Don't Annoy Your Prospects As They Walk In Your Door

Let me ask you this: If a stranger or less-known acquaintance arrived at your front door, would you immediately say something like, “Hi! What do you think of my home’s interior design?” or “Can I get your email address so I can send you some special recipes I have?”  Even if the person didn’t say it, they would definitely be thinking, “Whaaaat? Why are you asking me that already – we barely know each other!” Such questions would at least be socially awkward, and might even preclude you from gaining a closer relationship over time.

Likewise, in online experiences it is just plain annoying for people to get popup layers asking for your email address or to provide website feedback and have to attend to them. More often than not, your visitors will think “get out of my face!” and dismiss them immediately, feeling perturbed and wondering, “Do they really care more about their marketing initiatives than my shopping experience?” 

The online sales interactions you user experience design represent a similar conversation with your prospects. As such, they should follow the social norms we have for in-person interactions. It’s all about finding the balance between your marketing objectives and the user’s intents and wishes, while also injecting a good dose of empathy into the interaction. 

The same is true for an online experience. Most of us want don’t want to be pounced upon when we enter a virtual store. Instead, we first want to get our bearings, sense what this store is about, in terms of layout, brand feel and customer service. Only after that do we want to interact – and possibly engage or buy – at a deeper level.

This is why “premature solicitations” must be avoided. By these I mean:

• Popups asking for your email address
• Popups asking you to participate in an end-of-session feedback survey
• Requests to “Like us on Facebook!”, “Follow us on Twitter”
• Any other promotional graphics or copy that are modal (require a user interaction to continue)

I experienced the following popup layer 1 second after landing on this site.

This model layer forces me to interrupt my thought flow of getting some “comfortable, colorful and stylish summer wedges” and to attend to this offer. Here are some of my thoughts that immediately came to mind:

• “Why are you interrupting me now? I’m just getting started.”
• “Why don’t you just directly give me 20% off my first item? Why do I have to enter my email now, then go to my email to get my promo code?”
• “Why do I have to both with entering my email address twice?”
• “What other benefits do I get for providing my email address?” 
• “Will I get spammed? I don’t see any indication that I won’t.”

These are all questions and points of contention. Is this what you want your visitor to feel and think? Likely not. 

When you push a popup in front of your user you are annoying 90% of people who arrive at your virtual door. By imposing your marketing will on most or all of your visitors you are not honoring their desire to have a mostly anonymous, uninterrupted experience. Most importantly, you’re not building trust, and prospects don’t buy from companies they don’t trust.

A Better Way: Integrated Into the User's Workflow

A more supportive approach is to help your visitor stay on that “happy path” to finding a set of products that meet her preferences - i.e. selecting shoe size (e.g. in Lightbox layer, that user can skip, if desired), choosing style/color/brand preferences (e.g. in left-column filters), then viewing a list of shoes for consideration. This is the most preferable (and appropriate) path for most users.

If it’s important for you to state your sales propositions or offers, consider showing this copy directly within the experience (e.g. in the middle of your product listing, or in the top-left product position if you have “matrix” view. Your prospect will still perceive and see it, and hold it in their working memory. People don’t tend to forget offers that save them money; price is always a top consideration for online shopping.

The site below embeds a couple sales propositions in the top-left position of the product matrix. You could use the same – or other prominent location – to display your special offer. No “banner blindness” here; your visitors definitely won’t missing see your message in this location. If your promo is product or brand-specific (as some are), you can expose it after the user makes that selection.

If You Must Ask For An Email Early In The Experience

I understand the direction from Marketing Department: “We need more email captures, because email is our highest-converting channel.” Email is certainly a key lead-gen channel, but you need to be careful when and how you ask for it.

Based on my learnings from my last couple projects, a better time to ask is 7-10 seconds after the user’s first interaction, or when the user is has otherwise reached a “high engagement point” in their experience, like the product listing (category) page. This is the point when the user is ready to consider specific products and associated offers.

Be sure to also explain the “do fors” – everything the visitor will gain from providing their email address – and any pains that will be avoided (getting spammed, or not being able to unsubscribe from the emails). Doing so will lower the prospect’s fear of providing this personal information.

The site below mentions that not only will you save 10% off your first order, but you will “stay in touch” with the latest styles, deals and sales. This gives the prospect a clearer indication of what to expect after she enters her email. In addition, this layer appears after about 7 seconds (on my cable connection), so as to not directly interfere with my initial scan of the page.

A More Subtle Way to Ask

Rather than directly present the form to the user, consider presenting your form in a subtler way. Good approaches I like are: showing a minimized “Become an insider” layer – e.g. that animates in from the right side of the page. This approach makes your opt-in visible, yet not obtrusive (in terms of space) and interruptive (in terms of time). The user can easily minimize the offer layer if not desired – or not desired at this time. Putting your prospect in control of this interaction will more positively reflect on your brand, while likely not compromising your email opt-in rate.

