Usability Consultancy

In times of a recession, online fraud increases (CIFAS ‘Fraud trends and recession go hand in hand’) but most online users, although aware of Internet threats, have a gap in understanding them. Read more…

We’ve all been there. Sitting round a conference room table discussing with our colleagues about the design of the website, the flow of a particular user path or the layout of a particular page. Opinions differ on what would work best, whether the call to action button should be red or blue, square or round, flat or bevelled. We all know best, because we’re experts. Aren’t we? In some cases it may not matter how expert we are, because the loudest voice will win or the most important person’s opinion will be the one that counts. Read more…

By Lucy Carruthers

Chris Lake of Econsultancy recently published a blog called 50 swinish ways to annoy web users. It’s an amusing read, but what struck me is that the first 7 items related to forms of advertising on the web (Auto-play, interstitials, death by Adsense, death by banners, pop-ups, etc.)Advertising on web sites is an interesting conundrum. The participants in our studies are often quite vocal in their annoyance of them, yet online advertising generates big money for companies so we must be clicking on them. In fact, the IAB have recently released a press release stating that in the US Internet advertising revenues surpassed $23 Billion in 2008, reaching a record high. So like them or loathe them, adverts are a big part of our online world.

Our clients often ask how best to approach advertising on their site. Is brighter and bolder better? Should adverts be contextual and personalised? Should they wait until the end of a customer journey to upsell or is that too late? How can they create a design that provides the best balance between increasing their revenue without infuriating their customers at the risk of damaging their revenue?

I recently tested a high-fidelity black and white prototype for a financial client that contained placeholders for adverts. On pages containing non-personal content, the advertising wasn’t questioned by the participants as it appeared relevant to the main content, and also offered potential savings and discounts to the users. The participants were less keen to see similar material on pages where the main content was personal to them; however, their attitude was that as long as they weren’t distracted from their tasks they weren’t too bothered. But, as soon as the same participants saw the same pages but with the graphic design overlaid their attitude immediately changed; they were enraged to see ‘advertising’ amongst their personal account information despite the savings promoted. The graphic design had made the adverts far more prominent and as far as the participants were concerned they were intrusive and out of place.

So what can organisations do?

Firstly, organisations should see how their competitors are doing it and determine what works and what doesn’t. Online banking, for example, is an area where adverts are becoming ubiquitous and I think some banks have got their placement right, while others rudely interrupt the users journey.

Secondly, they should look for innovative new ways to advertise while keeping the users goals and needs in mind. Pixazza, a company in the States, have developed a means of converting photos on web sites into interactive advertisements. James Everingham, who is behind the concept, says that many adverts are an “obnoxious intrusion” and that “ads work best when they don’t resemble ads but rather a feature that helps shoppers find items they may already be interested in buying”.

Lastly, it’s crucial to test any designs with users and to test iteratively. Testing with early prototypes can catch key issues before it gets expensive to make changes, and testing once the final design has been overlaid can ensure that with the graphic design the site still meets the users needs and expectations. The graphic design can have a major impact on both on the usability of the site and the user experience; and satisfaction levels for the overall customer experience.

By Arthur Moan

Global brands that are serious about establishing and maintaining a worldwide online presence, must undertake international customer experience research to ensure regional credibility. It’s that simple.

It’s all too easy, even for high-profile commercial brands, to assume that a website which has proven to be highly successful in their native country, will make a seamless transition to other regions. A common pitfall for many firms is to build a global template site and then simply translate languages, currency and legal notices to comply with local markets. Without practical insights into local market attitudes and buying behavior, firms can be left bewildered by a poor reception and response to a site that has prompted positive feedback and results back home.

Part of our role in international customer experience research, is to inform global redesign and help to communicate brands in ways that are better understood by specific local audiences. One of my first tasks in this field was to assist with a global review of Adidas.com, identifying usability issues and brand perception across disparate international audience segments. We conducted usability evaluations in the UK, US, Germany and China before combining the findings into a single report containing market specific insights, similarities and differences and recommendations. In this way we helped to shape the global Adidas online re-design strategy.

Research like this is the bedrock on which global brands should build their regional confidence and international reputations. Another client of ours, who is a global technology & computer manufacturer, operates ecommerce sites in a vast number of countries around world. I’ve personally been to China, Japan, India and numerous EU countries to help refine its customer experience in diverse regions. Like most global organisations, they created a global site in the US which it rolls out in other countries. But before it can do that, it knows that that it needs to understand that people have different ways of purchasing goods and engaging with content depending on where they live. China has a history of cash on delivery and business invoicing for technology purchases, for example, and so many accepted western transactional models simply wouldn’t translate into sales. The overall trend then is one of global branding with localised content and practices. We also helped this same client understand their business customers worldwide by creating a set of personas for each of their mature markets. These were informed by quantitative data in the form of online survey responses and web analytics data insights. This was then enriched with qualitative local on-the-ground research to examine the different job titles and roles within their business, which would help shape the content and functionality they would need from a technology & computer supplier.

