Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

I have recently been asked if I would take part in another Q and A session on a wide variety of User Experience topics, such as conversion rates, best practice sites, UX methodologies, UX development processes and ROI. A previous Q&A session on Findability for e-commerce websites provides more specific business advice which you may also like to take a look at.

Questions were asked by Kevin Wei, from China, who is studying on a postgraduate course in Design and Branding Strategy at Brunel University. In his own words - “It’s a great course for students to develop design thinking and creative disciplines in branding or related industries. During this course study, most of my research projects related to the internet, like search engine branding strategy, e-advertising design and current dissertation research titled “user experience design strategies for e-retail brands”.

Below is the full session which on reflection should provide a variety of business benefits and industry insights which I hope you will find useful.

1. Could you tell me a little bit about your current work that relate to user experience or usability?

Through my specialist user experience agency PRWD I am working on a variety of projects at the moment which have user experience as the central driver to the client solution. To name a few examples I have been working with Fast Web Media, a digital agency in Manchester, providing them with both information architecture services and the complete user experience and visual design solution for their client Nationwide. In addition to this project I have also provided the new user centred design for another one of their clients, the England Rugby Football Union (RFU), in particular for their new corporate website focussing on the up-coming Rugby World Cup.
I have also been working with CDMS, part of Littlewoods Shop Direct Group, providing an interactive online press gallery for one of the multi-million pound brands at Littlewoods Shop Direct, along with the user centred design and development of new fully personalised customer experiences which are expected to significantly increase online conversion rates, due to both the user centred design and the levels of personalised that they are introducing.

2. The term of user experience seems to be popular in the internet industry, do you think it is just new jargon to repackage usability, or beyond it?

The terminology used in our industry has changed over the last 10 years, starting with the likes of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) through to usability, user experience and customer experience. I wouldn’t class user experience as jargon, its just our industry is looking for the terminology which will resonate best throughout the online world. With an increased use of the term customer experience I feel this has evolved due to the importance finalised being realised as to how good (or bad) a sites experience is for the paying customer (more directly related to transactional websites of course) although I prefer to use the term user experience, as this discipline isn’t just focused towards e-commerce websites but any site where users have goals and businesses have conversion metrics (sign-ups, enquiries, applications, account management)

3. What do you think the current problems of online user experience on e-retail site?

This is a huge topic in its own right! For instance I I have recently answered questions posed by Dave Chaffey from Marketing Insights on the 1 single subject of findability in online marketing and e-commerce. My responses specifically related to e-retail sites, as its from my experiences as lead user experience at Littlewoods Shop Direct, a multi-million pound online UK retailer with brands across all target audiences, that I have encountered and solved a wide variety of user experience problems (or barriers as I like to refer to it, as users face barriers to achieving their objectives). Along with findability, another even more serious issue for e-retail sites are checkout conversion rates. Losing potential or even repeat customers during this critical stage of the shopping journey accounts for on average of 65% of sales loses on UK e-commerce sites – when you consider the UK e-retail market was worth £30.2bn last year, while worldwide online sales will hit £250bn during 2007 (Source IMRG), that is a huge amounts of lost sales revenue for e-retailers!

Another problem for e-retail sites is the lack of attention dedicated to improving the user experience of visitors arriving from search engine marketing campaigns on the likes of Google Adwords. Businesses are continuing to invest growing amounts of money in the acquisition and recruitment of new customers, yet due to no focus on where within an e-commerce site to send visitors from these sources and with a cumbersome and barrier littered user experience, the money it costs to get the visitor to the site is wasted.

4. Could you recommend any of e-retail brands that you think it tackling user experience design most effectively?

One recommendation would be looking at Comet who have invested significantly over the past couple of years on improving their user experience, with a particular attention paid to the checkout process, trying to make it as comprehensive yet user friendly as possible. An additional note on Comet is how organic search has been integral into the development of their site, but this is another topic altogether!

Overstock are another online retailer who put user experience at the centre of their strategic plans a few years ago, ultimately providing customers with an information and feature rich experience which tackles all the key issues of findability and checkout conversions that I have mentioned earlier.

