Website Usability Tutorial For Online Marketers
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Transcript of Website Usability Tutorial For Online Marketers
Definitions, terms, principles Some real-‐world examples Easy things you can do today Questions and discussion
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…and those are the last bullet points you’ll see from me!
(I hate bullet points and sentence fragments.)
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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.
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How about this?
Usability is…
Getting people to what they want or need as quickly as possible, in a way that assures that they:
Can figure out what to do next Understand why they should do it
See how to do it (And will like doing it)
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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)
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What
Why
How
Like
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Let me hear your definitions:
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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
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Sound familiar?
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Marketing SEO Design Usability Identify what Make it Give it to Ensure that
they want findable them you gave it
to them
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When people talk about “usability”, they’re usually talking about user-‐centered design.
Without a design, you have nothing to usability test!
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Respect design. And designers.
They help create the emotional bond that you’re trying to build with your audience.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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Design
Research
Wireframes Interaction design
Visual design
Persona definition Site visits
Workflow analysis User role identification
Usability
Two parallel work streams:
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Design
Research
Wireframes Visual design
Iterate design and personas
Iterate design and personas
Validated design
Validated user models
Customer site visits
Synthesis of customer roles and workflow. Usability evaluation.
“Default” personas
End result:
Time
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Model your users!
Start from demographic data, if you have it. Then interview and observe some real users
Identify their typical goals, experiences, needs.
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It’s not “rocket surgery.”
You can do this!
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Define your users, their goals, and their constraints.
Design interactions to meet the 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. Don’t ask for information you don’t absolutely need.
Test your design with actual users. Optimize with A/B/multivariate testing.
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OK, I lied about “no more bullets.”
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The job of research Determine the target users’ characteristics.
Model the users.
Ensure that design understands and accounts for the user characteristics.
Assess whether the design addresses the three W’s and one L.
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The job of design Answer the visitors’ questions and counter their objections.
State the offering’s value.
Clearly indicate price. (Or clearly indicate how to get to it.)
Show them the path to uptake.
An e-‐commerce web site I’ve worked on…
First, the quick usability fix.
Then we’ll evaluate it live… three W’s and one L-‐style.
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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…
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[Let’s look at a site together]
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Define (business goals, target users, personas)
Validate (assumptions about users)
Design (workflow, interactions, layout, visuals)
Validate (whether the design achieves the goals)
Implement and assess…and repeat
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Ask yourself these questions:
Have you defined your users well?
If not, your site might not be as usable as you think!
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Ask yourself these questions:
Are you clear on what you want your site to accomplish?
Believe it or not, sometimes organizations aren’t.
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Ask yourself these questions:
Have you tested your…
Home page? Landing pages? Account creation flow? Product pages? Main conversion flows?
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Ask yourself these questions:
Have you begun to A/B/multivariate optimize? Make it a Darwinian struggle…survival of the
fittest (pages)
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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).
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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.
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“[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.”
49 Wikipedia.org
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Driving from the airport to the hotel
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Strategic plan: Go from airport to hotel
Tactics: Make some turns
How do you “do” strategic user experience?
It sometimes means big changes.
It often drives process and organizational structure changes.
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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.
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Offline: Nordstrom’s. Virgin Air.
Online: Zappos. Amazon. Land’s End. (Offline too.)
Who else?
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The sad truth: most organizations don’t align on the
user experience.
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Everybody’s. And nobody’s.
That’s the problem.
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How do you take a strategic approach to creating a great
user experience?
Four very hard easy steps…
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1. Alignment Find the disincentives to delivering a good user experience, then surface them to your leadership. Eliminate them.
Advocate for tweaking the business model if you need to.
Don’t take “bad profits”. Bad profits are unsustainable profits.
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2. Values Be open to learning and improving the user experience.
Those aphorisms about the customer always being right? They’re all true.
Remember the guy who complained about the food on Virgin Air? He’s now a taster. Stunt? Yes. But effective and revealing!
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3. Assess the user experience holistically Walk the customer corridor. Assess the total experience – not just the user interface.
Find the sticky points, the little trapdoors.
Remember, one bad touchpoint affects the whole brand.
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From sign-‐up to initial use…free to pay conversion…calling and emailing help, tech support, and billing…even closing the account.
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If you don’t know about this concept, talk to your product managers. They do.
62 A typical product manager-‐y image…
4. Leverage user experience design Don’t just fix the little user experience trapdoors and holes.
Assess and redesign the customer touchpoints… all of them.
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Yeah, but… how do I get my organization to do this?
“Initiative”
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Give yourself a new job: “Change agent”
Easy to say… harder to put into practice.
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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”
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“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”
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Successful strategic user experience is not just about delivering a design or testing
the site.
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It’s about aligning the organization to measure and improve the user experience…
Using the tools and techniques of user research and usability assessment.
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If you’re doing your job right, you’re changing your
organization.
“Initiative”
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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
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Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience www.shermanux.com [email protected] Twitter: @pjsherman
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