Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

House of Fraser have recently launched their 1st e-commerce site - following is a user experience review looking at how persuasion architecture has been adopted, key browsing functionality provided and the overall shopping experience you can expect at this new luxury online store.

For anyone interested in how I recommend House of Fraser can further enhance the user experience, I have gathered together a variety of recommendations, focusing on the checkout process, customer registration and specific areas during a visitors browsing process. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in hearing about these recommendations, as I will be passing them directly on to House of Fraser rather than sharing all this expertise with the whole online community.

Overview

Putting brands at what appears to be the forefront of their online strategy, the new House of Fraser website provides an almost immediate synergy between their online experience and the aspirations of the brand hungry visitor. On first view the site provides all the features and functionality you would expect from a site which has been developed using what I expect would have been a user centered design approach - high visibility of the search functionality and shopping basket (inc. summary of key info, a useful mini basket dropdown feature and the login/register links), clearly labeled and intuitive category navigation, a clear, best practice modeled checkout process and a strong focus on persuasion architecture. On to the review…

Visual Design Style

Going with a black, moody background, using a beveled header style similar to Windows Media Player11, the well structured pages throughout the site provide a very clear and uncluttered user experience. The extensive use of white backgrounds and keen use of space, especially as you are in the latter stages of a browsing and buying process, ensure the visibility of key functionality and product information is very high, and the use of large category headers and the related breadcrumb trail ensures users know exactly which category/sub-category they are in.

Site Navigation

Good signposting, filtering and brand focus

Overall the new site navigation works well, with clearly defined categories, page titles and breadcrumb trails. Link language is very consistent which ensure users don’t need to continually learn what is and isn’t clickable. The common and essential (for large e-commerce sites) multi-faceted navigation introduced at sub-category pages (allowing users to filter the current products by price bracket, colours and brand) works well and ensures the brand focused users can shop by their favourite brands once they are looking at the product type that interests them. Heavy branding throughout the site continually plays with consumer psychology, which in turn provides some of the persuasion content and momentum which is critical for shoppers looking to purchase expensive, branded products

Primary Category Navigation

By providing a top level category specifically for brands, along with John Lewis, this again supports what I expect will be a large percentage of visitors objectives which will be to shop by brand - these shoppers aren’t just looking for a branded dress or pair of trousers, they want to see what range of products from their favourite famous brands are available, irrespective of product type.

Slight navigational issues

Whilst browsing the site during the course of this user experience review I discovered some slight navigational issues which may well impact on a users overall user experience:

• On clicking a main brand promo from the top level category, you are taken to a search results page - I would suggest this keeps you within the womens category (inc. tab navigation remaining highlighted) but with a search filter applied on womenswear - to ensure consistency of breadcrumb. Also a new search box appears with a search term that you have supposedly entered
• In a search results page for womens tops, bottles of perfume, luggage and bags are displayed, some taking up the whole 1st results page which will confuse visitors
• Once within the brand directory, the main navigation tab disappears when you are browsing products from a particular brand, losing the visual indicator of which category you are within
• Also within the brand directory, when viewing products from a brand and then you remove that brand filter, rather than being taken back to the brand list page you go back to the homepage, which is dis-orientating
• Brand names on product lister pages are clickable to the product, but the product title isn’t - brand logos shown with actual products at earlier levels take you to all products by that brand - I would recommend adopting greater consistency
• If a product isn’t by a brand name, n/a is displayed in place of the brand logo - this brand logo slot could be removed if not a brand product for a tidier display of product information
• When viewing a bedlinen product page, it is hard to work out where to view product info ie, sizes, material, wash instructions - this info is actually found by clicking the individual product description which opens an Ajax pop-up - perhaps a simple underline would solve this

Homepage

The visual, flash driven main promotion, used to promote the current latest offers or trends, on the one hand provides an area of stimulation and intrigue for the visitor, but with its lack of instructional or support text can actually be an area of confusion for the visitor. I could imagine visitors wondering what will happen if they click within a certain area, or for the current sale example, how can they see the full range of products on sale.

