Your site's user experience: Balance user needs and business goals
Yesterday I attended a lunch seminar on the user experience (UX) and how it needs to be a fundamental component of your website. The presentation was given by Jason Holmes, Aaron Rosenberg, and Craig Kistler, three speakers from AG Interactive, the online arm of greeting card maker American Greetings.
They rightfully pointed out that for many websites, the experience is the product. That's certainly the case for AG Interactive, where users come to their site to send online greeting cards, either for free or as part of a paid subscription. If the customer's interaction with your brand is going to take place entirely online, you better be monitoring the user experience!
The presenters talked about the intersection of development, design, and experience. If you don't have someone watching over the user experience, it can get lost in individual departments or functions. In my own observations of websites and the way they're run, I've found that for the best results, a single person or group needs to take charge of the overall UX -- to be the "owner" of a product or a process. If you try to divide the task to multiple people, it doesn't get done. (For example, producing an email newsletter by committee is never a good idea, unless you have one person at the end who brings everything together and has the power to make changes for the good of the reader.)
The speakers also raised some excellent questions you should constantly be asking in regards to your UX:
To do UX testing if you don't have a dedicated person or team, you have a few options. Perhaps the easiest is going into a coffee shop, offering to buy someone a cup of coffee, and asking them to look at your site's printouts or wireframes. More complex approaches involve usability labs (a number of colleges have them), as well as remote usability testing. AG Interactive conducts its remote testing by triggering a pop-up on a site visitor's computer, asking the user if they'd like to participate in testing. If they agree, the UX team walks them through the process of installing simple screen-sharing software on their computer that will help the team track the user's movements.
They rightfully pointed out that for many websites, the experience is the product. That's certainly the case for AG Interactive, where users come to their site to send online greeting cards, either for free or as part of a paid subscription. If the customer's interaction with your brand is going to take place entirely online, you better be monitoring the user experience!
The presenters talked about the intersection of development, design, and experience. If you don't have someone watching over the user experience, it can get lost in individual departments or functions. In my own observations of websites and the way they're run, I've found that for the best results, a single person or group needs to take charge of the overall UX -- to be the "owner" of a product or a process. If you try to divide the task to multiple people, it doesn't get done. (For example, producing an email newsletter by committee is never a good idea, unless you have one person at the end who brings everything together and has the power to make changes for the good of the reader.)
The speakers also raised some excellent questions you should constantly be asking in regards to your UX:
- What problem are we solving?
- Why is the user here?
- How can I make it better? (Note that the it doesn't always need to mean a website. It could be a single page of a website, or a single element on one page of a site.)
To do UX testing if you don't have a dedicated person or team, you have a few options. Perhaps the easiest is going into a coffee shop, offering to buy someone a cup of coffee, and asking them to look at your site's printouts or wireframes. More complex approaches involve usability labs (a number of colleges have them), as well as remote usability testing. AG Interactive conducts its remote testing by triggering a pop-up on a site visitor's computer, asking the user if they'd like to participate in testing. If they agree, the UX team walks them through the process of installing simple screen-sharing software on their computer that will help the team track the user's movements.
Unfortunately, many companies do usability testing on big projects too late in the process. Many times companies only approve a budget for UX testing when the project is finally approved. But by that time, it's too late to make dramatic changes to the core idea of the project/product that the testing might uncover.
Here are some UX resources the presenters recommended:
- Nielsen Norman Group -- offers free white papers in the Publications section of its website
- Usability.gov
- Usability Professionals Association
And one of my favorite blogs that explores user experience in all areas, not just websites:
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