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A blog about visual design, analytics, usability, user experience, and remote research.
Theory
Technological advancements in the past two decades have added a new dimension to the way we communicate, shop and interact on a day to day basis. The spread of internet use has created a very unique and cost effective opportunity for businesses to reach customers and interact with them. At the same time, websites have become an important tool for customers to get in touch with their favorite businesses.
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Theory
The approach to user research has shifted quite a lot lately. Traditional in-person usability testing used to the be ultimate technique to understand how users go about using a product or service. There is no denying that this kind of research is comprehensive and — if conducted well — also very valuable. However, it is also a fact that in-person user testing takes a lot of time, manpower, and money — in other words resources that many companies don’t have.
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Theory
The usability of your ecommerce site can make or break potential sales. How can you tell if usability is an issue and, more importantly, how can you improve it? First, give it a go yourself. It’s probably been awhile since you’ve used your site like a customer. Navigate the steps through your customer’s eyes and see how difficult it is to find items. Making your website more user friendly should be a continuous process — never assume that your site can’t be improved. After all, each incomplete order may be tied to a potential customer you may never get back.
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UX Videos
When you examine people in context, synthesize their stories, and apply the results to solve a business or design problem (as my friend Steve Portigal defines it), you are conducting something people call ethnography, design research, user research, contextual inquiry, fieldwork, or whatever. Without getting into labeling it with a cool name, here are the best videos about this type of research activity. Videos are divided into four categories: introductory videos (mostly primers), examples (summaries or excerpts from such research studies), deeper dives (profound materials), and a fun category with a parody about ethnography.
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Links
Time flies. We just celebrated the start of a new year and already one month has passed. However, we are happy to see that the UX community doesn’t sleep either, providing us with great new articles and interesting insights. Like we started last year, we want to continue to share some of our most favorite articles on UX with you this year.
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Theory
When optimizing your website for more conversion, there are several factors that matter. Some things, such as the usability and accessibility of your content, can easily be tested and optimized before your site goes live. Then, after launch, there are lots of things that you can measure, such as where people come from, what pages they look at, how long they visit, or where they decide to leave you site.
These insights can be quite interesting and they can certainly help you improve your conversion — if you know how to interpret them. In order to take specific action on any analytical data, you need to understand why people act the way they do on your site. What are their goals? What is their motivation? Why do they leave without making a purchase?
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Announcements
Last summer, we introduced our latest product Usabilla Live – a tool that allows you to gather real-time user feedback on your live website. We are excited to see that the tool has been met with enthusiasm by marketers, designers, usability & UX practitioners. We were able to overcome the common challenges of remote user research with live, visual, and most of all qualitative user feedback.
Now, it’s time for the next big step. Context-sensitive live feedback is great. It also inspired us to look into new ways to gather even more specific and targeted user feedback. After listening to the ideas and wishes of our customers, and countless hours of conceptual work, wireframing, and programming, we are happy to announce the release of an awesome new feature: Usabilla Live Campaigns.
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Design
The web of 2013 is complex and ever-growing. In January, there were already 13.81 billion indexed web pages worldwide. That makes 13,810,000,000 web pages — which is a lot. But not only the number of websites has skyrocketed, they have also become a lot more complex. New technologies allow for new trends. New trends result in new standards. New standards create rising expectations among users.
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Design
As design trends change, it’s easy for websites that were once beautifully designed to appear outdated. Sometimes business objectives change, which can result in the website that was created several years ago no longer reflecting where the company is heading. Other times, old designs just look stale and could do with a revamp.
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Theory
This is a guest post by Guido Jansen.
Hopefully, you were preparing to start shouting at me after reading the title. If you weren’t, you might be making some really wrong decisions when optimizing your webshop and losing a lot of money. Let me explain to you what is so wrong with the title…
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