As we are well aware, the internet has changed the way we do things. The way in which retailers ask us to sign up for loyalty programs or clubs is one of those things that has changed. It was not long ago that you would stand in the store and fill out a paper-based application in order to join a loyalty program. Now you are handed a card and asked to complete the application online in your own time. A recent experience highlighted the importance of a smooth integration between the off-line and on-line elements of the application process.

During a recent visit to Borders bookshop, at the checkout I decided to sign up for their new VIP loyalty program. I was handed the membership card and told to complete my application online. When I arrived home and logged onto the website for the life of me I could not find how to complete my membership application. Despite my expertise and experience in user interfaces, this task proved difficult. I became frustrated not being able to locate the call to action from the homepage, referencing both the instruction pamphlet and the membership card in search for further assistance. Finally I found the text link labelled ‘Join Boarders v.i.p’ in the top right of the screen.

If your company requires users to finalise what begins as an offline process via your website keep the following in mind:

Highlight promotional features prominently on the homepage: As I was coming to the site with the sole purpose of completing a process I had begun offline, I wanted the process to be as quick and seamless as possible. I was looking for a prominent call to action, something that grabbed my attention straight away. I was looking for a large advertisement, particularly as this loyalty program was a new feature.

User workflows differ when the task begins offline: In my example above, when I arrived on the website I was not thinking in terms of ‘joining’ as the link suggested, I thought I had already joined due to having received the card in-store. Instead I was looking for a way to finalise the process, looking for key words such as ‘Register your VIP card’. An additional call out box on the homepage which referenced my offline step (receiving the card) would have been extremely helpful.

Know your audience: Joining a bookstore’s loyalty program does not necessarily require users to interact with the company online. Many customers may join the loyalty program only to use the benefits in the physical store. You are therefore likely to attract more customers that may not be so familiar with the internet than if it was an online bookstore for example. Providing clear calls to action as mentioned above, would greatly assist these users.

This month’s UsabilityOne newsletter includes Jonathon’s article on the important questions you should address before undertaking a round of user testing. The newsletter also includes what UsabilityOne has been up to, as well as a couple of articles we think are worthwhile sharing.

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Forty years ago not many people would have been able to accurately predict the advancements made in technology at the turn of the century and beyond. However, one prediction that has held true (relatively) is Moore’s Law conjured up in 1965.

Moore’s Law states that technology and computing will develop at an exponential rate. That is, every 18 months or so performance of technology is double that of what it was two years ago. In essence, technological growth is continuously accelerating.

But accelerating towards what? Exponential laws have no finishing point, they merely continue to grow at an enormous rate. So is this trend really to continue at the same rate or will there one day be a plateau? You would think there would be what with a limited number of resources in the world, but then again, I continue to be amazed by the latest products to come out.

Figure 1 The exponential growth of the number of transistors in computer processors (Taken from www.intel.com)

So without an end in sight, what does all this new technology mean? Well, put simply, those of us working in the computer and technology industry will have jobs for many years to come.  There is always something to push us forward, whether it be a competitor’s latest release, or a new idea that has only just taken off (3D television comes to mind). For us at UsabilityOne it means we will always have something else to look forward to testing, and for those of you who are thinking of updating websites, softwares or other technologies, it means you have a range of options that are always changing and always improving. So which one do you choose?

Although it can sometimes be overwhelming to try to take in the seemingly limitless amount of technology around us, we should not despair but should embrace. The most important thing we should take away from Moore’s Law is that we should always be on our toes, because as the nature of the law suggests, now more than ever before there will be new gadgets and gizmos coming at us.

Now, you may be sitting there thinking “I have all these proposals on my desk for website improvements and new designs but how do I know what is going to work best”. Of course there is no one simple answer – it depends on your business, your goals, your budget, etc. One tip we can give though is to work from the top down: What does your company do? What are your goals? It is crucial to have a clear sense of what you are aiming to achieve by implementing a new design technology. A couple of examples are listed below:

• A company wants to increase its sales so it implements an eCommerce feature on its site
• A university wants to improve its student interaction with its online learning facilities so they aim to implement a more interactive website using javascript and videos

To make the most of the myriad of available technologies, first decide what you want and/or need, then conjure a plan to best implement what is available. Identify the goals and objectives of the business, any boundaries which impact on your decision, and assess your timelines to choose a suitable direction in which to proceed. You may not need the best technology, you just need the best technology for you.

I recently purchased a Kindle e-reader from Amazon. When the package arrived, I was quite amused to see the following message on the packaging of the power adapter that I had included in the order: “Certified Frustration-Free Packaging”.

Quite a big call. I immediately wondered what had led them to include this “certification” on their packaging. My amusement quickly turned to … that’s right, frustration, when I could not work out how to open the packaging!