*UPDATE - whilst producing this user experience review House of Fraser appear to have rectified this by including clear clickable areas within this flash driven promotion.

A suggestion to improve the user experience would be to provide feedback to the user relative to where they move their mouse, for instance having some text that says “Select stainless steel pan set - save up to £15″ appear near to the mouse as you hover over this product. In addition, if there is an actual sale category, providing a clear link to view all the sale products would also provide a more progressive browsing experience.

Top Level Category

Focus on Brands rather than product ranges

Following through on the brand focus, in comparison to competitor retail sites such as John Lewis, House of Fraser have chosen to introduce products through a featured brands section, rather than showing branded products from different categories. On the one hand this limits the variety of product ranges that are being promoted at this level, but it does allow this page to again target the brand hungry shoppers, in turn ticking the persuasion architecture boxes.

Shopping behaviour and personalisation

It is at the top level category page that significant real estate begins to be used to show you previously viewed products. This user focused facility, not often adopted on competitor websites but one of the many integral areas of personalisation adopted by Amazon, is a great way of allowing a user to quickly revisit a product they have looked at earlier and what they liked. By using cookies, without a visitor needing to be registered this already begins to make them feel that the site is working for them rather than a 1 size fits all approach. I expect House of Fraser will also use this stored browser behaviour, especially collected once a visitor is logged in, to provide personalised through-the-line marketing campaigns. I can’t emphasise the power of personalisation enough…

Product Page

Unique, image led

Although not providing a radically different layout to the product page compared to competitors (and therefore remaining consistent with best practice for product pages), House of Fraser have adopted quite an image led user interface, where as you zoom into the image it fills the full width of the product page. With the clever use of transparent backgrounds this doesn’t detract the user from the key functionality on the page (price, title, description, quantity and add to basket), instead it serves to provide a richer experience whilst ensuring the product page acts as a persuasive experience focused on getting an emotional response from the visitor, such as seeing the high quality of the expensive product, therefore justifying the potential expenditure being undertaken.

High quality goods = high quality images

As expected you can zoom and pan around the image, and House of Fraser provides great levels of detail through multiple zoom levels which is vital when trying to sell clothing and other luxury goods online.

Shopping Basket

Minimalism personified

Going very much for a less is more approach, the user certainly isn’t presented by many distractions, although for this key buying process page there are a variety of user experience enhancements I would recommend House of Fraser considering. These focus on continuing the persuasion architecture approach and ensuring visitors have all the necessary information which they need to decide on committing to the checkout process:

• visitors being made aware of what credit cards and payment options are available, using an unobtrusive link and a Ajax pop-up (an approach adopted on product pages)
• another large checkout button at the bottom of the basket, especially for visitors who have large baskets and scan through them before proceeding to checkout
• the standard delivery charge of £4.00 be applied to the basket, with a related message informing users that they can specify a different delivery option within the checkout process
• a link to explain about promo codes - where to find them, what do they look like - this again would be an Ajax pop-up
• in addition to showing recently viewed products, I would consider an area to cross sell and up-sell with a focus on brand names, as used throughout the site

Checkout Process

Striving to adopt best practice and reduce abandonment’s

House of Fraser have certainly taken into account the factors which can lead to increased checkout process abandonment’s and I’ve listed here some of the key points I have picked up on:

• for new visitors, providing the key benefits why you should register, thus encouraging users rather than making them seek out the benefits of registering through the help section
• once past the login/register page, the removal of all un-necessary links and functionality (navigation, search facility, mini basket, comprehensive footer) which can distract users and increase checkout process abandonment’s
• providing a clear, industry standard security message to offer re-assurance for visitors wary of shopping online
• a clear process indicator is provided - where I am, how many are stages left - so the user feels comfortable and in control

User Experience and Persuasion Architecture Improvements

As I mentioned at the start of this review there are a variety of areas where I recommend House of Fraser could improve on the user experience. These areas are:

• The Checkout Process
• Creating an Account (Registration) inc. the Recognition Points area
• Browsing and Searching Functionality
• Hamper Shopping

Please contact me directly if you are interested in learning about these recommendations.

