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Love him or hate him.

It all comes down to one single, tangible factor, which marks out the good from the bad; soul.

The reason for the Clarkson tribute on the left is this weeks Sunday Times Motoring article on an Aston Martin which sees Clarkson pitting it against design perfection in the shape of an Audi R8 V10.

And to save you the read, the Audi is just too perfect, where as the Aston has soul, something that can’t be created by following set rules, but comes from the heart of those involved and is a direct result of the creator’s passion.

All of which brings us nicely to the argument that has raged on since the start of website design; who is best placed to create the perfect site?

The Good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s go back to basics and look at who the usual suspects are, in the red corner we have “visual designers” (brand and marketing) and in the blue corner we have “interaction designers” (user centred).

Whilst visual designers have a wealth of ability and passion, it is often focused to heavily on making something look good and the risk of making the same, beautiful creation completely unusable.

Now wheel in the interaction designers, who’s passions lie in the creation of the perfect experience, through usability testing, prototyping and more testing. However, there is a strong argument against all of this testing and refining as it can just blunt a sharp, creative idea, making the end result more function than form.

Experience is all, or read Experiential

For years I thought experiential was about experiencing a design, but it’s not it’s about experience, and this where soul comes from.

An experienced designer is passionate about the look and the effectiveness of a design and ensures their soul is applied to everything they do.

An excellent example of what not to do is a site we reviewed a while back that seemingly missed both design and ease of use steps during it’s development and almost certainly skipped public testing.

Help me help you

If you want to avoid the common pitfalls of digital procurement, ensuring your acgency has suol, then follow these easy steps:

• Check potential agencies have a proven user centred design methodology as well as a creative portfolio
• Ask for CVs of key staff and make sure they are guaranteed to be on the project
• Meet the team and chat to them about what they think is good and bad
• Don’t ever feel that it’s not your right to ask questions
• Ask for clarification on every point until it’s clear
• Remember you’re the client and paying the bills

If you would like to know more then give me a call or drop me a note and we’ll take you through our experiences and see how we can help.

global usability testing, information architecture, interface design, internet research, market research, usability design, user centred design, user interface Design, e-commerce, Internet, Mobile, research, usability

 I don’t ordinarily consider gossip-blogger Perez Hilton a source of social marketing insight but on this occasion he twittered a report by Sysomos - a US based organisation specialising in media monitoring - and its actually quite interesting.

 

Sysomos analysed more than 11.5 million Twitter accounts, indexing user profiles and looking at the frequency of status updates and behaviours over a period of time. There is plenty of data to mine through but some key findings of note include:

 

• 21% of all registered users have never even posted a Tweet;
• More than 50% of all updates are publishing using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com;
• 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25 ; and
• Just 5% of users - or Power-Tweeters as we shall call them - account for a massive 75% of all activity.

Twitter has experienced explosive growth in recent months and this report is essential reading in helping to understand why.

 

Read the report here

 

Blog, Community, customer insight, e-commerce, internet research, market research insight, research, social networking, Twitter

We love surveys. They are quick to create, garner invaluable insight and make us all feel that we really do understand our customers. But there is a problem, one which you have probably experienced many times, and that is inappropriate questioning during my online experience.

Yep, it sounds a little complicated, but really it’s about asking the right questions at the right time. Why ask someone at the end of the checkout process who well their visit went, when they are bound to answer well as they have just completed the task they came to your site to do?

Or even better, why ask someone how well things are going today with their visit when they have only just got to the site?

Our favourite is a survey that ran in the UK recently that asked customers why they were leaving and what could be done to improve their experience. Answer; nothing we all leave once we are finished!

Now of course there are some fantastic solutions to this dilemma that use amazing algorithms to track customers across your site before intercepting them at the critical point. But these are very costly to set up, run and report on, too much for most mere mortals whose dwindling budget can not cater for such expenses.

Opt-in, email out

The answer to our prayers took some finding and a little developing. The result is an enterprise level tool at a self serve price that allows us to do this:

1. Customer enters site, opt-in questionnaire is offered to xx%
2. A few simple questions are asked to understand their reason for visiting the site and their email is captured
3. They are then sent a post-visit email survey that they must complete within 24hrs of their visit

This emailed survey is linked to the initial opt-in, seamlessly joining both sets of data and is used to measure everything from what they actually did to how well it worked and their likelihood of return or recommendation.

High success rates guaranteed

The best part is that the users visit to the site is hardly interrupted and their attention is focused on completing their tasks not rushing through a survey. The resulting data is very high quality as we are able to compare initial drivers against actual tasks and outcome verses perceived success.

We have also seen a very high uptake of this type of survey due to the fact that it can be completed at a more appropriate time and in reflection rather than prediction.

