Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

Yesterday evening I was in great company at the Just The One (JT1) Summer BBQ, chiefly organised by Ian Jindal, at Flow Interactive’s offices in Clerkenwell, EC1.

Along with exchanging views on the UK retailing industry and the usability market, I was down in London speaking to E-consultancy about potential collaboration between them and PRWD. More on this in due course.

I must firstly compliment head chef for the evening Ian Worley, Director of User Experience at Flow, for providing a superb feast from the BBQ (the Beef Skirt marinated in Chimichurri sauce was devine!) along with a couple of others from Flow.

Moving on to the conversations, Ian Jindal’s influence in bringing together the likes of the MD of Bazaarvoice, the Head of E-commerce at Otto and the Head of Web Services at WPP allowed for some really stimulating conversations. Coupled with the fact the hosts Flow are usability advocates and dedicated to User Centered Design, it was no surprise that user experience was one of the primary topics being discussed, which naturally meant I had plenty to say indeed!

My only regret from the evening was not having the time to speak to all the attendees, although I’m sure at the next event this can be addressed. For the people I did spend time chatting to, a few follow up comments from me..

Theresa, we should definitely talk more soon on me potentially becoming part of the Customer Engagement Unit. The Q&A session I mentioned which will be of interest was on Findability for Web Design and Marketing over on Dave Chaffey’s website.

Rob, to confirm I would be very interested in exploring collaboration opportunities between cScape and PRWD in areas of user centered design and customer experience. Lets talk some more.

Gavin, it was great to chat with you about some of the usability and accessibility challenges you are faced with when managing the WPP website, and the move towards Sharepoint 2007 at some point in the future sounds like one meaty challenge! Oh and on a lighter note, Buzz Quiz TV should definitely be added to your roster of interactive and engaging PS3 games - it will give some of your fingers a rest from Guitar Hero!

Camilla, thanks for your kind words about me having the drive and ambition to build my own business, and it was great to share stories on different areas of buying psychology. And keep seeking that killer idea that will allow you to develop your own business!

Geke, it was great chatting to you about product and user research, and thanks for your keen interest you had in our usability methods and our business model, not to mention our recruitment strategy centered around psychometric profiling. Our recruitment partner in this is Psycuity.

Lee, sorry we didn’t get too much time together before you headed off, and once you’re back from your extended holiday we should definitely get together to further discuss collaboration opportunities - I also need to take you through our business model for UCDcommerce, our blue chip retailing capability and e-commerce platform.

Joris, after seeing your name many times on Fred Hopper literature during my days at Shop Direct Group, it was great to chat with you and share views on the state of the blue chip retailing sector, and the penetration (or lack of) of highly experienced usability experts within the UK and European market. We most certainly need to explore collaboration opportunities!

John, its great to hear the scale of demand you have for UCD services at Flow, and I’ll look forward to exploring opportunities for PRWD to provide additional consultancy and UCD resource for your business. As I mentioned the Manchester based agency we provide these types of services for is Fast Web Media, recent winner at the NMA awards in the Consumer Products and Services category for their work with Coors.

Chris, it was great to finally meet you in person, and it was interesting to compare the challenges faced by Otto Group and Shop Direct Group in attracting the younger, more web savvy shoppers through the likes of your Oli brand. Congratulations on the launch of your new Freemans website also - following my user experience review of House of Fraser which Ian found extremely useful, if time permits I will look at doing a UX review of your new site!

Carol-Ann, it was great to catch up with you and reminisce on our Shop Direct days, and best of luck with your involvement in the re-platforming of the Otto group retailing sites - a necessary evil I’m sure!

Last but not least is Ian himself! Once again Ian it was unfortunate that my train back up north trimmed my evening (don’t mentioned the 1.5 hour delay I ended up with!) but I was intrigued with your explanation of how P-XML is one of your new passions. Oh and not to mention your totally merited trupet blowing (and live demo) for the new viral iPhone game for Carling!

And that’s a wrap. Just seeing the length of this post its probably for the best that I didn’t speak to everyone!

So to all you attendees, feel free to add your comments on how you felt the evening went…

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.

Ashley over at E-consultancy has just posted a new article on multivariate and A/B testing, which they see as being a key testing and optimisation technique in the future. I agree and have posted a response, and I expect his post will generate a significant amount of feedback and interest from software providers and other online marketers.

In particular for e-commerce sites, from my experience these types of testing can provide clear commercial insights into what is and isn’t working on their website, and I expect to be involved in such projects quite frequently.

An article which I have come across is titled Multivariable Testing, which provides a very good insight and further links to anyone who is interested in this topic.

What thoughts or experiences do any of you have on this form of testing and optimisation? Please share your comments.

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.