Conclusion

Irrespective of the possible user experience improvements that could be introduced, House of Fraser have produced an excellent e-commerce website which perfectly suits its target audience and compliments its high street presence. With a degree of richer user experience functionality introduced, and a clear focus on branding and imagery, whilst adopting very much a user centered design approach and significant persuasion architecture techniques, House of Fraser’s 1st transactional web presence is destined to be a great success and very much a destination website for style and brand driven online shoppers.

So yes, I would say that overall the House of Fraser website is a User Experience triumph!

I’d love to read your views on both this post and the House of Fraser transactional website. How do you feel it compares to their main competitors such as John Lewis? Can you identify any user experience improvements?

*Update 5th September - I must commend Kodak (in particular Thomas Hoehn, Director, Marketing and Customer Experience) for not only being quick to provide their feedback to my comments in this post (see the comments) but in also providing insights into the scale of the Kodak online operation - anyone for 100,000+ pages! - along with some of the new functionality they are looking to roll-out. Although in my comments below I have been quite critical of the current user experience of on the Kodak website, this isn’t an umbrella view of what Kodak are doing online, rather specific comments on just the product listing facility currently in use.

Now back to the original post…

Comparing and researching hundreds of digital cameras to find your new companion for the next few years should be an enjoyable, user friendly and visually rich experience - here are how 2 of the major manufacturers, Fujifilm and Kodak, are providing significantly different experiences.

For anyone who may also be interested in researching cameras online, at the end of this post is a variety of sites I have found most useful, constructive and informative, along with some of the digital camera models I have been looking at.

What I expect to get from the manufacturer websites

1. Enjoy a more interactive experience, to take me as close to handling the cameras as possible without going to a high street specialist
2. Ensure that I am aware of the latest models available
3. Determine which digital cameras fit within certain budget and specification brackets

This is where I have experienced 2 significantly different user experiences which I felt compelled to write about here.

Fujifilm - Intuitive, Customer Focused and most of all Useful

Summary of the Fujifilm user experience

Utilising Ajax functionality to provide immediate product availability updates based on user selections, this product comparison tool allows users to quickly and intuitively update the products to show which ones fit within the users shopping criteria.

User experience benefits

• Product filtering controls displayed in standard web form format ie. simple checkbox buttons, to ensure immediate user recognition
• Users can filter products by key product data, such as price ranges, zoom levels and movie functionality
• Users see immediate page responses as they check the various options on and off
• Product comparison functionality has been included in the tool for an enhanced and more useful user experience
• Irrespective of screen resolution the tool fills the available space, rather than being fixed width and potential cutting off on smaller resolutions

Recommended user experience improvements

Although when you view the Kodak user experience below, it is clear that Fujifilm certainly have the competitive advantage, to further improve the user experience, flexibility of the tool and usefulness to the more serious photographer, I would recommend some of the following:

• Providing greater amount of filtering control, and group the controls ie. photo specifications (to include megapixels, max resolution, size of LCD, lens range, ISO sensitivity), phone specs (to include weight, battery type, storage types) and more special features (to include image stabilisation, face recognition)
• Expanding on this customisation and filtering, provide distinct user experiences for different camera user types ie. the casual camera user, the prosumer user and professional users - therefore a user, by perhaps answering 1 simple question, can indicate which type of customer they are, and the shopping tool can be tailored with specific product filtering attributes - again all this can be achieved on the same page using Ajax to provide a seamless and attention holding user experience
• Consider the use of slider tools, which allow a user to slide bars to specify ranges of a particular feature that they are interested in ie. choosing between 5 and 10 megapixel, or choose between 300 and 400 grammes for example). View an implementation that Amazon uses for its diamond search facility
• As a user hovers over a camera, provide a small window which features a snapshot of the camera, possibly featuring a snippet of an external review to further entice the user to consider the camera
• For more instant explanations of specific features, rather than clicking to view more info, again a small window could be displayed above the shopping tool

Kodak - Traditional Product Display, Not User Friendly

Summary of the Kodak user experience

Adopting a more traditional product listing style, Kodak allows the user to sort the range of products (all 70-80 of them) by one of the featured specifications (megapixels, zoom, display, memory, price).

