Last week Google Analytics sent out an email regarding some new features which look fantastic. They include:

1. Google Analytics Real-Time
2. Multi-Channel Funnels
3. Mobile Reporting
4. Flow Visualization

From a UX perspective we are really excited about the information we will be able to glean from our users with these new features and can’t wait to use them.

In particular Multi-Channel Funnels looks particularly valuable by providing amazing insights into the various touch points which occur prior to converting or purchasing. This will help to avoid the risk of looking at website in isolation.

For more information see http://bit.ly/su90wr.

We sometimes have clients come to us who want a rich, descriptive understanding of their users’ behaviour and motivations, whilst at the same time expecting statistics and hard figures to go with this. If time and budget had no limits this could most definitely be achieved. However, we often find ourselves giving clients a mini rundown of the limitations and benefits of each approach so they are in the best position to understand our proposed solution.

The Pros:

The Cons:

Understanding the why’s and the process of something is essentially what qualitative research can unveil, however if it is numbers and statistics that you are after then quantitative is the best approach to take. It would not make sense to run a series of in-depth interviews with a focus on user needs and then use this information to say 66% of users want X and 25% of users don’t need Y. It simply does not make sense. What you can do is provide a summary of the users’ mental model, the process they take when approaching a task and the information they need to support this. Or map out the customer journey that highlights user needs during each stage.

While it is generally agreed that each approach is distinct and has unique properties, they are often used to complement each other. For example, when a quantitative analysis identifies that the customer conversion rate has dropped 30% in a re-designed website, it often uses qualitative research (i.e. moderated user testing) to understand why. Similarly, when a quantitative survey is delivered, the questions it asks have most likely been informed from qualitative research preceding it (i.e. depth interviews).

While there is much debate around which is the better research technique and why, what isn’t attested is that the most accurate results occur when a triangulated approach is taken – that is, when they are used together.

Google has recently made some pretty comprehensive changes to their Gmail interface. One change that I found interesting is what Google are calling ‘Display Density’, which automatically adjusts the layout of the page based on the size of the browser window. Google have also provided three settings that can be used to adjust the density of information on the page and afford users a level of control over how the page looks. While I don’t think the implementation is quite right, it is an interesting way to solve the problem of designing interfaces that will be used on devices with screens of all shapes and sizes.

Gmail Display Density Settings (https://mail.google.com/mail/help/newlook_sizes.html)

The issue of what resolution to assume for a user group is one that we come up against regularly and will become more of an issue as the use of multiple devices to access the same interface by the same user becomes more common. Imagine accessing Gmail from a 21 inch widescreen in work, a 13 inch notebook in the home office and on an iPad on the train.

I feel that this type of functionality is a really positive step and will help to preserve the integrity of the overall experience across devices while optimizing it for the screen size being used at any one time and I hope to see more of this type of functionality.

Over the last few weeks I have been on the road doing a bunch of user interviews. This has been a great opportunity to catch up with some of my favorite podcasts (as an aside – I can highly recommend Radiolab, a science podcast to fuel your inner geek). In general, I am a big fan of podcasts as a medium for consuming information which has led me to sample many podcasts over the years but very few have engaged me sufficiently  to keep me listening. With this in mind I thought I would bring together some tips on creating engaging podcasts.

1. Keep the context of use in mind

2. Chunk content into chapters

3. Focus content on the topic of the podcast

4. Ensure the start of the podcast is engaging

5. Entertain the listener

6. Keep advertising separate from content, either at the end or beginning

Watch out for more detail in our newsletter this month.

This post has come about because we are currently working with a peak government body in the accessibility space and have been discussing accessibility around the office. When accessibility comes up, I always refer new colleagues to an article by Phil Powell which is available on Boagworld. Listening to Phil talk about accessibility was the point where I really began to understand its’ importance – I recommend listening to him (http://boagworld.com/podcast/205/ -  is at about 17 minutes from the end), or reading the article on Boagworld.

Accessibility is a topic which is of importance to all organisations however I would suggest that it is often misunderstood. My discussions with clients and colleagues within the industry would suggest that most think of accessibility as building interfaces for disabled people.  I would suggest that accessibility is much broader than this; it is ensuring that interfaces are available to all people. Accessibility doesn’t just assist those with disabilities it assists everyone; older people, visitors who temporarily do not have access to a mouse, users who do not have the latest graphical browsers and plug-ins, people with slow Internet connections, people who access the web in noisy, or low-light environments, people using mobile devices, people with injuries, the elderly and so on.

Put simply I wrote this post to highlight the article by Phil Powell which I feel is of value to everyone who works with websites.

As a side note, we had a question this week from a client about CMS’s which help to generate accessible code.  This article is also worth a read.

After spending a day performing about 500 Google searches of various businesses for a recent project, we made the observation that many organisations are not optimizing the metadata tags in their websites for their users; namely neglecting to use metadata to communicate the nature and content of the website and to encourage people to click on their link.

Example of Metadata

(Note: don’t know what metadata is? It’s essentially ‘data about data’, and is entered into the head tags of your HTML content. It is made up of a number of tags, including “description”, “keywords” and “language”. Search engines essentially read metadata to ‘understand’ what a page is about).

