Web Usability and Conversion

  Deﬁnitions, terms, principles   Some real-‐world examples   [n+1] actions you can start to take today   Questions and discussion 2

…and those are the last bullet points you’ll see from me! (I hate bullet points and sentence fragments.) 3

This talk is: A framework for thinking about usability, conversion, and aligning your organization on the user experience. This talk is not: A discussion of speciﬁc tools and metrics. Other presenters and vendors are covering that. 4

What is usability? Your intended users can accomplish what they’re trying to do on your site or with your product. Usability has several components. It can mean learnable, memorable, eﬃcient, and/or error-‐tolerant. 6

Learnability Satisfaction Memorability Usability Error Prevention Productivity Shneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the User Interface. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman

How about this? Usability is… Getting people to what they want or need as quickly and eﬃciently as possible. 8

…so they can: Figure out what to do next Understand why they should do it See how to do it (And will like doing it) 9

Go to Flickr.com and look for this tag: “Questionable_Design” Or follow this link: http://bit.ly/cFHvjX 15

Getting people to what they want or need as quickly as possible so they can: Figure out what to do next Understand why they should do it See how to do it (And will like doing it) 16

What Why How Like 17

Let me hear your deﬁnitions: 19

I like this deﬁnition: The fundamental purpose of marketing is to identify what people want and need, then satisfy those customers. John Rhodes, 4 Jan 08. http://bit.ly/BtfUF 20

Sound familiar? Usability and marketing share the goal of giving people what they want or need. Marketing is the what. Usability is the how. 21

Visitors who take a desired action are said to be converted. This is “well duh” stuﬀ to you all… Key point: usability is a precondition of conversion. 22

Marketing + SEO + Design + Usability Identify what Make it Give it to Ensure that they want ﬁndable them you gave it to them = Conversion! 23

When people talk about “usability”, they’re usually talking about user-‐centered design. Without a design, you have nothing to usability test! 25

Respect design. (And designers.) They help create the emotional bond that you’re trying to build with your audience. But…make sure your designers understand your business goals! (More on this later.) 26

Like “security” and “accessibility” (and “beauty”), usability is experiential – it’s experienced by the perceiver. Usability cannot be claimed, it can only be established through demonstration. 27

Determine whether your intended users can: Figure out what to do next Understand why they should do it See how to do it (And will like doing it) 28

Too product-‐focused: Thinking about the product in terms of the features it supports. 30

Leads to feature matrix thinking… And a “presence-‐ absence” mindset… Which doesn’t lead to designing to satisfy users’ goals and workﬂow. 31

Too market-‐focused: Thinking about customers at the market level, not in terms of individuals, their goals, and their workﬂow. 32

Knowing your segment and competitors doesn’t tell you how to design your site, service or product! 33

Know the product/ service Know the market Know the people who use the product/service! 34

User-‐centered design is a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of users are given extensive attention at each stage of the ideation, deﬁne, and design phases of product/service realization. 36

Two parallel work streams: Design Information architecture Interaction design Content Visual design Research Persona definition Site visits Workflow analysis User role identification Usability 37

Info architecture Interaction design Design Content End results: Visual design Validated design Iterate design Iterate design and personas and personas Validated user models Research “Default” Customer Synthesis personas site visits of customer roles and workﬂow. Usability evaluation. Time 38

Model your users! Start from demographic data, if you have it. Then interview and observe some real users. Identify their typical goals, experiences, needs. 39

It’s easy to become trapped into a product-‐ or market-‐ centered perspective… and lose site of what the customer needs. User-‐centered design gives you tools to put and keep focus on the customer, release after release. 40

It’s easy, actually… Go visit the customers Proﬁle them Build personas from the proﬁles Tell the customers’ stories (“agile”-‐ly) Illustrate the stories 41

That is…know your customers’…   Capabilities and constraints   Goals   Workﬂow   Context of use Note: you can’t get this from a survey or a focus group session. 42

Design interactions to meet your personas’ needs…   Does your persona need lots of support and reassurance? Hold their hand!   Do they want to go fast? Let ‘em tab through ﬁelds. And don’t ask them for information you don’t absolutely need. 43

Also, test your designs with actual users. And optimize with A/B/multivariate testing. 44

OK, I lied about “no more bullets.” 45

It’s not “rocket surgery.” You can do this! 48

An e-‐commerce web site I’ve worked on… First, the quick usability ﬁx. 49

That button increased the percentage of clicks to the conﬁgure and purchase path by (low) double digits. Who knew that one button could make such a big diﬀerence? Well, I did actually…  52

Conversion ≠ pretty design! What do I mean? Heheh…you’ll know in a second… 53

Pretty scary, huh? Here’s the thing: IT WORKS. 55

[Live view of Ling’s Cars] 56

“People choose a new car approx. once every 3 or 4 years. That's a LONG product cycle. So 99.9% of people don't want one today. So I need them to remember me and come back. It's a MASSIVE purchase for a 100% online sale… Name one other car leasing company you remember or even choose to discuss. You can't. See? My site does polarise, it does annoy, and it does work. Yes, yes, yes. Some like it, some hate it. At least you have an opinion :) In a very diﬃcult mature market, with massive branded competition all selling the same basic product, it diﬀerentiates. No one else ever manages that. Plus have you tried really USING any car dealer's website? Pass the razor blades. I am looking at my 7373rd visitor online today, with 71 concurrent on my site (today was/is busy). No one else manages that in my industry apart from Autotrader and eBay motors. Certainly no independents manage it.” 57