Although not a perfect user experience, the Ajax driven diamond search facility on Amazon is a good introduction as to how technologies such as Ajax can be implemented with careful consideration to allow a customer to interact with your product range more intuitively and more customer focused. This is especially true for very large sets of products where the more intuitive and personalised a user can filter the products, the quicker and more likely they are of converting into actual sales.

5. What are the main elements of successful user experience design on e-retail site?

• Visitors should be able to find what products they want how they want to, whether that be through category browsing, filtering and sorting products to match their criteria, through the search facility and through promotional elements which specifically target different customer types.
• A visitor should always feel comfortable with what they have added to their basket, where they are within the site and where are the key shopping tools such as the search facility, help information and checkout options.
• Providing user reviews, comprehensive product information (if the user requires this), wish lists and detailed and clear delivery costs and options available
• Relevant and targeted cross selling of products which benefit the visitor
• Personalisation of site content where information is known about the user
• Checkout processes which are totally clear as to how long the process is, what fields are mandatory, summary of order and delivery costs, useful support information ie. why we need this information, this field should contain xyz, user friendly messages if a user has missed completing a field (perhaps using context sensitive messages as a user is competing a form) and not forgetting providing complete piece of mind on security measures in place

This list could go on for a while but there should be lots to think about here…

6. Could you briefly describe your ideal online user experience development process to e-retail, and what roles would you consider important?

1. Identify key strategic goals for the business
2. Involve all affected areas of the business which will be impacted with the e-commerce operation
3. Develop personas of the intended target audiences
4. Carry our user groups and other information gathering exercises to understand your target consumers
5. Based on all of the above, develop initial drafts of information architecture
6. Carry out card sorting with a sample of your intended target audiences to compare the in-house information architecture with how real users would expect to navigate and find your products
7. With an information architecture in place, specialist user experience designers to develop paper prototypes of key pages within a site, covering shopping journeys, checkout processes and account management facilities
8. During this process feedback requested and used where applicable to continually optimise the pages
   Produce the paper prototypes using the likes of Axure RP Pro to allow for engaging testing
9. Test the prototypes with real users and in-house team members, gaining feedback on the experience people have
   Enhance the prototype using an experienced visual designer to correctly visualise the importance of various elements within the site, and to develop the brand synergy which in turn will provide an exceptional brand experience for consumers
10. Design and develop the site based on all the above
11. Carry out user testing at key stages of the development to ensure the site continues to provide an exceptional user experience
12. Ensure feature rich web analytics in incorporated into the site so even the smallest detail can be seen which can be used for continually optimise the user experience of the site as usage increases
13. Once live, monitoring of site usage, conversions, drop-outs and other customer interactions
14. Periodically user test to continually optimise the user experience, especially on areas such as checkout
15. Constantly consider more ways to enhance the user experience by introducing more customer friendly tools and interactions

In terms of important roles to consider, as you will see from the above a large e-commerce development would involve a wide variety of roles, from marketing and operations to user experience designers and technical developers.
The 1 most essential role within the project is for the information architecture and user experience design – without the highest attention paid to developing the right user experience, ultimately the site will suffer in areas of user task completion and more importantly conversion rates.

7. Do you think user experience design alone enough to make a positive relationship between e-retail brand and customer? What else do you think can enhance it?

Definitely not. Brand proposition, niche or wide product ranges and customer service are 3 areas which all impact on a customers perception of a brand. Brands that are using business blogs to talk to their customers can also enhance the relationship between them.
On the flip side businesses need to be extremely careful who they partner with in terms of advertising, as this can have a serious negative effect on a brand perception. A recent example of this is the likes of First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax and the Prudential removing their adverts from Facebook as there were appearing on the British National Party page.

8. What do you think ROI (return on investment) from user experience, especially like a totally personalization system is quite costly?

This is true, and its why its mainly the larger and blue chip e-commerce sites such as Amazon are truly embracing the possibilities of personalisation. ROI can be significant when businesses provide personalised shopping experiences, but for businesses without the necessary budgets for complete personalised experiences, there are lots of small user experience improvements which can be carried out to provide a ROI which far exceeds simply driving more traffic to your site via Google Adwords or similar.
I have recently posted an article on the business benefits of user testing, which again can be carried out with large or small budgets. This can provide conversion improvements from 2% all the way to 100% and above with the correct planning, testing and implementation.

