Support work can range from being a furious fire-fighting activity to a careful unraveling of someone else's code. An engagement often starts with an anxious client and an impossible timeline… just get it fixed asap. But what if this type of ad hoc approach is just throwing fuel on the fire and making things worse?

1. Support
Stop the Bleeding

2. Introductions
Anne Stefanyk
Drupal Strategist
@eskimoyogi
Vanessa Turke
UX Strategist
@vcreatrix

3. Questions for you
Who is in the room?
What are your challenges?

4. Triage of Support

5. Typical Support
● fix//build it asap
● unhack my site
● install this module
● update my site
● make it easier
● finish my site
● train me
● move this thing
● this is borked
● need more stuff
● dude MIA
● security scare
● review my code
● I just need a themer

6. New Support Client
Rebuilding Trust

7. “Strive not to be a success,
but rather to be of value.”
–Albert Einstein

8. What is your turnaround time on the
issue queue?

9. Hierarchy of Chaos
P1: Critical Impact – Site Unusable
P2: High Impact – Business Severely Impaired
P3: Medium Impact – Business Partially Impaired
P4: Low Impact – Service Fully Usable

10. Instill Calm in the Issue Queue
● Be responsive
● Develop intelligent audits
● Over communicate
● Under promise

11. Audits
● Site Audit
● Code Audit
● SEO Audit
● Security Audit
● Performance Audit
● UX Audit

12. Are you spending the right time on the right
tasks?

13. Symptom vs Solution
Symptom: User finds it hard to fill out the form
on mobile
Solution: Needs to be able to estimate
10hrs of a ux audit to learn why/how people
are failing

14. Are you pixelpushing
or creating real design value?

15. Testing & Validation
● Guerilla Testing
● Google Analytics Tracking
● A/B Split Test

16. Are you getting real user feedback?

17. Where do test users come from?
● When to use actual site users
● When to use third party user testers

18. How to create value for your clients

19. Make Data Driven Decisions
● Your best friend: Google Analytics
● Implement fixes, test, analyze
● Communicate often
● Email marketing tool
● Social media

20. Tactics for Making Data Driven Decisions

21. Channel Assessment & Re-Structure
● creating a consistent, cross-channel experience
● examine content categorization and topics
● create an intuitive mental model for users
● harvest buzzwords and common phrases from interviews

22. Horizontal Content Flow
● users are not visiting very many pages
● users not finding critical pages
● pages do not appear to have clear pathway (homepage hub)
● complementary content
● visual focus

23. User Scenarios Based on Problem Solving
● Identifying needs
● Understanding identified needs
● Isolating alternatives
● Choosing solutions
● Refining solutions

24. Supporting the workflow of new and power users
● Discovery
● Realization of Need
● Consideration
● Conversion
● Retention

25. Ideas for Benchmarking
● Value Proposition: perceived benefit to the user
● Relevance: perceived value proposition match their needs
● Clarity: perceived comprehension of offerings
● Anxiety: site elements (or absent elements) that create
uncertainty in the user’s mind
● Distraction: what users eyes are drawn to on a page (does it
help or hinder)
● Urgency: what incentive does a user have to to action
immediately?

26. Guerrilla UX
● Interview stakeholders by phone/Skype
● Getting feedback on wireframes or designs
● Making small changes and observing users reactions
● Observing users
● UX Audit

27. A new model: ‘Concierge Support’
● Issue
● Problem (symptom)
● Benchmark
● Solution
● Tasks
● Acceptance Criteria

28. How to model a healthier process
● Sales
● Team Members
● UX/IA
● Development workflow
● Tools
● QA

29. Q & A

30. Thank You!
Booth 508 to enter to
Win a Free UX, Security or Code Audit!