User Experience - The Usabilla Blog

How To Design Cool Team Pages

on July 5, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 18 Comments

Just like everything else on the Web, team presentations have changed a lot over the last few years. They went from non existent to being very personal, funny, and engaging. Our expectations towards the user experience of a website grows rapidly. Not only do we want clear information, and easy to go through signup processes, we also want to know who is behind a website and why we should trust them.

From the early phases of the Web until only a little while ago, websites did not give their visitors the chance to meet their team. While basic contact information has been a common thing to offer for a while now, most of the time it was not clear who you would reach once you took the daring step to actually make contact.
Read the rest of this entry »

Theory

Why The User Experience Can Or Cannot Be Designed

on July 2, 2012 / by Paul Olyslager / No Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Paul Olyslager.

It seems an endless discussion whether the user experience can or cannot be designed. The difficulty of the discussion lies in the level of abstraction. I believe that is because everything is an experience and everyone is a user. There is no standard definition, nor consensus among the practitioners, of what experience design really is.

In this article I hope to shed some light on the issue. I will share my thoughts about the difficulties to design the user experience and give some practical tips how to overcome this challenge.
Read the rest of this entry »

Announcements

New: Collect Emotional Feedback On Your Live Website

on June 26, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 7 Comments

Emotions become increasingly important on the Web. While good usability has become a common standard, the user experience of a website has turned into a major distinguishing factor. People no longer want to solve boring tasks on your site, they want to be entertained and experience pleasure while finding answers to their questions.

Happy website visitors are more creative, can better navigate your website, and are more likely to become loyal customers. That’s why we have developed Usabilla Live: Optimize your website for emotions by allowing visitors’ feelings to become actionable indicators for a better user experience. With a focus on the user experience, you not only make your visitors happy, you can also increase your conversion rates.
Read the rest of this entry »

Design

6 Guidelines For Designing 404 Error Pages With A Positive Impact

on June 21, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 2 Comments

It goes without saying that the best way to go about errors is to avoid them. People neither have the time nor the nerves to deal with technical problems, while browsing your site with a certain goal in mind. So you should do everything in your power to avoid errors.

Yet, there is little you can do about the unexpected. No matter how hard you try, some users will run into a dead end at some point. It might or not be your fault, but you should be prepared for when it happens.

Customized 404 error pages have become the rule. We see them almost every time that we try to visit a broken or non-existing link. Webmasters have realized that classic 404 error messages can have a negative impact on the user experience. They are negatively phrased, boring and for most people too technical to truly understand. Customized error pages on the other hand can have a positive impact.
Read the rest of this entry »

Design

Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites

on June 6, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

This article was originally and in full length published on Smashing Magazine. Please visit the original source for the entire text, including many visual examples.

Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency.

We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new medium that we lost sight of its full potential. Instead of using the Internet on our terms, we adapted to its technical and, at first, impersonal nature. If it wasn’t for visionary contemporaries such as Don Norman or Aarron Walter, we might still be focusing on improving processes, neglecting the potential of emotional design.
Read the rest of this entry »

Discoveries

How Logo Design Can Add Magic To Your Site’s User Experience

on May 24, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

Your logo can be considered the heart of your website. Positioned at the very top of your site, chances are good that it is the first thing to meet your visitor’s eye. This quality position calls for a special role. As emotional aspects have taken in a central role in web design, it is time to see if your logo can contribute some magic play to your site’s user experience.

The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand or economic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are strikingly different from other logo in the same market niche. Logos are used to identify. — Jacob Cass

There have been plenty of articles written on logo design. Reason enough for me to not go into the theory once more, or give tips for effective logo design, and neither will I cover mistakes you should avoid.

Rather, I’d like to focus on the very practical effects your logo can have on your site’s user experience. For example, your logo can be a great tool to draw your visitors in, it can help you to introduce and identify yourself, and it helps people to remember you.
Read the rest of this entry »

Theory

5 Reasons Why Metaphors Can Improve Your User Experience

on May 23, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

There are many ways to experience the world around us. Especially offline, we can make use of our different senses to collect information, interpret our environment and make judgments. On the Web, however, our senses are more limited. As designers, we need to present information carefully to make sure our users think, feel and do the right thing.

A great way to help your users understand abstract content, create a sense of familiarity, trigger emotions, draw attention, and motivate action are metaphors.

The way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.

– Lakoff and Johnson

Let’s look at five reasons why metaphors can have such an influence on your user experience. For the full article, including examples, please visit Six Revisions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Theory

If You Don’t Learn, You Might As Well Not Test

on May 22, 2012 / by Richard de Vries / No Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Richard de Vries.

The most popular way of optimizing a website is by A/B testing it. For some reason the bigger the website gets, the harder it becomes to test. If you are dealing with optimization in a big company there is a fair chance you will recognize this. Putting up with rules and regulations, trying to get everyone involved and not getting people to agree upon what to test are just a few of the many things you will run into. The easiest way to solve this is to avoid working for big companies and only work for startups. However if you change your approach to testing, you might be able to create some magic, even in a big company.
Read the rest of this entry »

Theory

Book Review: Playful Design by John Ferrara

on May 16, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

The new book Playful Design by John Ferrara is about to come out and our friend Matthew Niederberger was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at one of the first copies. Here is a very brief summary of what he thinks about it. For the full book review, please visit the actualinsights blog.

According to Matthew, Playful Design is a very insightful book on how and why games
can solve real problems. It covers everything from clear explanations of the fundamentals, over definitions, to individual elements. From game concept to prototype, the author discusses many different facets of game design.
Read the rest of this entry »

Theory

Optimize Your Conversion With Insights From Behavioural Economics

on May 15, 2012 / by Neal Cole / 3 Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Neal Cole.

As Dan Ariely explains in his popular books people are often irrational in their decision making as they are heavily influenced by unconscious biases. Conversion professionals can utilise knowledge of these ‘rules of thumb’ to nudge website visitors towards a particular behaviour. However, because people may not be fully aware of these influences customer research cannot predict how they will respond to the use of such persuasive designs.

Online experiments (A/B and multivariate tests) are the only true way of evaluating how visitors will respond to a new web page or online journey. Organisations that use such experimental testing can potentially save millions of pounds by avoiding lost sales and benefit from an uplift in conversion.
Read the rest of this entry »