USER EXPERIENCE

When we're conducting user testing the

number one comment that we hear from

the website visitors is that they want the

website to “be easy to use”. No real

surprise with this revelation. However,

where the challenge comes is in trying to

figure out what “easy to use” means to

every visitor that is coming to your

website. Users have different

personalities, they are at different stages

in the buying cycle and that means they

will have different answers to the

question ‘what does “easy-to-use”

mean to you?’

User experience, by definition, is the

science of designing “easy-to-use”

software interfaces. However, it is very

important to note that we are dealing

with people that arrive at your site with

some very strong preconceived notions,

biases, and expectations. If we fail to

recognize the “context” in which the

user is viewing our website, blog, e-mail,

or any online communication through,

the opportunity to convert the user into

a customer will be all but eliminated.

Jakob Nielsen, usability guru

extraordinaire, tells us that there are 5

components that are core to achieve

success with a successful usability

strategy:

Learnability

By learnability he is making reference to

how easily users can accomplish their

basic tasks on your site, the first time they

encounter your site.

Efficiency

This core component speaks to the users

ability to quickly perform their tasks once

they have become familiar with your

website’s page layout and navigation

structure.

Memorability

Upon the visitors returning to your website

after a period of time, are they able to

interact as efficiently as they did on their

last visit to your website? If so, then your

site is memorable.

Errors

During a visitor session, this core

component, looks at how many errors

the user made, how severe these errors

were, and how quickly and easily can

they were able to recover from these

errors.

Satisfaction

This component, as its name implies, is

strictly focused on the level of overall

satisfaction that the user has

experienced with your website.

Who owns it

In corporations there are always a lot of

opinions floating around about who

should be responsible for the company's

user experience. The 1st choice typically

goes to the IT department, the 2nd most

popular group seems to be the folks in

marketing, and finally someone will

nominate the C-level people to own the

user experience. Though none of these

groups are completely the wrong choice

the user is actually the best choice. Who

better to tell you how to improve the

usability of your online properties than the

people that use them.

There are a great number of ways that you

can capture this insightful information. You

can hold user group sessions to see how

users interact with your website, you can

conduct user surveys at the end of a user

session, or you can perform testing with

the various user touch points within a

website, email message, or even within

your online advertising. This testing will tell

you a user’s preferences by analyzing

which variation of the touch point users

interact with most within the same

website.

Why you must

A recent survey by Harris capital

interactive found that 9/10 online users

have experienced problems while trying

to accomplish their tasks, in 42% of

these instances these users have gone

directly to the competitors online

property! If that statistic doesn't make

you think seriously about evaluating the

usability of your website, nothing will.

This isn't just saying that they are just

going away, this is telling you that they're

going directly to your competition!

Improving the user experience will

dramatically improve the conversion rate

of your online marketing efforts.

Increasing your online conversion will

increase the realization of your business

goals. Depending on your business goals

these conversions will represent objectives

such as increasing direct sales, increasing

sales leads, getting more members for

your organization or even increasing

financial support.

Where to start

As with any goal oriented activity, before

you can begin to make changes you have

to know if the changes that you are going

to make are having a positive effect. With

a user experience initiative there are two

places to go to get a good benchmark of

where you currently are. Your website

analytics and your users. Take a look at

your analytics and review the ‘goals’

metrics to see what your conversion rate

is.

As we stated earlier, your users are the

best source of information and feedback

on the performance of your website. Set

up a survey on your site that users can fill

out as they’re leaving. Also consider

sending out an email campaign to your

current customers with a link to a survey.

Or if you want to go the old fashioned way,

just get on the phone, call some of your

current customers and ask them about

their experience on your website.

This will certainly provide you with a list

of issues to begin looking at, prioritize

that list so that you will receive the

maximum return on effort, test all of the

changes via A/B testing methodology,

measure the results and keep going.

About 3Sixty Interactive

3Sixty Interactive is a professional agency with over ten years of experience in the digital world. They offer a variety of digital marketing solutions that include search engine optimization, digital advertising, email marketing, social media, customized strategy reports, analytics and maintenance of your marketing plan.

Learn more about 3Sixty Interactive at www.3sixtyinteractive.com or by calling us at 1-877-43Sixty.