9. How would you explain the benefits of an online user experience design approach to a project manager who is unfamiliar with it?

The simple (but highly powerful) benefit is that you are committing to ensuring your online user experience allows your customers to interact with your brand without un-necessary barriers, in turn optimising their chances of task completions and conversions.
A site with a strong user experience will be visited more often, receive much more referrals and convert more visitors compared to one where the user experience hasn’t been considered.

10. What positive future implications of online user experience to change e-retail industry?

• Single page checkouts will begin to be introduced into more into e-commerce sites, and when implemented correctly will help to streamline this part of the process and improve conversions.
• Richer and more engaging ways to shop will provide users with a more enjoyable and memorable shopping experience
• Sites will become more personalised and flexible so consumers feel much more apart of the brand, and that the site is working with them to provide a more intuitive and involving user experience.

Whilst on my train back from this future of usability event tonight, hosted by Bunnyfoot and E-consultancy, I wanted to share some of the key messages and findings that came out of both the questionnaire and from the speakers.

Ashley Friedlein, CEO of E-consultancy, opened the event - he started by talking about the change in terminology over his 10 years within the online user experience and usability field…

…going something along the lines of HCI - usability - user experience - customer experience - UCD (User centred design)

Ultimately its about putting users at the heart of your online marketing decisions, a statement which can’t be emphasised enough.

Another of Ashley’s industry comments was on the continued trend of emphasis placed on the acquisition of potential customers.

To brake this post up I thought now is a good time for a 1 liner from Ashley -

“Driving traffic to your website isn’t hard - you can simply pay for it.”

This is certainly true for businesses spending significant marketing budgets using the like of Google Adwords.

But as Ashley pointed out, the continuing rise of cost in ppc and with affiliates looking to change their charging models, this will only increase the chunk of marketing spend that the acquisition area will take.

In contrast, what smarter businesses (who are looking to better increase ROI and conversions) are realising more and more is that improving the user experience and usability of their websites can provide much greater increases in conversion and retention rates.

People will spend longer on, convert more often and refer on a site with a good user experience which is intuitive and enjoyable to interact with.

Ashley feels that whilst usability is now being considered much more, looking further ahead he is also interested in the next level of user experience studies and online marketing.

This assumes that any usability flaws have been fixed, and now it is time to look at areas such as persuasion architecture and behavioural analysis. Ultimately a better understanding of what triggers online users to interact with an interface and pursue certain journeys, which can therefore allow the website owners to adapt the messaging/tone of voice/allocation of real estate to target different users.

All excellent snippets of views from a businessman whom I have much admiration for, not only for the business he has built in e-consultancy but also for his willingness to assist me in various aspects of establishing both my user experience agency but also me personally in the online arena (part of which is this blog that you are reading).

Next up was Linus Gregoriadis (Head of Research - E-consultancy) who provided a walkthrough of the questionnaire findings and what this means for the Internet now and in the future

Key highlights of the report were as follows:

• Over 700 respondants
• From what I recall this was made up of around 350 client side, 200 agencies/specialist usability consultants and the remaining as other individuals working within the online arena
• Usability is beginning to make a dent in the overall budgets of redesign projects
• Over the next 12 months across all areas of marketing investment, such as seo, ppc, affiliate marketing, mobile and usability, usability was considered the area whuch will see the biggest % increase in marketing spend, followed closely by seo and ppc - (to refer back to Ashley’s views which I share completely, until businesses place more strategy (And budget!) on the actual user experience they are effectively hemoragging money sending vasts numbers of visitors to a site which isn’t founded on UCD (user centred design).
• When asked where the responsibility lies when it comes to the usability and user experience of a project, over 70% confirmed that in-house teams and or/individuals held this responsibility. This left around 15% who use external expert ux agencies and consultants, along with another 10% who work alongside specialist agencies

Finally for this brief overview, the top 3 results for a business embracing the possibilities of having usability and user experience at the core of a project were as follows:

1. Increased brand perception
2. Increased brand loyalty
3. Increased conversion rates

The full report is due to be made available shortly at which stage I will provide a link.

