The Future of Usability and User Experience
Thursday, July 5th, 2007Whilst 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:
- Increased brand perception
- Increased brand loyalty
- 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!