Customer Experience research in these circumstances is best conducted as a one-to-one, end-to-end process that is task oriented, allowing time to understand offline habits in order to pinpoint the stage at which local customers choose to engage with your website. It’s important to witness how customers like to navigate, how they read, how they like their screens organised and copy arranged, what terminology they use that may be different from other regions, and more. The next stage is to use focus group discussions to talk through concepts, ensure imagery and icons mean what they are intended to mean, and then recommend an accepted look and feel. Ethnographic research reveals a real understanding of cross-channel interaction with websites, and discovers what drives potential customers online or even offline. Reasons can be as diverse as cultural landscape or attitudes to security, but they need to be identified.

Of course operating a bespoke web presence in each country can cost businesses a lot of money, so customer experience research needs to be as efficient as possible. Foviance took the decision five years ago not to open offices around the world. We have in place a global network of local trusted usability consultancy partners with the same standards and values as Foviance, who are skilled at recruiting local representative demographic line-ups. This provides us with increased flexibility to deliver research in the locations most appropriate to our clients and their target markets. Moderation is always conducted in local language and translated real time for the client in attendance. We also deliver an English dubbed video of all the sessions for the stakeholders who could not make the travel and can even provide web streaming of the sessions around the globe – anything that they feel helps them deliver against their globalisation and localisation strategies.

Due to our years of experience and knowledge in conducting this type of research, our clients generally rely on us to manage the entire research programme using one of three main methods:

• Foviance Consultants can deliver the research in each individual location (if timelines allow) using our partners’ facilities. We employ French, German and Portuguese consultants.
• We manage the research remotely, carefully briefing our international partners who deliver the research and complete the analysis and reporting. This is then consolidated by us into a single overall report.
• Finally, with a Foviance Consultant attending the research sessions, we manage the research remotely, carefully, completing the analysis and preparing the report.

In essence we can conduct customer experience research anywhere; I have yet to be tasked with a location we could not reach. Equally importantly our business focused approach to customer experience research ensures that our global clients receive the insight they require into local markets as easily as if they conducted the research in the US or UK.

This is an abridged version of a conversation between Angus Cormie, head of e-Business EMEA Consumer for Dell, and Foviance Lead Consultant, Clare Mitchell Crow. This is the latest in a series of regular interviews with senior figures from the world’s most respected businesses, focusing on the ways organisations manage their customers’ experience.

Angus, please tell us a little more about your experience and role at Dell?
Sure. I previously worked for Phillips and 02 in a variety of commercial roles, getting into the online space around 11 years ago through the 02 mobile portal venture Genie. I ran the 02 online portal for a couple of years before leaving to gain some practical marketing and retail experience. Since then I have been back in the corporate world, initially with T-Mobile and then with Dell, where I manage its website and the online team for the consumer division within EMEA.

Foviance has been working for Dell for around two years. Could you talk about the work you have done with customer experience?
With Dell and in previous roles I have done a lot of work with usability, largely broken down into two areas. Firstly, testing new concepts and ideas from a web experience perspective, and secondly, ongoing usability activities, setting up regular robust reviews of customer experience and usability analysis. Regular reviews give us enormous levels of feedback that are very different from ad hoc research for new product concepts and so on, but both activities are extremely valuable. With both Foviance and with our in-house teams we tend to look at path analysis and general usability. Ad hoc testing helps us see things we may not be focusing on, but the only way to make customer experience testing part of the culture and ethos of the company is to make testing regular, consistent and measurable. A quarterly programme of activity allows us to ask the same questions over again and track responses and analysis from one quarter to the next with measurement. It’s a big ask, and it is time consuming and expensive, but gives us the biggest return.

Dell recently reorganised its business focus with regards to customer categories. How does this affect your own role?
When I first joined Dell the European organisation was very much a sales organisation. Consumer was the first division to become a global business unit and it’s only now that the other segments are doing the same. Despite this globalisation, Dell has actually managed to give the regions more focus and more engagement with our global colleagues. The online team within Europe has had plenty of opportunity to influence and drive change and to be key players in what actually goes on with the way we manage our business. We’re positive these changes are a force for good. Within consumer we had some concerns about how we would make that transition from a business focus to a consumer path, but we’ve worked to adapt the whole experience of entering our site, selecting products, and customising them, so that it is much easier for consumers. We drove change that brought more consumer focus around language, tone of voice, and specifically the online path and navigational elements, and these changes were successful and adopted globally. The next stage will be to make it more end-to-end and journey driven through all the different customer experiences and touch points.

