Costco UX Case Study
This is a case study of Costco’s e-commerce user experience (UX) performance. It’s based on an exhaustive performance review of 637 design elements. 250 other sites have also been benchmarked for a complete picture of the e-commerce UX landscape.
Costco’s overall e-commerce UX performance is mediocre. Their UX is especially thwarted by usability issues related to mediocre Mobile Web performance.
First benchmarked in April 2012, and reviewed 27 times since then, most recently in January 2024.
Overall UX Performance
637 Guidelines · Performance:
Desktop Web
320 Guidelines · Performance:
Mobile Web
317 Guidelines · Performance:
To learn how we calculate our performance scores and read up on our evaluation criteria and scoring algorithm head over to our Methodology page.
The scatterplot you see above is the free version we make public to all our users. If you wish to dive deeper and learn about each guideline and even review your own site you’ll need to get premium access.
Costco’s Desktop Web E-Commerce Design
37 pages of Costco’s e-commerce site, marked up with 290 best practice examples:
Costco’s Mobile Web E-Commerce Design
28 pages of Costco’s e-commerce site, marked up with 250 best practice examples:
Explore Other Research Content
Every week, we publish a new article on how to build “state of the art” e-commerce experiences — here’s 5 popular ones:
Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them
Format the “Expiration Date” Fields Exactly the Same as the Physical Credit Card (72% Don’t)
PDP UX: Core Product Content Is Overlooked in ‘Horizontal Tabs’ Layouts (Yet 28% of Sites Have This Layout)
Form Field Usability: Avoid Extensive Multicolumn Layouts (16% Make This Form Usability Mistake)
Form Usability: Getting ‘Address Line 2’ Right
See all 406 articles in the full public archive.