I’d argue that elevating your site to a place people enjoy going does indeed provide a financial return.  Take the Netflix example I gave in my last post.  If Jared now sees Netflix as a place to get into hairy discussions about obscure movies, he’s likely to go there more often, likely to try some of their recommendations, and clearly likely to praise the site to others.  And we all know that turning your customers into advocates is one of the best ways to bring in new customers.

Amazon is another great example.  Their customer rating system has one of the best reputations around, and people often go there before they make a purchase.  True, it doesn’t guarantee that people will actually buy from amazon, but it definitely increases the likelihood that once they find a product they want to buy, they’ll check out the recommendations at amazon and then check price and availability while they’re at it. 

So there is a clear financial payoff to including these less tangible elements in our design decisions.  Designing a successful and unfrustrating experience is good, but designing a successful, unfrustrating, enjoyable and engaging experience is where the real payoff will come.

I heard Jared Spool and Stephen Anderson share the example of Netflix.  They have a feature where they ask you to rate several movies, then they start recommending movies to you that they think you’ll like.  The more movies you rate, the better the recommendations are.  This drew Jared and Stephen in to the point where Stephen said he spent 6 hours rating movies on the site just to see what it would recommend to him.  And Jared said he was so impressed at getting recommendations of movies he hadn’t heard of that he now views the site as a place where he can go to get into a real nerdy discussion of movies instead of just a place to rent movies.  This feature doesn’t make the site any more ‘usable’, but it adds a level of enjoyment and engagement that it couldn’t have gotten by focusing on usability alone.

When we’ve asked people to rate our site and then asked “what would it take for you to rate it a 10?”, we often hear things like “I just don’t give 10’s unless the site really blows me away”.  No matter how hard we work on our navigation system or page layout, we’ll probably never get it to the point where it blows people away.  But if we add in elements that draw the visitor in and provide unique value or fun, like Netflix has done, we have a much better chance.

So yes, we definitely need to work on the basics and remove frustration and failure from the site.  But as we move up that maturity curve we need to start adding in elements of delight, seduction, and enjoyability to the visit.

In the early days, the focus was on making websites usable:  making pages scannable, ensuring links conveyed the right scent and navigation was clear, making processes clear and straightforward, etc.  In essence, it was all about removing frustration and obstacles to using a site.

But now that we’ve grown as an industry and most sites follow at least basic usability rules, we’ve come to realize that this is not enough.  A user may be able to easily complete his task, but if it’s a hum-drum boring experience he’s likely to be merely satisfied and not happy, delighted, or eager to return.

I’m starting to see glimmers of this realization all over the place:

• Stephen Anderson calls it “seductive interactions”
• RJ Owen calls it “the differences between usability and user experience”
• Forrester signals it by including “enjoyability” as one of the primary drivers of satisfaction
• We see it in our own research that shows that traditional elements of usability account for only 60% of a visitor’s satisfaction with the experience

The question now is:  how do we advance from a site that’s perfectly usable to one that’s engaging and fun?  The answer to that is really the marriage of interaction design, visual design, and visitor engagement.  And it promises to open the door to a world of new possibilities.

(to be continued in next week’s blog)

That’s why I was excited to see this great article about improving content on the web by Shay Howe:  Writing for the Web:  The Right Strategy.  It’s worth taking a quick peek at.  Nothing earthshattering, just some good solid principles to follow when writing for the web.  I particularly like his bullets about “writing user-friendly content”:

• Give users a summary
• Get to the point quickly
• Use small sentences
• Limit one thought per paragraph
• Use bullet points
• Use sub headings
• Do not over use exclamations!!!
• Drive emphasis with repetition
• Drop unnecessary adjectives
• Use details, be specific
• Use hyperlinks
• Use a personal tone
• Be unique
• Escape content overload

He also advocates judicious use of fonts, colors, and sizes – things we’ve definitely seen in our research that help focus the customer on what you want him to focus on.

All in all a good reminder that even the best IA and UI’s will fail if not supported by appropriate, good content.

