How to improve product thumbnails on product listing page where the products are legal documents?

Question

I am trying to understand what improvements I can make to a image icons on a product listing page. The challenge is that the products being sold are assessment documents and templates. Currently all the products feature the same illustration of a stack of paper with the front page containing lines, a simple stamp and a squiggle to resemble a signature.

It is not feasible to place a preview of the document, I don't know what to put in its place to improve. Does anyone have any insight into how to make improvements to a product image on a listing page where the product isn't as glamourous as clothing for example. What can I research and how would I test to see if the changes made has made an improvement?

Answer 1

You could show a preview of what's inside in numbers of visuals. Like:

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Answer 2

Assuming you already have a product using the old icons, run some user-testing sessions with a good cross-section of your users that require the recognition of the different documents and templates - Something like "Can you find and download a template for 'x'?"

Record which document/template each test was using, how long each task took and any other issues the user reported or comments they made on the way through the task.

The results of these sessions are your benchmark.

Change over to your new icons and run the same tests again but with different users. You need to use different users so that you can remove their memory of the tasks as being a factor in any change in the results.

If your new icons are doing their job then you should see faster completion times and fewer issues and negative comments - That's the measure of your improvement.

You could also run a Net Promoter Score (NPS), System Usability Scale (SUS) or Kano Analysis survey at the end of both sets of tests to see the changes in acceptance