Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

A study carried out jointly by BITKOM and Oracle found that ‘More than 50 percent of German companies use the means of communication provided by web 2.0.’

So why are UK companies taking so long to catch on? Below are a few issues which I think are to blame.

Afraid of the unknown

For many, the online world is something they are still getting to grips with and at first it can be a daunting task to keep up to speed with the continually changing online landscape. But we all know not to knock it until you’ve tried it, and those who aren’t are getting seriously left behind.

Not buying into the idea of ‘web 2.0’

Frequently I hear ‘but we have a website, we don’t need anything else’. These little figures from Microsoft digital advertising solutions, speak for themselves:

• 73% of UK social networkers have visited the personal space of a brand
• 16% have had a dialogue or sent a message to a brand
• 68% will visit a website related to what they have seen or read on a friend’s site

It’s not enough to simply have a website – consumer’s use a range of different networks and sites to find out about your business and brand.

According to research by Hitwise (Hopkins, 2006) , social networking site MySpace is responsible for more Traffic flow into the HMV.co.uk music portal than both the Yahoo and MSN UK search engines.

Confusion on how to measure the results

There’s no jiggery pokery involved, and compared to some forms of activity this is one of the more tractable and measurable activities. On the simplest level of measurement; conducting searches to determine the number of times a brand was mentioned on forums and blogs is a good self analysis tool. However there are some pretty smart ways and means of tracking conversations about your brand which range from monitoring online share of voice within a particular sector, analyses of content and tracking micro blogs to name a few.

Not sure where to start?

A good starting point is a company blog, something that we here at PRWD could help you set up. It gives your customers and possible consumers the opportunity to see a more personal side to the company and allows them to participate and comment – and as marketeers and usability professionals know the key to building brand loyalty is getting the consumer highly involved with the brand.

I have recently provided comments on one of Bryan Eisenberg‘s articles over at Grokdotcom focused on optimising your lead generation pages.

This great article has prompted me to look at producing an article on our blog around the same subject, providing some insight into our methods of optimising our clients lead generation websites and pages.

Until this article is produced head over to Bryan’s article which I’m sure you will find provides some valuable insights and tips for your business.

Thinking back I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have an email account. Nor can I remember a time when I couldn’t get in touch with people from all over the world in a matter of seconds by simply opening up messenger or Facebook. I buy most of my electronic goods, books, and travel online and would never even dream about purchasing a product without reading reviews and checking out a few sites to gauge the sort of price I should be paying, whether I purchase online or not. Not mentioning the 30 plus sites I will check daily from news RSS feeds to bus timetables, cinema times, or downloading vouchers for the restaurant I’m going to that evening.

The extent to which this generation has grown alongside the internet means that not only are the consumers of today extremely internet savy but have very high expectations.

Many sites do not live up to consumers expectations

OK we’ve moved on a long way from the first generation of flat websites, but still some fundamental elements are being ignored by some of the major e-tailers:

• Getting the brand story from in-store experience to an online experience
• Technical issues such as slow loading page speeds or faulty links causing major dis-satisfaction and reduced conversation rates
• Poor navigation and lengthy purchasing process; consumers today will simply not tolerate this and leave your site and shop elsewhere
• Poor product images – there’s really no excuse
• Lack of innovation with available programs, applications and online communities such as 360 views, virtual tours, YouTube, Video Jug and social networking sites.

Finally and worst of all, I can still find some retailers who for reasons unknown to me have a complete lack of online presence. This can severely damage a brand and customer satisfaction.

With the fight for the consumers pound harder then ever and online spending on the increase (sales in the first quarter of 2008 are up 50% on last year, NMA 15.05.08) what better time than to address the usability and design of your website? Check out our website and range of usability services for more info

A recent post on E-consultancy entitled Five reasons why you should embrace Usability provides the following reasons as to why businesses, especially true for businesses operating e-commerce websites, can’t ignore the challenge of making their online experience usable. Instead businesses should embrace usability:

1. You seriously can’t afford not to

Repeat: you cannot afford to ignore the user experience. Especially if you sell online. Or if you can afford to then you aren’t optimising your business performance. It’s that simple.

2. User experience can be more important than brand and price

It can be argued that the user experience is more important than both brand and price. What use is a brand like Gap when there is no on-site search tool on Gap.com?

What use is discounting prices when your checkout process is poor and haemorrhages prospective buyers? Conversely, a startup with no known brand and average prices can get on the map by being more user-friendly than established competition.

3. Gain the competitive advantage

There is a bigger picture here: a higher than average conversion rate will ultimately help you to outbid competitors on Google Adwords.

Usability studies can help you convert as many prospective customers as possible. Again, with Google Adwords in mind, if you are paying to attract these prospects then it becomes even more important to realize a return on your (paid search) investment.

Likewise, if your site converts well, then affiliates will like sending traffic to your site as the earnings per click (EPC) they get from you (how much money they make on average per referral they send you) will be better than your competition.

4. Focus on web standards

Usability studies will test your website for errors, as well as problem zones. Error-free code is important for various reasons, not least your Google rankings.

5. You are already spending on design

Websites should be constantly tweaked for optimum business results, but even if you only update your site every couple of years you will still spend a lot of money, so make sure you spend it wisely.

Invest 5%-20% of your design budget on usability to be sure that your new design is in line with what your users want. Usability first, changes second.

My thoughts on why businesses can’t ignore usability

Alongside the comments above, introducing usability into an existing website, by way of either small, subtle changes, for instance to the visibility of key site tools, or by carrying out a complete expert usability site critique, through a complete cycle of card sorting, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, user testing, eye tracking and carrying out focus groups (a non definitive list) businesses can achieve clear increases in visitor conversion rates, shopping basket sizes, registrations, applications, newsletter sign-ups and other specific goals which the business is targeting for their website.

Visitors experiencing good usability on an e-commerce site will:

1. be more likely to complete a shopping process
2. be more willing to browse additional ranges of products that wouldn’t normally be looking for
3. enjoy their experience and be more inclined to revisit the site in future
4. have confidence in the ways in which they can find the products they are looking for (ie. by an intuitive navigation system, by a clear and helpful search facility, by special seasonal specific promotions, plus viewing related products whilst that are browsing the ranges)
5. feel in control of their browsing at all times, avoiding the feeling of being lost and having to go back to the homepage and start again
6. recommend the site to friends and colleagues who share similar shopping styles, therefore providing the business with free publicity
7. be more receptive to marketing communications from the business

And my final benefit (for this post) to a businesses providing good online usability…

Customers will visit and shop from the site again and again, as it is somewhere where they feel comfortable and in control, which helps develop trust in the brand. Visitors are always more likely to remember a site they have enjoyed using than one which confused or frustrated them.

Users clicking on a link from a search engine results page expect that the explanation of the site as shown by the search engine matches the content of the site they land on. Therefore to provide an optimal initial user experience the page title and description should accurately describe the contents of that page.

Page Titles & Descriptions for Search Engine Optimisation

As detailed in this wonderfully detailed and informed report on search engine ranking factors, by www.seomoz.org, page titles in particular play a highly significant part in ranking a site on the like of Google.

Search Engine Optimisation for PRWD Client’s

The clients that my business, PRWD, work for all benefit from the knowledge and expertise of these kinds of ranking factors which help to give the site significant and high exposure on the major search engines for non brand search queries. 2 case studies of SEO, which include the factors highlighted in the report, are for Blue Rhapsody SEO and Swift Dental SEO.