In user experience we often speak about affordances, that is the way in which something is designed suggests how you can interact with it. Along one side of the packaging are two rows of dots which often suggests an affordance of “tear here”, (see below) which was consistent with the packaging of the Kindle device. I quickly found out that this is not the way to open the package. Next I looked for another common affordance on packaging a “tab” (like that on the image below) that suggests where you should open a package, but no joy.

Eventually I worked out how to open the package and happily charged my Kindle. I found the experience quite amusing (also a little frustrating) and think that it is a great demonstration of how user experience principles don’t just apply to graphical interfaces. To my mind, there are three important design considerations that the packaging didn’t adhere to:

1. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver on – certified frustration-free experience

2. Affordances – the design should provide visual clues of how users can interact with a product

3. Consistency – interactions and the way in which they are presented (e.g. “tear here”) should be consistent

UsabilityOne Managing Director, Shef Bey was interviewed earlier this week by Power Retail. See a video of the interview here…
http://www.powerretail.com.au/insights/usability-testing-essential-for-optimised-online-user-experience/

At UsabilityOne we have extensive experience, not only in evaluating search functionalities across a wide range of websites, but also in helping our clients gathering user requirements and designing the user experience for their search functionality.

Search is an important user interface element in any website. Research shows that around 10% of users will elect to use search as their primary means of locating content within a website. However our experience indicates that most users will turn to search when they have been unsuccessful in locating content via a site’s navigation structure. In addition, when it comes to search, Google sets users’ expectations to a high standard.

So, how do we evaluate the performance of a site search, from a usability perspective? Well, this question can be addressed from two separate angles: firstly, from a classic usability evaluation perspective we can compare how the site search performs against search best practice and observe users searching the site. Secondly, we can look at Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) to monitor how the site search is performing over time.

At UsabilityOne we suggest the following seven KPIs that relate to search:

1. Average searches per visit
2. Percent of visitors using search
3. Percent of zero results searches
4. Percent of zero yield search
5. Results Page views per search
6. Search result to site exits ratio
7. Percent of search refinements

Unfortunately, the above KPIs do not monitor how well suited to the query the search results are. Some qualitative methods need to be put in place in order to monitor both the appropriateness of the search terms used and also the relevance of the results returned.

The story behind each of these quantitative and qualitative measures will be published in our next newsletter.

We recently conducted focus groups and one-on-one interviews on behalf of a Client who was looking to break in to a very well established segment.  Findings from our work indicated that there was a a high reliance on search in the segment – as a result, traffic in the segment is predominantly driven towards one existing and very well SEO’d website.  Interestingly, however, was that the site’s brand recognition was extremely low.  By name, users were not able to identify the site, yet were able to instantly identify the site on viewing one of its listings pages.

Naturally, implementing a thorough SEO strategy was one of our top recommendations coming out of the project.  But that wasn’t the most important outcome of the study.

There was a more nefarious impact of the users’ habits.  Due to the large proportion of traffic being dominated by this one site, its characteristics tended to dominate when we explored what participants were looking for in a website for this category.

So, is this a bad thing?  Well, not necessarily.  On the one hand, we were able to very clearly identify those features which support task fulfilment in the segment.  But on the other hand, users tended to gravitate to that particular site’s visual design in describing their preferences.  When we probed further on the issue, it became clear to us that these preferences were the result of familiarity only.

UsabilityOne doesn’t ascribe to the school of ‘design by rote’.  Having a site with a visual appeal that is exactly the same as your competitors’ sites may help drive acceptance in the short term, but without a unique positioning, there is little to drive repeat visitation or brand recognition.  And in the case of this particular segment, we feel the market dominance of the existing site is clearly at risk, when it could easily be toppled by a similarly designed site with a better SEO strategy.

We spent a lot of time analysing the data from our fieldwork, and were able to provide our Client with a clear picture of the users’ needs, which they’ve used to drive their design approach to producing a site that will be clearly focused on user task fulfilment, while also being unique in its design approach.  Lesson learned here:  Your (potential) customers only know what they know – beware of taking their feedback too literally, or risk creating plenty of bland ‘me-too’ websites that lack stickiness.

I recently purchased a new mobile phone from a major Australian Telco, at the same time I moved from a pre-paid service to a contract, all with the same telco. Unfortunately, all did not go smoothly and this led to numerous interactions with customer support over a one-week period. Throughout the process I experienced a number of frustrations, all of which were exacerbated by having to engage with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu each time I called customer support.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that IVR is a great tool, and has many brilliant applications. However, what made this Telco’s implementation of IVR frustrating was that rather than providing the caller with a number of options to select from, the system initially asks the caller to explain the reason for their call. This assumes that the caller already knows the options that are available to them and the words/phrases that they will need to use in order to access the correct menu option.

In my opinion, this is like telling me that I need a key to unlock the door in front of me and rather than providing me with a set of keys that I can compare to the keyhole I am given some materials and told to go ahead and make a key a key that fits the lock. What makes it worse is that I HAVE to go through this particular door, there are no alternatives. Best of luck.