In closing I haven’t touched on the redesigned Visit London website which is due live on the 5th July - this project featured UCD at its core and through the course of the project, using user testing and eye tracking to name but a few methods, the head of user experience at Visit London Jeremy Wilmott and his team have been able to ensure that the relaunched site is well positioned to provide visitors with an exceptional user experience. As with any such large scale redesign project on-going usability evaluations will ensure the website continues to meet its wide variety of visitor needs.

As I make my way back north this evening following this event, taking stock of both this assessment of the future of usability as well as my own knowledge and experiences in this arena, I am relishing the opportunities across all industry sectors which my specialist online user experience agency PRWD will continue to become a key player, both in forward thinking, intuitive web development projects but also in providing businesses with services such as user testing, information architecture analysis and solutions, eye tracking, behavioural pattern defining and persuasion architecture.

All in all an excellent evenings discussion and industry analysis, I hope you’ve enjoyed my summary!

Around April 2007 I was delighted to be asked to contribute to a Web Design Best Practice Guide which Dave Chaffey and E-consultancy were producing.

The guide was to provide a regularly updated, single point of reference covering best practice approaches for all the topics that anyone involved with website design needs to do an effective job.

Due to the sheer scope of the guide, I was asked to provide contributions, advice and case study examples on specific topics within the guide suited to my experiences and expertise.

The areas I contributed to were as follows:

• Section 3. User-centred web design process
• Section 4. Web usability
• Section 6. Information architecture
• Section 7. Visual Design

The finalised guide is more than 350 pages in length, which is considered one of the most comprehensive reports of its kind available.

You can view full details of the content of the guide within the best practice guides area at E-consultancy, entitled Web Design Best Practice Guide.

I strongly recommend you at least downloading the sample best pracice guide which may well encourage to purchase and download the full guide.

Finally I must add a thankyou to Dave Chaffey (whom I’ve recently taken part in a Q and A session on Findability for online design and marketing, particularly for e-commerce sites) and Chris Lake, editor at E-consultancy, for in the 1st instance requesting my input to this huge project but also for adding in a special mention within the contributors section at the back of the full guide!

I’d love to get your feedback on the best practice guide if you choose to download it, or share any other comments on this posting.

Taking a different view of the upcoming FA Cup Final between Chelsea v Man United (come on the reds!), following the relaunch of the Manchester United website in 2006, which has since received multiple award nominations, I was interested to see how Chelsea are promoting themselves online, both in football and commercial terms, in comparison.

Surprising to say the least, but the current Chelsea FC website is a fully flash driven site, providing an ultimately different user experience to Manchester United.

As expected and required for a variety of reasons including search engine optimisation and accessibility, a text only version of the site has been provided.

Having spent some time exploring the Chelsea website, as I’m already fairly familiar with the Man United website in terms of information architecture, user experience and ultimately the user experience that has won them awards, I am beginning to un-cover some fairly significant user experience issues which can only be detrimental the overall Chelsea brand experience and online revenue generation currently.

Very top level, but below are some of my initial user experience comments, in no particular order (**editors note - as I have been analysing the Chelsea website to produce this post I have realised that I need to get back to paid work, so whereas the following list and this post in general could be alot longer, I had to hold off going into this subject too deeply!):

• non-caching flash homepage - the main flash movie that you view on the homepage (once it finishes loading, which even on an 8MB broadband connection feels quite frustrating) hasn’t been coded to allow for caching of the flash file, so therefore each time a user wishes to return to the homepage, (perhaps as they are feeling lost - but that is another matter) they have to wait for the full movie to load. To compound matters, viewing the site in Firefox actually made the flash file hang at some stages, requiring a browser refresh.
• mixed navigational methods - although one of my key recommendations for large, particularly e-commerce websites, is to provide users with alternative ways to navigate a site based on their browsing preferences ie. using the search facility, exploring the promoted products/information and navigating through the main navigational routes, the implementation of some of Chelsea’s browsing features, such as the zoom functionality in particular and the discovery of the sidebar sitemap, ensure that rather than generating confidence in the user, confusion is brought on followed by frustration at trying to understand how the site is working
• fixed site size, both horizontally and vertically - by using a full fixed width flash movie to display the site, a user has to continually click inside small internal frames to scroll through the content within the frame. By the nature of the site, articles and reports can be extensive, which requires significant amount of scrolling, although unfortunately not by the standard means of scrolling the browser window
• poor quality imagery - although the site isn’t actually selling products, the quality of the imagery used throughout the site is detrimental to the overall appeal of the site, as it provides a much less professional representation of the club and its sponsors to a visitor
• non-clickable areas appearing to be clickable - some of the ‘hit areas’ within the site have been incorrectly included within the flash movies, which result in the mouse cursor changing to signify a link when in fact the area isn’t clickable

