Usability: Whats The Use by PRWD & Sigma

Usability, What’s the use? Paul Rouke Head of Usability, PRWD Christopher Bush UX and Design Consultant, Sigma

About Sigma
The UK arm of a 1300 strong IT consulting group, Sigma AB
Publicly listed on the OMX Nordic - Stockholm
Global offices: Sweden, UK, USA, China, Ukraine and Hungary
Partnerships: Microsoft, IBM and Oracle
User experience design, implementation and consulting
Web, mobile and application design and development
CMS implementation (Umbraco, WordPress, EPiServer,)
Copywriting, content creation and migration
Training in social media and writing for the web
User engagement: interviews, focus groups
Usability and accessibility testing
Requirements definition and solution design (JAD)
Rapid prototyping for web and mobile
UI design and interface testing

Sigma Clients include

A specialist usability & conversion optimisation consultancy run by Paul Rouke
Provide services to help improve website conversion rates
Expert evaluations
Usability testing
Split and multi-variate testing
In-house consultancy
Training
About PRWD

PRWD clients include

Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
What is usability?

We all know how important it is to be considerate of what people want… especially when buying presents… …look what can happen when we ’re not!

How can usability testing help you?
Understand your users
Inform design
Eliminate problems & frustration
Improve customer service and profitability
Reach more people

How does a good experience improve the effectiveness of your site?

What they don’t do
Stay still
Think that they know best
Ignore what their customers are saying
Presume their brand credibility means visitors will automatically trust them as an online retailer.

“ Our in house UX team spent weeks wireframing, designing, prototyping and usability testing a whole raft of new features that our customers had told us they wanted over the years” James Hart, eCommerce Director @ ASOS An example of what they do

What this approach has led to
Truly one of the most usable and user friendly shopping baskets I’ve seen
A superb example of what I always recommend retailers, irrespective of their size , should focus on… and this is…

Transparency

ASOS and their usable shopping basket

Waitrose

Turning the negative around

Mobile experiences

Mobile experiences Mobile commerce is a small but growing market

Mobile experiences 8% of shoppers completed purchases over Christmas 2010 survey of 10,000 shoppers by ForeSee Results, Jan 2011

Common uses of mobile So what is everyone doing?

Common uses of mobile Location based services

Common uses of mobile Small purchases & Micro payments

Common uses of mobile Product research & reviews

Common uses of mobile Product comparison

Amazon

Amazon Simple UI

Amazon Simple & predictable UI

Amazon Focus on browsing

Core navigation at foot of page Amazon

Amazon Lots of supporting information

Case studies

Case studies Lakeland

Project overview
A full e-commerce platform redevelopment
Integrating with best of breed web technologies

What they don’t do
Forget that its their customers that really matter

How PRWD helped
We delivered 2 rounds of moderated, lab based user testing
Here are some of the key insights gained…

“ It’s good information and a quick way of finding things. I like it” Mega menus make browsing easy “ Product grouping is good, and there's not too much of it, it's all there, not needing to scroll. I prefer to click and go to another page than scroll so this is good”

“ If I'm looking for something that I've never owned before, I love it if there are customer reviews” “ I like them, its better to hear off someone who's already got one rather than the person who's selling it” “ Customer reviews are good, if people are boring enough to write them , I wouldn't. I would definitely read for expensive items” Users love rating & reviews

“ I do expect to see videos now - they have them with clothes now. I wouldn't have expected it in the past but you see it a lot more so for a new website I'd definitely expect it and do find it really helpful” “ I like the video, it's giving me information that isn't in the description” Video demonstrations help the user

“ Free postage over £50 is a good thing, it would make me buy more just to not pay the postage” “ Free delivery is a big plus, even if it's incorporated within the price – I’m happy for it to be incorporated into the price” Cost of delivery can be a deal breaker

More insights
The time I had with 9 women in 9 hours – (Google ‘ 9 women x 9 hours ’ )
10 e-commerce best practice features – (Google ‘ Lakeland best practice ’ )

Usability & web forms
Common sense principles you can follow:
Keep them simple
Only ask for the minimum info required
People are busy, they don ’ t have time for big forms

Which form will visitors use most?

14% 86% Which form do visitors use most?

What is the sales conversion rate?

What is the sales conversion rate? 17%

What is the sales conversion rate? 17% 55%

Lessons learnt
Use existing customer knowledge to tailor your online experience
Enquiry forms can be long
Enquiry forms can ask users to complete multiple fields
Your enquiry form can help qualify prospects, saving you time and money

Case studies Brand Central

How Sigma helped
Product discovery and research exercises
Large scale user engagement (remote and face-to-face) with a with users across AMER, EMEA, APAC and Greater China
Two rounds of formal lab testing
Creative, interaction design and solutioning work
Development
Product awareness video and training

Features sweet spot

Lessons learnt
Always have a home button
Language and terminology can be BIG blockers
Make it easy… Interface elements should be recognisable and predictable
Reduction of complex features can increase usage

Case studies Brand Central feedback "At last – everything a creative agency could possibly need for each IHG brand, in one place and always up to date – genius!!! ” Hotcake marketing

Case studies Brand Central feedback "Brand Central has provided a quicker than average route to market and excellent resource for our hotels, enabling them to access new artwork designs which can be harnessed for far reaching marketing activity that in turn converts to commercial gain within our estate. ”

Citizens Advice

Looking for advice

http://cl.ly/2b3r3E3N2G2v1S0C2519

http://cl.ly/1Z2u3s420F0b3C0h0t1D

Usability for lead generation

Original version Impact Vs Content?

Test version A Which test won?

Original v Test version A - RESULTS + 9% Which test won?

Test version A – What and why?
Make the required and optional information more obvious
Remove the back button to encourage completion
Which test won?

Buttons, don’t you just love ‘em! Use button size, style and colour to focus the user and increase conversions

Test version A Which test won?

Test version B Which test won?

How do Ultralase do this?

Who What Why Lets do it How do Ultralase do this?

Test version A v Test version B - RESULTS + 66% Which test won?

Answering potential questions encourages conversions
Branding can be replaced with useful user information
Information can help to turn off poorer quality prospects
Think - who > what > why > lets do it
Lessons Learnt

The use of usability… Understand users Inform design Eliminate problems Improve service & profitability Reach more people

Thank you. Questions?

Office: 0161 228 0585 Email: paulrouke @ prwd.co.uk Web: http://www.prwd.co.uk PRWD 22 Lever Street Manchester M1 1EA Sigma PRWD Office: 01625 427718 Email: Hello @ wearesigma.com Web: http://www.wearesigma.com Sigma Ropewalks, Newton street Macclesfield SK11 6QJ Mobile: 07739 745 126 @WeAreSigma @PRWD / @paulrouke

Usability articles, case studies, resources & best practice available here: http ://blog.prwd.co.uk/usability/UX101

Usability: Whats The Use by PRWD & Sigma

by Paul Rouke on May 05, 2011

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Usability: Whats The Use by PRWD & Sigma — Presentation Transcript