Given the huge costs savings that this mini-enterprise survey provides, more and more clients are now running quantitative and qualitative research projects together, combing online surveys with lab based or remote usability studies.

customer insight, internet research, market research, usability research Internet, usability

Chris Averill, MD of CADinteractive explains why user-centric interface design should really be driven by compelling content, adaptive technology and direct customer insight.

In a recent pitch, I was lucky enough to put together all the learnings on usability that we have experienced over the past few years.

Central to the design strategy is that all those who visit a website homepage are, in principle, the same - they just want to get what they have come for, as quickly as possible.

As obvious as it sounds, and it is obvious, there are not that many people who really get it and, more importantly, are implementing it.

Here at CAD interactive, our team has been combining a little Myers Briggs personality-trait mapping with a dash of predictive web and basing it all on a framework built around the customer.

The end result is an experience that meets the needs of the customer, while ensuring increased conversion rates, up-sell and repeat visits.

The answer is out there, somewhere
As with all great ideas, none of the components we’ve based our design on are new, just the way they are being applied.

Why are so many potential customers finding it so hard to buy online and go for a call-centre route to complete their purchase? Most of us have done it, and it cuts right across e-customers, experienced or not.

There is an intrinsic fear of buying certain things online, but there does not seem to be any clear pattern as to which products, services, brands or experiences drive customers through offline channels.

But what is obvious is the companies that provide information to customers in a format that meets their needs, in a timely way, are much more likely to see successful online transactions.

Call centres work - sometimes
Proof of this approach can been seen or heard every day. The next time you want to buy something, go online, find it and try to buy it answering all the questions you have in mind; cost, availability, colour, weight, size, accessories, delivery, returns, upgrades, subscription, alteration, installation and so on.

Then phone the call centre and go through the process again. Very often the process will be quicker and easier, even if you have to wait to get through.

This is usually because you are speaking to a real person who understands you, is able to change their questions based on your knowledge and provide the sales information at a level of detail you can grasp.

So the more complex the proposition is, the harder it is to get it right online, or so it seems, and this dilemma covers everything from train tickets to satellite TV.

Seeing Everything Obviously (SEO 3.0)
Please excuse the pun, but it’s the reality of the way we all look at information and how we want it served up.

As with a call centre, having information put to you in a clear and obvious way works much better than many scatter-gun web-sites where you find yourself drowning in information.

Firstly, why segregate your customers at the start of their journey? When you search for a train ticket on National Express East Coast you are presented with the best value and most convenient ticket options on one screen, providing two very different customer groups, business and leisure travelers, with a single, shared experience.

Next, provide returning visitors with useful information, especially if you have a large or complex website. Amazon do this well, showing what I have looked at before and what others are looking at in relationship to my interests.

Testing times
At the beginning of this piece, I stated that, along with compelling content, one alsoneeds direct customer insight to make a website work.

To make the predictive web happen, you need to ensure that the site being improved already works well. You can then use this as a starting point for successful variant testing.

The key to testing this way is not to be afraid to try it, as one of my more forward-thinking clients puts it. “We should always be asking, ‘Why not?’, not ‘Why?’”
We will often use a combination of pre and post-launch testing tools, including:

• Rapid prototype, remote testing
• Functional lab testing
• A/B testing
• Multivariate testing

Once a site is live, there are loads of tools out there to run predictive content implementation, from Maxymiser to Vignette, that allow you to both change content displayed based on previous history and tune your site based on quantitative data.

Ultimately, successfully using predictive, dynamic content and personality-trait profiling is about knowing your customers needs before they do, through good insight and proven research.

Ensuring you partner with an agency that has a good track record in user centred design will guarantee you the best possible results and, as we have here at CADinteractive, demonstrate these through improved Key Performance Indicators, sales and happy customers.

interface design, internet research Internet, Predictive, usability

CADinteractive has just completed a detailed research study into the online behavior of internet users across the Gulf and Levant regions.
The research involved Arabic and English users through surveys and telephone interviews, with over 1,200 respondents in total.

What drives the Middle East?
A wide range of trends were revealed and insights discovered with both local and expatriate web users. Of particular interest were the cultural sensitivities displayed for and against censorship. Whilst the uptake of key online services, that we in the West take for granted, is very low; often due to availability or lack of these services.

Whilst iTunes is the Standard in the West, it’s lack of presence and difficulty of licensing rights for music has left the Middle East without any alternatives, therefore online music usage is low; not for a lack of want.

Social networking also came in for a rough ride, with a strong cultural emphasis on such services being seen as time wasting. Although a great deal of comment was made on how these services could gainer more use through better understanding of the culture.

All in, we here at CAD have been impressed with what we have learnt and are eager to apply it to the future work of our clients in the Middle East.

To find out more about our global research services please contact Laura Farrant.

arabic research, internet research, market research