What Manchester United are doing well from a user experience aspect

1. a structured, consistent and professional presentation of information
2. a standard but ultimately intuitive navigation and information architecture
3. a polished visual style which provides fans and business users with the appropriate levels of brand and club awareness and information
4. use of interactive flash where it can enhance the user experience ie. a virtual tour of Old Trafford
5. a highly visible and consistent search facility, a must for such a content rich and deep website

What Manchester United are doing well from a commercial aspect

1. constantly integrated promotion of commercial channels such as MU TV, MU Mobile, MU Pics, MU Finance
2. constant promotion and visibility of the register/login/account details functionality - ultimately by encouraging fans to register Man Utd can tailor content and offers accordingly, providing much more commercial value to the site
3. an integrated visual approach combining the brand and the sponsors
4. an overall professional visual style which caters for both the fans and corporate requirements, which ultimately reflects well on Manchester United as a commercial business

My recommendations to the online brand manager at Chelsea FC

If I was sat in front of the online brand/marketing manager for Chelsea, I would recommend a range of actions which would certainly help Chelsea focus their current online brand marketing.

1. carry out user testing, with a range of users such as casual supporters, die-hard supporters, corporate hospitality users, the press, visually impaired and more
2. obtain a heuristic evaluation of the website (view a 1 page overview of what is a hueristic evaluation and how it works)
3. develop persona’s of typical users of the site, concentrating on what key areas they are likely to be looking for within the site
4. carry out card sorting exercises to gain an insight into how actual users expect to locate different pieces of information throughout the site
5. based on the above points, consider testing a different, user centred design solution which would aim to vastly increase the usability and overall user experience of the site

In my view, although such a user centred design project will have resource and cost implications, by really focussing the site on the user, I would predict Chelsea FC would experience significant :

• increases in page views
• increases in length of visit
• increases in natural search traffic
• increases in uptake of commercial channels (betting, mobile, TV etc)
• increases in visitor loyalty, especially if user registration is introduced (similar to ONE United)
• decreases in visitor drop-out rates
• good press regarding the site and its usability and accessibility

Final thoughts

Comparing the 2 online presences currently, although Chelsea have made significant on the pitch strides to rival Manchester United, the current online battle is most certainly being won by Manchester United, who appear to be harnessing most of the commercial opportunities that can lead from an immersive and intuitive user experience.

Ultimately results on the pitch will always make the headlines (and provide the marketing) for a football club, but I look forward to seeing whether Chelsea will look to online as a marketing channel with which they can more effectively promote the club and the brand to what is now a worldwide audience.

I’d be interested to hear any feedback to this post, as well as finding out if anyone has more examples of potentially harmful rather than positive user experiences amongst football clubs and other sporting brands online?

As a business and personal user of Google Analytics, along with being a user interface designer, it is great to now be using the new Google Analytics interface, which has been given a significant user interface redesign.

The amount of data that is recorded by Google Analytics and is therefore made available through the interface is vast, which makes both the information architecture and user experience of this interface critical to the software’s success.

For SME businesses I would thoroughly recommend considering implementing Google Analytics into your site, especially if you currently have no user friendly and multi-leveled way of accessing statistics to your site visitor behaviour.

There is already significant articles on the subject of the new Google Analytics interface, so rather than re-inventing the wheel below are links to my most relevant and useful articles reviewing the new interface:

• Avinash Kaushik, an independent consultant and now working for Google as an Analytics Evangelist, provides his view on the 1st 5 things you should do when using v2
• 27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed on Mashable
• The Google Analytics official blog

Hats off to the user interface designers and information architects responsible for the new interface!