Peter Morville’s talk was followed by a discussion led by Mark Burrell of Endeca, outlining the spefics of Endeca’s faceted navigation.  Key takeaways here:

• Endeca has a UI Design Pattern Library.  From the examples that were shown, the seem to be patterns for the guided navigation portion of the page (for example, vertical stack guided nav, range slider, multi-select)
• To design a good search experience, you need to understand business goals, user types, goals & scenarios, assets, and modes of integration
• Think about both the “knowledgeable seeker” and the “uncertain explorer”
• Faceted navigation isn’t limited to just text descriptions; he gave a good example of a car website (carzone.ie) that allows “browse by type” by showing sketches of body types (sedan, minivan, coupe, etc)
• Quantitative facets can be given using range sliders, which gives the visitor greater control over seeing exactly what he wants (for example, all plane tickets between $100 and $450)

All in all, a pretty good summary of some of the best aspects and best practices of faceted navigation today.

The premise is that good Search is critical to a website, and using pre-existing design patterns can really help Search be successful. Nothing new in that premise — anyone who uses the web knows how critical Search is, and how frustrating it is when it doesn’t work as expected. But they did give some good examples of new uses of Search. Here are some of the highlights:

• “Search is iterative and interactive, what we find changes what we seek” – Interesting concept, and helps explain why people’s expectations change as new search methodologies come onto the scene.
• “Browsing does not scale” – meaning that at some point, listing the navigation topics becomes unwieldy. Not sure I totally agree with this. If done well, you can index a pretty deep site with browsing navigation in a very usable way. (And, as a colleague points out, some might say that “Search does not scale” at some point — especially if you have a wide variety of types of search results.)
• ” ‘Best first’ is one of the primary search patterns, and is the key to Google’s success” – Can’t argue with that! His point is that the algorithms to determine relevance are extermemly important, and including “social data” can help immensely. (Social data, or social search, involves paying attention to what other searchers think are successful results for a particular search and then using that information in the relevance algorithm.)
• “Faceted navigation lets people begin the way they normally do, by entering a search term. But then it gives users a custom map for their search term, and gives them a simple next step” – This is key – so many websites have pages that just dump the customer onto them and have no clear next step. Examples given are Yelp, NCSU Libraries, Land’s End, Buzzillions, Amazon. One of the key aspects of Faceted Navigation is that it blurs the line between search and browse – in Land’s End, for example, you can browse down into the site but still see a faceted navigation display on the left side of each page.
• “We’re finding ways to take the search interaction beyond just search” – example is Songza, which gives search results on the same page as allowing you to actually play the songs.
• “We must keep questioning how we define search, how we define the problem” – This was, in my mind, the best part of the presentation. They showed several examples of non-traditional uses of Search. For example: Maybe the box is really a place to ask questions, and we should strive to return answers and not results (wolfram). Or maybe search is about helping people to make better decisions (hunch). Or maybe it’s all about understanding and interactive visual results (oakland crimespotting). Or finding similar images (gazopa). Or searching by singing (iPhone music search). “In the future of search, it’s critical that we consider the user experience across channels” – For example, with the iPhone, the search must work on the phone itself, in the iTunes app, and in the iTunes store. Search needs to allow users to move fluidly across those platforms.
• “Getting search right requires a microscope, a telescope, and a kaleidascope” – A microscope to really dig into the details, understand the search logs, and ensure individual searches are relevant. A telescope to see the big picture and how search fits with navigation, other channels, and trends on the web. And a kaleidascope to see things differently and see how search is a part of many different things.
• “Search is a hybrid between design, engineering, and marketing. It’s a project and a process, and the problem is never solved” – This is a great quote and a great reminder that the job is never done. Providing great search results requires constant ongoing review of search logs, external trends, refinement using social data, etc.

My next post will summarize the second half of this webinar, led by Mark Burrell of Endeca.

A great quote from Flint McGlaughlin:  “The chief enemy to forward momentum is confusion.”  If you don’t have a clear next action on the page, you’re “bleeding revenue”. 

I’ve written earlier about our simple A/B test with a landing page where we applied some of these basic principles and improved our conversion rate by 370% (which directly translates into a 370% increase in ROI, by the way).  But we should all remember that these same principles apply to non-landing pages as well.  Yes, typical site pages may have to serve many purposes (for example, a product page need to serve those who want to find out about the product before purchase, buy the product, and service or support the product after purchase.)  That’s how we often justify having many, many links on a page like this and expecting the customer to figure out what he wants to do.  But that’s in fact the easiest way to confuse and lose the visitor. 

If, instead, those pages had very clear next steps and helped walk the cusomer down the right path, they’d be MUCH more effective.  “Clarity trumps persuasion”.  Indeed – clear pages with clear next steps will always improve customer thruput and conversion rates.