User experience downfalls

• No ability to filter the products means that you are always scrolling up and down the list of 70+ cameras
• Price confusion - some products have prices, others doesn’t - does this mean the phone isn’t available or obsolete? Can I buy this phone online? What is the price I can expect to be charged by the retailer?
• With no product filters, significant scrolling is required to view products in the mid or lower ranges of your chosen sorted column
• There is significant amounts of duplicated product specifications, but with no filtering option I still have to read the details for each camera, even though its spec may be identical to the previous camera
• The user experience (and attention levels) are interrupted each time you wish to sort the list, as the site uses standard page refreshes compared to Fujifilm dynamic page updating
• There is no visual indicator as to which column the products are currently filtered by, which can be an issue if you are moving back and forth between specific camera product pages and this list
• No comparison facility, which is crucial when shopping for technology products, where slight difference in specifications can be a decision maker for lots of shoppers

Summary of my online shopping experience at Fujifilm and Kodak

1. Fujifilm are harnessing some of user experience enhancements possible with web 2.0 functionality
2. Kodak provide a more traditional product listing which requires significantly more time for a user to interact with and identify their ideal camera
3. Based on the above brand perception is much better for Fujifilm
4. I would be much more inclined to recommend Fujifilm to friends looking for cameras with specific specifications from the main manufacturers
5. One advantage Kodak has over Fujifilm is the integrated shopping experience, allowing you to purchase some of the cameras direct - again as mentioned earlier as this isn’t a facility offered for each camera it could in fact be detrimental to the brand and user experience - for instance a user may wonder why Kodak are willing to sell only some cameras direct
6. Although Fujifilm certainly have the competitive advantage over Kodak with their current shopping comparison tool, as I have idenfied there are further enhancements that they could make to create an even richer and useful tool for all levels of digital camera shopper

As promised, useful links for online camera shopping!

• Digital Photography Review - highly detailed, independent reviews
• Trusted Reviews - very comprehensive digital camera reviews
• Digital Camera Resources - more in-depth digital camera reviews
• Photography Blog - advertiser intensive but useful reviews

And some of the digital cameras I have been looking at…

• The Olympus SP560-UZ - the strongest contender yet for my cash!
• Fujifilm Finepix S9600
• Fujifilm S6500fd
• Olympus E-410
• Nikon D40

I would welcome your comments on any aspect of this post, whether its the camera models I am considering (and your recommendations), other manufacturer websites providing good or bad user experiences, as well as comments on my comments and recommendations.

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.

A very interesting article on Usability News has been published quite recently entitled Web 2.0 ‘distracts good design’ which raises a very interesting point:

As web 2.0 technologies become more mainstream, there is a clear risk that in turn this will result in poor usability practices and user experiences

A parallel that I can draw from this is based on my experience as lead user experience designer at Littlewoods Shop Direct. Having worked as an offline print designer for 3 years, when I started work in the e-commerce team in 2000, I was able to gain a solid understanding of the differences between offline and online design. During the next 6 years, as the web become more popular, more offline graphic designers and agencies made the move into the online arena, but in the rush to produce exceptional online design work, focused on highly visual and creative solutions rather than the user experience and whether the site is usable.

On the 1 hand there are lots of examples of how web 2.0 can be used to provide compelling, rich and user friendly solutions, a large selection which can be seen over at the SEO Mozs’ web 2.0 awards.

On the other hand I do agree with the Usability News article (and more specifically Jakob Nielsen) that we will see executions of web 2.0 functionality and interaction which unfortunately fails to provide good user experiences.

As yet the current wave of web 2.0 sites have been developed using highly talented user interface designers alongside strong technical developers, but I don’t think it will be too long that the same technical developers will be asked to develop solutions from less experienced ‘print-to-web’ designers who perhaps have less groundings in the principles of good usability and user experience.

Personally speaking (through PRWD) I am starting to work on projects which will benefit from web 2.0 developments and user interactions (with a complete focus on the user experience), and I look forward to sharing these on this blog.

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!