Our observation about metadata was inspired by the search results of a large business, who had not edited the descriptive metadata tags in their website after it was created with a template, leaving the ‘lorem ipsum’ filler text to display in their search results. Metadata is the foundation of all information retrieval processes and its importance in good user experience should not be taken lightly. It is possible that certain metadata tags have been both neglected or abused over the years, due to aggressive black-hat SEO tactics, or theories about SEO and the relevance of the metadata tags. Despite the rumours and the SEO myths, metadata is still a critical step in correctly identifying and defining the content and structure of a website.

Descriptive metadata entered in a website source code is important because it is the first port of call for users to gain an understanding of a website (this is the metadata entered in the meta “description” tag of your website code). It is the text that is displayed in search results and is generally all a user will refer to when they determine if they want to click on that link. If the metadata gives the users false expectations of the content of a website, than user dissatisfaction can occur. Users do not want to have to click around to find information they expected to see elsewhere, or be taken to a dead end. Descriptive metadata needs to be a brief, accurate and keyword rich description of the site’s content. No more than 250 characters will be displayed in search engine results, so keep it short and to the point so users don’t miss out on vital content.

Metadata within a website should also be consistent; a unified metadata structure also indicates a clean and intuitive taxonomy within your website. Using a metadata vocabulary such as Dublin Core can ensure your website’s metadata is thorough and aids in content retrieval and management. When evaluating the information architecture of your website, look beyond your navigational structure and ensure your metadata is also intuitive, relevant and matches your target audience’s expectations of content and classification. Good information architecture structure encompasses all elements of the page, including those the users don’t necessarily see.

We are often asked by our clients to find out whether their customers would use or need a Smartphone or tablet app to access their functionality or content. Of course the answer depends on the business and the target user group but it often raises the question of whether a native app, web app, or mobile optimized website is the most appropriate approach where the business wants to facilitate use of mobile devices.

Gmail Web App

The pros and cons of each approach are too numerous to list here, however, in depth understand the context in which their users need to interact with them on mobile devices is often an overlooked consideration. Native apps are great for providing a slick, rich and integrated experience. However, if your customers access your content from mobile devices rarely or are more likely to use web search to find you, developing a native app may not represent the most cost effective solution and choosing instead to develop a mobile-optimised website would be more appropriate. Simply having a native app will not enhance the overall experience if users are not likely to download it in the first place. Companies like Amazon take the approach of catering for all eventualities but most online businesses do not have Amazon’s user base or deep pockets and must choose what to implement.

We believe that establishing context of use and the needs of users with respect to mobile device access is an essential when planning how to facilitate mobile device user interaction. This will make sure that the business understand when, where and what users access on their mobile devices and ensure that the most appropriate, and cost effective, implementation is used.

Accessibility is often one of those things  placed in the ‘too hard’ basket, or worse deemed unimportant as it thought to be only relevant to a small portion of the population.  The fact of the matter however, is that accessibility benefits all internet users.  Accessible websites and the information they contain are generally easier to comprehend, more user friendly and often more compatible across a range of web browsers, including mobile browsers.

Image from http://www.korten.in/Accessibility.aspx

While undertaking a full accessibility review can be a daunting process that may require the input from a professional, there are a few simple things everyone can do, to ensure that their websites are more accessible.

1. Do not make your website dependent on colours.
   Colour alone should never be relied upon to convey meaning to users. Links should always be underlined, and important information and forms should always be labelled correctly.It is easy, when designing a website, to think your website is immune from colour blindness problems because it doesn’t use red or green. In reality, there are many different types of colour blindness and the only way to ensure that your design is truly accessible is to check your foreground and background colour combinations to determine if they provide good visibility. 

   The W3C official statement on colour visibility is: “two colours are considered to provide good colour visibility if the brightness difference and the colour difference between the two colours are greater than a set range.” The range suggested by the W3C is > 125 for colour brightness and > 500 for colour difference.”.

   An easy way to check the contrast levels of your website’s colour scheme is to download the Vision Australia Colour Contrast Analyser for webpages: (http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=628). This tool analyses all colour schemes according to the W3C guidelines for contrast and provides a pass or fail mark. It can be changed to particularly target different types of colour blindness so all types of visually impaired users can be tested.

2. Place alt text on all images and media.
   Text equivalents should always be provided for all images on your website, as screen readers cannot ‘read’ images, they read the information provided in the alt tags. If the image used contains text, all text should also be included. Having alt text in the image tag ensures users relying on screen readers can hear the description of all images, rather than just hearing the file name. It can also be useful when pictures cannot be downloaded from the server, which often occurs when users are on slow connections. Alt text is particularly essential when an image is used as a main navigational link.Alt tags can be easily placed within the <img> tag of your website’s HTML body code. For those who are unsure, look for the tags that look like this: <img src=”/images/styles/usabilityone.gif” alt=”UsabilityOne”/> The alt text for this image exists after the ‘alt=’ tag, and reads as “UsabilityOne” 

   If you’re not sure about whether to provide alt text for your graphic; the safest solution is to always include it.
   It is also good accessibility practise to ensure your page is not dependent on images for navigation, or that the whole page is an image (e.g. one huge JPG created in Photoshop).