When designing an icon, strive for:

• Simplicity – simplify the design to just the key elements that convey the message.  For example, iPhone uses only 4 buttons in an icon of a calculator, instead of showing an entire calculator face.  Use silhouettes or outlines where possible
• Distinction – make sure the icons are clearly distinct from other icons used on that same page; use color, contrast, size , and shape to help differentiate.  Again, iPhone does a good job at this:

• Standardization - use common icons that people already understand (eg envelope for mail; clockface for clock).  The American Society for Graphic Artists and iStock Photos are good places to look for common icons
• Words – If needed, use one or two words (no more) in conjunction with an icon.  Some users are more text-based than visual-based so words will help, but only if the icons aren’t clear on their own, and if the addition of text won’t add clutter.  One example – a square box with the words “TV” inside is much more instantly recognizable as a TV than the more traditional box with rabbit-ears (which doesn’t mean anything to younger people).
• Understandability across cultures  – For example, many cultures don’t understand the old-fashioned US mailbox or telephone icons; better to use more common stylized versions.  Never use hand symbols in icons!  They’re bound to be offensive in at least one country or culture (most likely a Mediterranean-bordering nation).  Things like “OK”, happy face, frowny face, etc are much better.  Red circle with a diagonal slash is universally accepted as meaning no or incorrect or prohibited.

And finally, some good sources for icons:

• dafont.com
• aiga.org
• istockphoto.com
• underconsideration.com
• images.google.com
• colorschemedesigner.com

A few key takeaways:

1. Even if you’re a design expert, you STILL should test.  These folks know all the tips and tricks to optimize a page and get the highest clickthru possible, but even they admit that they can’t always predict the outcome, so you should always test (specifically, A/B or multivariate testing).
2. When demand is soft, make your value rock solid.  Figure out what it is that sets you apart from your competitors and communicate it.  Communicate your value with statements that are instantly credible; use quantitative statements rather than qualitative ones.
3. When you have fewer resources, have your page do more.  Consider asking different questions to better be able to analyze the quality of the leads (thus letting you possibly pass fewer but more qualified leads to your sales force.
4. When customers are overwhelmed, change your focus.  One example used a popup overlay with name/email capture and “start your free xx” call-to-action, overlaid over the original homepage.  This resulted in 64% conversion improvement.
5. Measure what matters.  Connect your results to the company’s bottom-line results — eg convert ‘# leads’ to ‘increased revenue’ or ‘increased profit’.
6. Test radically different strategies.  Don’t just test minor wording or layout differences – you may miss the bigger opportunity.
7. Competitive analysis is vital.  This will help ensure your PPC ads and value propositions stand out.
8. It’s never too late to start gaining value from testing.  Again – test, test, test

They also reiterated a few good design principles for eeking out the highest clickthru possible:

• use a dedicated landing page instead of sending people to a page on your site
• remove unsupervised thinking – make it clear what the main objective of the page is
• reduce friction and anxiety (long forms, confusing terms, asking for private data)
• place testimonials close to call-to-action (best way to alleviate any anxiety)
• clarify the value proposition and ensure continuity (carry the value proposition through from step to step, have a clear headline that reinforces whatever the offer was that led to the page
• have credible content and include credibility indicators where appropriate
• ensure a clear and compelling call-to-action action button (eg “get free access” instead of “click here” or, worse yet, “submit” ).  And focus focus focus – don’t have 6 alternative calls-to-action — have one
• understand and use the typical eyepath (eg don’t put the call-to-action or primary information in the secondary right-hand area of the page)

But what if you can’t get your team all in the same room?  My current team is spread out all over the world, and it’s a rare luxury to get us all physically together.  Yet we still have the same type of projects that need a team to sort through lots of items and make sense out of it all.  My solution:  Online Card Sorting.  While not a typical use for card sorting, it actually worked perfectly.

After the team did phone/webex brainstorming (capturing the issues in an Excel spreadsheet visible to everyone), we had over 200 ideas.  I then imported these issues into the online (and free!) Websort , created a new sorting project using these items, and shared the “survey” with the team over webex.  We moved each item individually into “piles” that made sense to the team, rearranged as needed, and then named the resulting piles.  Voila!  We had the equivalent of stacks of yellow post-its and team consensus without ever being in the same room (or Country, for that matter).  Certainly a lot cheaper than flying everyone in for an “old-fashioned” face-to-face meeting…