Slides from part one of #usabilityfail: stop wasting your marketing budget on bad usability. Seminar presented in Perth, Western Australia November 2011

1. UsabilityFail
Stop wasting your marketing
budget on bad usability
Mark Sherwin & Dan Baker

2. @PrecedentComms
#PrecSem
#UsabilityFail

8. User experience
It starts by being useful...
Desirability
Functionally people must Usability
be able to use it...
Utility
The way it looks must be
pleasing... “Is the product
useful to me”
“I can easily use it”
The overall experience
“I like the way it looks and feels”
“I like the product”
Executing well on all of these areas creates a positive user experience.
Research and testing is need for each.

9. Common Sense Fail
iTunes Legal Agreement:
g. Blah blah blah...
You also agree that you will not use these products for blah blah
blah... the development, design, manufacture, or production
of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

10. More than two thirds of companies
(68%) recognise a strong link between
long-term business performance and
customer experience.
Econsultancy Multichannel Customer Experience Report, 2010
http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/multichannel-customer-experience-report

11. Quick straw poll:
Hands up if you have a digital
marketing budget

12. Quick straw poll:
Keep your hands up if you also have a
usability or user experience budget

13. Quick straw poll:
Keep your hands up if your usability
budget is the same or more than your
digital marketing budget

14. ― Search Engine Optimisation
― Pay Per Click advertising
― Referrals from groomed sites
― Engaging Social Media
― Integrated offline marketing

15. ...and it’s a utter waste
if they walk away

17. Increasing spend 100% may deliver
5000 users, but only add 100 enquiries
Optimising the journey by an additional
2% will add 100 new enquiries

18. tangible benefits

19. ‘Begin with the end in mind’

20. Business objective Goal KPI
1 2 3

21. Business objective Goal KPI
1 2 3
More new members Complete registrations
Grow level of
membership in the
organisation Retain current members Complete renewals
we
Raise profile of Become synonymous Increase in inward links
organisation with our central issue
Increase commercial More service sales Increase in qualified
revenue enquiries

22. 37%
100%

23. $80k
$1m

24. intangibles

29. Spend 10% = Improve 83%
Jakob Nielsen

30. ...so how do
we do it?

31. set the direction

33. Using journeys to inform activities

34. understanding your users

35. You are not your users.
Neither is your boss.
• What do your users want to do?
• What do you want them to do?
• What barriers do your users face?

38. Persona 4: Alumni
“I keep an eye on upcoming events and research my old friends at the
University are doing. News feeds are important as I’m a busy man”
Dr Alan Mackintosh, GP, 40
Key tasks
Web usage • Alan is a busy man with little free time between work and
family life. He subscribes to updates from alumni relations
Access to other information platforms and the events section of the site to keep up to date with
new information
Use of your website • He keeps an eye on upcoming events and lectures, trying to
find time to attend one or two a year
Strength of relationship with you • He finds and keeps in touch with other alumni though the
website and especially enjoys reunions when they are
arranged
Alan is a GP, living in Hertford, Herts, with his wife Alana and • Research is another important area , keeping him up to
their two small children; Isla 9, and Hamish 7. Alana is date in his own area of expertise. Some old friends from his
pregnant, so there will soon be yet another addition to the student days are now work at the University, and he is
family. After Alan graduated his first job was in Scotland, always interested in reading work they publish
after which he moved to Cambridge for his GP training. His
main interests are art history and photography, but he also You would like to promote
enjoys bird watching, playing golf, art galleries, theatre, music • Alumni benefits and networking events/opportunities
and the pub - Alan is a big fan of real ale. He is not politically
• Upcoming events and seminars particularly alumni events
active, but he supports the coalition government.
and those related to medicine
He accesses the internet both from his PC at work and at
home using his laptop and his new iPad. Websites he visits are • New research that’s being carried out
Flickr, the Independent, Amazon, eBay, Waitrose, Expedia, • News feeds, so that Alan can subscribe
Wikipedia and Art. His parents live in Edinburgh so he is still • How, when and where alumni can donate to the University
in touch with the area and the local community. He has an
interest in distance learning.

40. why usability fails

42. Why usability fails
1. Lack of consistency
2. Lack of clear navigation to common
goals
3. Lack of orientation in the process
4. Lack of error handling
5. A lack of clear closure
6. No easy reversal of actions
7. Lack of control / flexibility
8. Content is unclear and hard to read
9. Too much information / memory
required to perform action
Jakob Nielsen

44. User-centred design process

45. Usability testing
Watching people try to use what you’re
creating / designing / building
(or something you’ve already created / designed / built)
with the intention of
– making it easier for people to use or
– proving that it is easy to use
Steve Krug

46. Usability testing: scale and fidelity

47. The Micro-usability test
1. Define your audience and their goals
2. Create tasks that address those goals
3. Get the right people to test with
4. Watch them try and perform the tasks

48. The Micro-usability test
A quiet space

49. The Micro-usability test:
with stakeholders
A quiet space Stakeholders in a different space

50. Check your unexpected bounce rates

51. Check your unexpected exit pages

52. so what does it cost?
What does it cost?

54. now who’s going to own this?

55. Attracting people to the site
Marketing
Making the
IT Web Team Manage site
site work
Services /
Products
Delivering what people do on the site

56. Attracting people to the site
Marketing
Making the
IT Usability Web Team Manage site
site work
Services /
Products
Delivering what people do on the site

57. business goals + user goals = positive UX
Take the time to understand your business and customer needs
– Customer and stakeholder – Experience vision
workshops
– A/B testing
– Requirements gathering and
– Persona development
analysis
– Scenarios and use cases
– Competitor analysis
– Mental models
– Analytics reviews
– Information architecture
– Ethnography and contextual
development
inquiry
– Prototyping
– Focus groups
– Usability testing
– Depth interviews
– Longitudinal studies
– Surveys

58. The golden rules
1. ignore the myths
2. consistency is king
3. content, content, content
4. focus on forms
5. mobile is a must
6. accessibility is relevant