“Read how Web Design Magazine (http://bit.ly/9eTxfd) had to eat humble pie IN PRINT after I won the BT Business/NatWest IT and Communications award ( for whole of UK) in December.” -‐ Ling Valentine, Ling’s Cars 58

Ling’s approach is high risk, yes. But…she knows her customers, she understands them, and she delivers what they want and need. The site is ugly, but it’s usable. And it converts! 59

Have you deﬁned your users well? If not, your site might not be as usable as you think! 61

Are you clear on what you want your site to accomplish? Believe it or not, sometimes organizations aren’t. 62

Have you tested your… Home page? Landing pages? Account creation ﬂow? Product pages? Main conversion ﬂows? 63

Have you begun to A/B/multivariate optimize? Make it a Darwinian struggle…survival of the ﬁttest (pages). 64

If you do even some of these things, you’ll be on your way to a better designed and more usable site. And you’ll convert more visitors (to users, community members, buyers, reviewers, whatever your goal is). 65

Often, doing these things require that you change your organization. And changing organizations is hard! You need a strategy and an implementation plan. And you’re going to have to sell the plan. 66

“[Strategy is] A long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.” “Strategy is diﬀerentiated from tactics or immediate actions by its orientation on aﬀecting future, not immediate conditions.” Wikipedia.org 67

Driving from the airport to the hotel 68

Strategic plan: Go from airport to hotel Tactics: Make some turns 69

How do you “do” strategic user experience? It sometimes means big changes. It often drives process and organizational structure changes. 70

Remember, in many organizations, departments and teams are incented to create bad user experiences. Changing organization structures and incentives to refocus on the customer is hard work. 71

Oﬄine: Nordstrom’s. Virgin Air. Online: Zappos. Amazon. Land’s End. (Oﬄine too.) Who else? 72

The sad truth: most organizations don’t align on the user experience. 73

Everybody’s. And nobody’s. That’s the problem. 74

How do you take a strategic approach to creating a great user experience? A few very hard easy steps… 75

The ﬁrst step is to become aware of the problems! How? Walk through the entire customer experience. 76

From sign-‐up to initial use…free to pay conversion…calling and emailing help, tech support, billing… even closing the account. Find the sticky points, the little trapdoors. 77

Remember, one bad touchpoint aﬀects the whole brand. 78

If you don’t know about this concept, talk to your product managers. They do. A typical product manager-‐y image…  79

Leverage user experience design Yes, ﬁx the obvious user experience trapdoors and holes. But eventually, you’ll want to assess and redesign the customer touchpoints… all of them. You won’t get to do them all today. So prioritize and get ready for a long haul. 80

Yeah, but… how do I get my organization to do this? “Initiative” 81

Give yourself a new job: “User experience change agent” UX Easy to say… harder to put into practice. 82

A person who leads a business initiative by:   Deﬁning and researching the problem   Planning the intervention   Building business support for the intervention   Enlisting others to help drive change Isixsigma.com UXmatters.com – “The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent” 83

“Change agents must have the conviction to state the facts based on data, even if the consequences are associated with unpleasantness.” Isixsigma.com Uxmatters.com – “The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent” 84

Successful strategic user experience is not just about delivering a design or testing the site. 85

It’s about aligning the organization to measure and improve the user experience… Using the tools and techniques of user research and usability assessment. 86

If you’re doing your job right, you’re changing your organization. “Initiative” 87

Watch your customers in their natural habitats. You’ll learn more in three ﬁeld visits than you will in thirty focus groups…or three hundred surveys. 89

Figure out what your customers value. And why they value it. Build models of your customers. And keep ‘em updated. 90

Don’t go to the ﬁeld with a complex script. Why? Because you’ll miss the real stuﬀ – what they believe, what they’re trying to accomplish, and where their pain points are. 91

Once you’ve done your qualitative, up-‐close research, it’s time to execute. For this, you need need interaction designers, information architects, content producers, and usability experts. But share your key performance metrics with them! 92

Designers will design better if they know what outcomes and numbers you’re responsible for. Share your KPM’s with them. Make them live the KPM’s as much as you do! 93

When your design team has created a ﬁrst pass, it’s time to validate and iterate! You *can* just throw it out there if you’re willing to live with the consequences. The world makes a great usability lab. But the risk of an unpleasant and very public surprise is much higher. 94

Be bold. But don’t be reckless. Exhibit “data-‐driven boldness.” (I just made that up.) 95

This deck is posted to Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/PaulSherman 97

Connecting Cultures, Changing Organizations: The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent. Published in UXMatters Magazine, January 2007. http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000162.php Usability For Strategic User Experience. http://www.slideshare.net/PaulSherman/usability-‐for-‐strategic-‐user-‐ experience A Kit For Building User Experience Teams In R&D and Product Management Organizations. http://www.slideshare.net/PaulSherman/user-‐experience-‐kit 98

Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience www.shermanux.com paul@shermanux.com Twitter: @pjsherman 99

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Web Usability and Conversion

by Paul Sherman on Feb 23, 2010

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Web Usability and Conversion — Presentation Transcript