Dell is very active in social media with Twitter, Facebook and more. Are you seeing big growth for Dell in those areas?
Well, the UK certainly needs to catch up, with the US being very much the pioneer in this. They’ve done huge amounts in building the blogs and the forums and online activity generally – everything from IdeaStorm, the Dell online forum where customers can post their ideas, to our very active Twitter account in the US, which promotes our Dell Outlet returned and refurbished products and has helped us pass our first million dollars on that. We’re doing the same now and have set up five or six Twitter accounts in EMEA to promote certain things. So we’re very much getting into social media activity here, but it is also at the heart of what Dell had been doing very well for several years. We’ve benefited hugely as a business by using social media tools to join in on the conversations our customers are having about Dell. It’s a strategic imperative to do more in this space.

What innovations have you see during these tougher economic times?
We are actively exploring customisation and personalisation technology, certainly in terms of the products, but particularly regarding the web experience, enabling behavioural targeting. We’re also placing a greater emphasis on testing generally at the back end. This includes both beta testing and multi-variant testing. I’d rather spend time with my team looking at lots of smaller parts of the overall customer journey and get a greater gain, than spending a year conducting a single major redesign. We’re also, like other companies, moving away from being a purely transactional company. Social media tools and content will help with this and allow our customers to engage with us about what they really need and make the right decisions. Overall I’d say don’t get too complicated – simplicity is a model that works well.

What relationship does customer experience have with financial success?
Clearly a lot of what you do with customer experience is very tacit knowledge driven, based on experience you have in figuring out the best solution for individual customers. Sometimes we want to make changes that take us out on a limb a little bit, but having a discussion with finance teams about the possible impact of that is always going to be a difficult decision. So we work hard to find ways to test and measure stuff before we actually do it. However we have found that our own personal experience does count for a lot.

As you move more into social networking and in-store as well as online, is there someone who will take overall charge of customer experience?
There’s certainly no single owner of customer experience. It’s a diverse responsibility spread across the business. That includes teams and centres of expertise in the US that are globally responsible for online, but there are also very strong lines for day-to-day management on the ground in the regions. It would be great if there was a single owner, as that would help with the development of a customer experience focused culture, and that comes from leadership down. We’ve definitely become more consumer focused than ever before and think a lot more about it.

Who offers a great customer experience, in your opinion?
A hard question! From a telco background, I think companies have to learn that it’s not just about selling a product, it’s about developing and building a relationship and keeping those customers and engaging them post-sale. We’re certainly going to take some learnings from the telco side. Me personally, I like those ‘wow moments’ – going through the web and finding some functionality, or copy on a website, or a thank you screen, or anything that makes you think: “You know what? That just made that whole process so much simpler; exactly what I needed.” A passion about the detail of experience along the whole journey through a website will ultimately result in a web experience which is very strong indeed.

The enterprising people at Nokia have set up a $5 dollar comparison website. This interesting site allows you to see pictures that have been uploaded by people around the world showing (you guessed it) things that cost $5. The website aims to explore the relative value of $5 and is asking people to upload their own images. Nokia admit that the amount is an arbitrary one but are most interested in exploring how low cost communication can be brought to the masses (3.3 Billion) still without mobile communication. Being able to tap into this considerable market would be very profitable for whoever gets there first.

It is an interesting concept in these frugal times, but is it one that is going to provide an insight into how to break into this untapped market? I am not convinced. I think it is a novel way to while away 5 or 10 minutes but that’s really as far as it goes. The most interesting thing about the site is what it highlights – the value of 5 dollars around the world. But of course communicating value it is not always as simple as displaying a picture of what it’s worth. Others have tried to highlight value in different ways, Boden for example have a formula that purports to measure the value of their clothes: value = price (£) / times worn.

However, highlighting the value in what we do as an industry is a different story. Companies do not always realise that investing in usability or the user experience can reap huge rewards. But I think, to be fair, a lot of companies are coming around to this way of thinking. However, with all the belt tightening and credit crunching that is going on at the moment, some have opted to try and save by cutting spending on evaluations. This could well be to their detriment as more prudent companies recognise that now more than ever is no time for cutting corners when you are trying to get an edge in a competitive market.

There are a number of ways to stay ahead of the game – analytics can help you measure success and failure and point to areas that cause users to drop off, not to mention understanding who is visiting your site and why. If this is carried out both pre and post user testing, its real value is clear. By combining analytics with user testing or an expert review you can get a more holistic view of your online offering. For cross-channel insight you can think about throwing emotional research into the mix. If your belt tightening is starting to make you feel the pinch maybe it is time to consider some of the above!

Consultancy director, Marty Carroll at Internet World running a session on Customer experience: the only real differentiator. Marty will cover the following areas:

• Understanding the ROI of investing in customer experience
• Why online experience matters more in an age of social networking
• The science behind creating great customer experiences

Earls Court, London. April 30, 2009

The Freestyle Interactive Ltd half-day seminar brings together speakers and case studies to help you plan, manage and develop flexible, efficient and cost-effective digital communications.

Foviance, director of consulting, Marty Carroll is speaking about Effective Usability: Pushing the Boundaries, with Foviance client BP as a Case Study.