Here is an example of my first exchange with “Lara”:

Telco: “Hi, I’m Lara, welcome to [Telco name]. I’m here to help you with your call today. All you have to do is talk to me. So using just a few words, tell me the reason for your call.”

Me: “I have ported the number from my old pre-paid sim card to my new contract sim card. I am now receiving calls to my old number on my new handset but my handset indicates that the phone number of my sim card is different. I suspect that this may be why I can’t access or setup voicemail.  I would like to get this fixed. ”

Telco: “Sorry, I missed that. I’ll understand you better if you use just a few words.”

Me:  frustrated pause…”issues with my new sim card and voicemail”.

The system then latches onto some words in my statement that relate to their menu structure and offers me what it sees as the most relevant option. I have no idea if this is the right option as I don’t know what all of the options are and I won’t know until I speak to someone, quite often after a prolonged period on hold. As a result, I frequently found myself in the wrong department with no idea how to get to the right department. The very friendly call centre staff often transferred me to another department, but due to the Telco’s use of VOIP, the call repeatedly dropped out before I got to speak to anyone and it was back to Lara to start all over again.

All-in-all, it leads to an extremely poor user experience which tarnished my perception of the brand and has led me to actively recommend family and friends avoid this Telco. My experience serves to highlight how menus provide invaluable orientation for users. I suspect that my frustration would have been greatly reduced if Lara had started off by providing me with a list of options to choose from. Perhaps even more importantly for this telco, I would not have clogged up their customer support line with my queries for a week if I had been provided with these options up front. You have to wonder how much money they are spending on servicing customer support calls which could be avoided by simply offering customers a list of options to choose from at the start of the customer service call.

Youtube, who’s heard of it? Everybody according to a report released last month  [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/online-videos-approach-a-billion/story-e6frg996-1225916568105] which states more and more people in Australia and across the world tuned in online to watch the latest clips and videos. And, although it saddens me to see that Justin Beiber’s song, “Baby” ft. Ludacris has taken the crown for most watched video of all time, the first video ever to reach over 300 million views, we can turn this tragedy around and use evil for good.

So while you may not be a prepubescent teen lamenting on puppy love, you can incorporate video into your site to increase its popularity, regardless of whether you want to earn money, share knowledge or increase page views. To assist, we have come up with the following pointers on how to incorporate videos into websites:

• Make it snappy. Smaller chunks of videos attract a viewer’s attention and will hold it compared to longer single clips.
• Pop up windows don’t work. Instead, place the video in the page – this helps the user read the text in conjunction with the clip.
• Stick with interface conventions. Although you may have the urge to break the mould, don’t. Turning a play button icon into a hexagon may confuse and/or alienate your viewer.
• Ideally, avoid including advertising however if this is not possible choose your advertising videos wisely. Make sure your adverts relate to the website content.
• Finally, and most importantly, quality. Sound volume going up and down is never a turn on. When creating your video pay attention to the quality of your video and audio content

With 84% of brand and agency marketers currently using some form of online video in their marketing efforts, now is definitely the time to jump on the bandwagon and make your site noticed. But what do you think? Have we missed anything out? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Organizations are always under tremendous pressure to keep ahead of the competition. As a result, they explore novel ways to shorten their product development lifecycle. Most often it is the various testing phases which bear the brunt of the cuts in time and resources.

Due to budget and time constraints, usability testing is often left out of the process altogether. Some organizations mistakenly associate usability testing only with the end product, which is actually contrary to the principle of user centric design process. Introducing usability testing (particularly the rapid iterative form, as explained below) at the early stages of product development can in fact save organizations from facing unpleasant and time consuming surprises later.

When your organization has an aggressive launch schedule ahead, rapid iterative usability testing can support your launch quite effectively if conducted during the appropriate phases of product development. As the name implies, it is a rapid/quick process and is done in iterations.  The end result will typically be as if you conduct two rounds of usability testing before the product even hits the market – all without sacrificing time and slowing your production schedule.

The success of the method rides on few critical aspects;

1. Don’t save the best for last, start usability testing early. A working prototype could be an excellent candidate for testing. Utilize paper prototype in case all the sections of prototype are not functional.
2. Besides the testing team, the product team’s involvement in this exercise is critical. Product management and development teams should also make themselves available to view the sessions. This will ensure that the team understands the severity of usability issues and also be able to quickly decide on major amendments to the product.
3. Sprints should be carefully planned to accommodate the time required to make changes on the prototype.
4. A rapid testing process does not mean the number of testing participants should be reduced – test with too few participants, and you risk injecting bias into the process.
5. Setting the expectations of the participants is crucial especially when prototypes are used. This will ensure that participants do not get too focused on the shortcomings of the prototypes.

At the end of the session, the testing team develops an issues list to highlight the problems faced by the users. The issues list should be discussed with the product development and management team through a group discussion to ensure that changes are prioritized prior to solutions being explored.