements like form fields were brought closer together, however, not closer than two millimeters.
Impact On Client’s Business:
Today, many eCommerce sites do not feature most of these special accessibility elements for users with disabilities. They aren’t time-consuming or expensive and thereby can be implemented with just a bit of consideration and know-how.
After redesigning the eCommerce site and implementing a lot of these accessibility features, it started to attract more shoppers with disabilities to their website, which yielded more conversions and revenue.
- Improved Website Performance by 3X
- Increased Organic Traffic by 110%
- Improved ROI by 7%
Conclusion:
ADA compliance not only assists in creating an eCommerce website for people with disabilities, but it also advances the overall interface and makes it more user-friendly. It makes the entire online shopping experience more confident, increasing reliability as well as sales.
For more information, on ADA Compliance or other services, visit our official page.
