Usability testing – Does it apply to me?

What makes a good website? Is it the slickness of the look and feel, the features that the site offers, the interesting content or the ease of use?

The look and feel of your site maybe sensational, but what’s the point if it does not accomplish its purpose, which is to lead people to its content? The features that the site offers may be varied and interesting, but what if the user cannot get to them?

An established firm can probably afford the services of a usability consultant, but what about any of us regular people… what are the basic rules that we can follow to have a usable website?

Best Practices – Online Customer Experience

In my previous post, I attempted to define customer experience. This post however will actually prove how important it is to pay attention to the customer.

Lets take ecommerce consumer electronic sites for example. Research in this area states that the best consumer electronic site is more than 50% easier to use as it is informative & more persuasive – Source: change sciences kantuit reports.

The area of research may vary but the solution for a good customer experience will be the same. The following are ways to improve customer experience.

Put it all out there
Offer customers an easy way to browse all products/services on offer. A strong search option, that is intuitive, can go a long way. Promoting new products or services is fine though you might want to back this up with a good catalog that the customer can scan at one go.

Help customers locate content
Minimalize content. Do away with unnecessary graphics. Ensure a clear navigation so that  users do not get lost in the site. Display important content ‘above the fold’ so that users don’t have to look for it.

Do not overdo the homepage
Don’t bombard the homepage with promotions and special offers. Instead, concentrate on getting across the website’s message to your users.

Ensure that link and title names are accurate
Amazingly, you will find this simple rule violated. Title and link names must correspond  to the content they indicate.

Focus on the customers need
Customers call the shots, so decipher what they need and give it to them. For example in  ecommerce sites, customers want a quick and easy yet safe check out process. Attempt to  complete the checkout process within 2 steps.

Cross sell and up sell carefully
Ensure that offers are targeted to specific customers. This way cross selling and up selling is more effective and customer loyalty is increased. Over-communication or irrelevant communication reduces the impact and instead might turn off the customer.

These are some suggestions to make your site more customer-friendly. If you feel that there
are some more that can be added, feel free to comment. I shall add them to this post accordingly.

Four steps to successful banner ads

This week am working on a project that includes banner ads. These need to promote the brand of the company on its website.

The question was: What kind of features should an ad have to help catch the attention of users and increase sales as well. Online Ads have to follow certain Best Practices in order to be profitable.

Primarily these Ads need to reflect the brand of the company while being effective at sales. On the other hand they should also be able to measure the attitude of the customer with regard to the brand.

A quantitative way to gauge the effectiveness of the banner ad would be pretty simple. Web metrics can capture the number of clicks that a banner attracts. Companies generally experiment with combinations of banner size, color and layout to get the best response from customers in terms of clicks.

However online banner ads cannot be considered successful based on clicks alone. The customers feel and attitude towards online banners is just as important if not more.

“As online marketers, we underestimate the level of commitment involved when a consumer clicks through to a website. The consumer is making several assessments in the blink of an eye — will this be a waste of time? Will the site I click to be safe? Will the information I seek be relevant? Will I get what I need efficiently? There is a risk vs. reward scenario that we all play out when deciding to interact with an online advertisement. If we rely too heavily on the website destination to do our talking, we will likely find that no one will be around to listen.”

– Scott Meldrum