3. Use meaningful and distinctive page titles.
   Another easy way to improve the accessibility of your website is to ensure each of your website’s pages has a different and meaningful title. The title is the text placed between the <title> tags in your website’s source code, and is displayed in the tab of each browser, so you can see the description of each page you’re on (see image below). 

   It is also the first thing a screen reader will come across after a web page fully loads, so it is vital that it gives your visually impaired users a meaningful description of what page they are on, and to differentiate between other web pages.

   Have a look at the titles on each of your web pages that come up in the tab of your browser. Is it succinct and descriptive enough to give a reader an understanding of the page they are on? If someone was just relying on this, could they tell it apart from the other pages within your site? If it doesn’t do these two things, it’s worthwhile manually changing the text in-between the <title> tags in your source code, or asking your web developer to change it to something more appropriate.

   A good habit when creating a window title is to ensure it always follows the format “Page Title | Company/Organisation Name”. This format lists the page identifying information first.

While businesses strive hard to increase their online visibility, at the same time they also make it really difficult for customers to contact them. Some classical examples are :

(a) use of long contact forms which force users to follow a strict template that doesn’t address their specific needs with respect to contacting the organisation, and

(b) email ids like info@companyname.com where emails are seldom read.  Still worse is to provide a phone number which never gets answered.

Does this reflect on the callous attitude of businesses or can it be passed off as a norm? In my humble opinion, the attitude reflects indifference towards their customers.

Contact channels, response rates and turnaround times should be governed by stringent KPIs. Without these in place, many of the queries go unanswered and users/customers lose faith in the brand. This could have a severe impact on the user experience.

Photo credit – ihasahotdog.com

If you have a product/services/corporate website, there are a few key things to watch out for:

1. Contact options listed should be responsive – Under the pretext of encouraging users to use the website, some organizations do not list contact numbers upfront or through direct means. They use a contact form or email option. We have been witnessing this trend especially with a few ecommerce websites. Understandable that maintaining a 24X7 call centre might be out of the budget for small to midsized organizations. In those cases, the contact forms or email option should be extremely responsive. Any lapse could mean loss of credibility and therefore loss of a business opportunity.

2. Keep the contact form short and simple – Long forms are discouraging. So keep it short, simple and to the point. Extract minimal (mandatory) information from the users. Templates are great to divert or route queries to the appropriate departments. But ensure all query types are covered and also provide an ‘others’ option to widen the range.

3. Promote self help options but not at the cost of user’s time – FAQs are great information resources. When provided in conjunction with contact us option, users tend to use this more effectively. But there are few times, when users do not have the time to go through the FAQs in detail. In such situations, users should have access to contact details quickly and not have to go through the hassle of looking through the website to find this information.

Irrespective of the nature of contact channel, the key performance indicators (KPI) should be defined and adhered to at all times.  Different organizations favor different communication channels. Depending upon the channel of choice, guidelines should be defined. For instance: if email is the preferred choice, have an auto generated email acknowledging the receipt of the query and also clearly outlining the timeline within which the user can expect to hear back from the organization. Besides the above mentioned points, provide an alternative option if the user has an urgent query to be processed. Also, be conscious of the timeline provided to the user and provide a response within the time frame. In case of any delays, communicate the message to the user. This will help in addressing user anxiety and avoid scenarios where they send repeated requests.

One of the interesting takeouts from our recent eCommerce research is that online ‘window shopping’ is increasingly becoming part of our lives.

So, what does this mean for eCommerce retailers? This information points to the importance of the browsing experience. It also presents a significant opportunity. Providing a site that is intuitive and user friendly, which allows users to quickly and easily browse products has benefits for retailers. It encourages users to spend more time on the site, which provides more opportunity to convert those browsers into purchasers.

How do you increase the usability of an online store in terms of browsing? Beyond the standard usability best practice for websites, our research identified another key aspect: flexibility. Retailers need to create an environment which provides the flexibility for users to browse the site how they wish. This involves allowing users to refine and sort products by a number of different factors such as category, brand, price and size.

A solid understanding of the different ways users may wish to browse products on a particular website is essential for retailers. This will differ depending on the product offerings. For example, a user who is browsing LED TVs will likely wish to sort products by screen size. However, a user browsing a used car website may wish to sort products based on any number of factors (year, manufacturer, kilometers traveled or number of doors to name just a few). The used car website highlights the importance of browsing flexibility for online stores.

Another important aspect of browsing flexibility is the ability for users to control the number of items displayed on a page. Users have expressed that pressing ‘next’ can get very annoying when a website displays a set number of products per page, with no option to increase or decrease this number. Allowing users to decide how many products they wish to view further provides the flexibility users seek from online stores.

Providing relevant, logical sorting options (and the functionality to clear these options at any time) enables users to browse a site according to their needs, facilitating a more enjoyable experience. For retailers, this provides the added benefit of potentially increasing online sales.

For further information related to eCommerce best practice, please view our report: ‘The State of Online Retail – Part 1’ (PDF – 6.4MB).