Consider Starting a Dialog

Remember, many shopping experiences these days – at least for discretionary purchases - are increasingly multi-channel: your prospect first hits your mobile site while waiting in line on Day 1, hits it again a couple days later while watching her son’s football game, then continues their shopping scenario on your desktop site a few days later (pay day), and perhaps “carts” a couple items. So you don’t need to fully convert them on their first experience.

As a marketer, ask yourself (and your team): Is it more important to convert this person now, or to give her time to connect with your brand? If the latter, consider other ways to start a dialog, including:

• A short online survey, using a tool like Qualaroo or Userhue.
• A chat interaction (minimized by default, so as to be unobtrusive, yet visible)

I’ll explore these other “dialog modes” in a separate article. For now, start thinking “outside the promo/email box” early in your interactions with your prospects.

Summing Up

All of us humans want to feel like we’re in control, and your website users are no different. So respect your visitors’ desire for control by presenting your email capture forms in a more creative way, and at a more appropriate time. Doing so will reduce the “annoyance factor” and give your visitors a more favorable impression of your site and your brand. If in doubt, ask: “What I do this if I was interacting with someone I don’t know well - or at all - in person?" If not, consider an alternate approach that shows you know how to balance your visitors' desire for autonomy against the goals of your marketing campaigns.

How to Reach Mark

email: mark.hall99@gmail.com
skype: markhall_skype
twitter: @HallmarkUX
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hallmarkexperience

If You Could Ask Only One Question of Your Visitors, What Should It Be?

Brian Massey posed a great question to me the other day: If you could ask your site visitors only one question, what should it be? I love this question because it distills pre-conversion user research down to its essence: how can you best glean the “why” motivations behind what your users are thinking – and, equally importantly, the concerns they may be feeling – early in their experience? And how can you choose a question that, after you analyze user responses, will be actionable – will allow you to confidently make and test design updates that better address these concerns and improve your conversions?

In this article I’ll focus on what question to ask, and in a future article I’ll unpack where and how you should ask this question.

Start with the research end in mind

Start with the insights goal you’re trying to achieve by asking the question. Are you trying to expose the general concerns or questions (what marketers call “objections”) your visitors may have, or are you more interested in learning something more specific, such as whether your Product Detail page is missing any key information? If you’re new to user experience research, or your website hasn’t undergone any significant usability testing, you should typically start with the “general” goal and ask more open-ended questions.
In this article I’ll assume that you are asking the question of a person who doesn’t yet know and trust your brand and is early in her shopping experience (e.g. just arrived on your website or landing page). A different question – or set of questions – would apply for your converted customers.

First, avoid asking the wrong questions

First, let’s talk about questions you shouldn’t ask. The prospect is already on your site, so clearly your marketing has worked (at least partially). So early in the experience you should avoid asking marketing questions like:

• How did you first hear about us?
• What prompted you to start looking for this type of service?
• What other competitors are you considering?

Instead, focus on the questions most tied to your research goals, and that uncover questions and concerns that would negatively affect your visitor engagement and conversion. Save the marketing questions for further down your sales funnel – for example, on order confirmation pages, in your social media channels, or on your email response pages.

Some possible questions

OK, let’s finally get to the question you should ask. Based on my experience leading research projects for six Fortune 500 clients, and my recent survey of the latest user feedback solicitation tools, here are my top 5 possible questions (in no particular order), along with some pros and cons for each:

Drumroll, please…

In my opinion, the #1 question I would ask is Question #5. Coming in a “Close 2nd” is Question #4.

The two questions are really variations on the same theme. By asking either of them you are communicating, “I value you as a potential customer and am truly interested in learning where our website is missing the mark relative to your needs, wants and expectations. This question is specifically not calling attention to your offer, it’s not “going for the close”, and it’s not asking your visitors to be designers; it’s simply saying “we care, we want to improve your experience, and we’re listening.”

A key thing to remember: for many shopping scenarios, “making a positive brand impression” or “building brand memory” is as important as closing a sale or generating a lead. Connect with the visitor first; sell to her later. Another thing to bear in mind: with the rapid growth of mobile devices usage, prospect experiences are often multi-touch:  the prospect hits your website on their iPad the evening of Day 1, briefly visits your site during lunch on Day 2, and again visits your site during an afternoon coffee break on Day 2. So, except in some small dollar amount, single widget sales cases, it’s not a “once and done” interaction (or if it is, it shouldn’t be).

A sample scenario

Let’s say that Judy, a middle-aged woman from Austin, is shopping for a place to board her dog Max while she’s on vacation. She’s willing to pay extra for a better facility and service. After doing a web search for “dog boarders austin,” she lands on www.campbowwow.com.

Judy’s main concerns are:

• Pricing – how much will it cost for the week?
• How much play time her dog will get
• How clean the kennel is kept

Judy sees that these questions are not answered on the top half of the home page. After about 10 seconds of scanning, she’s a bit disappointed and clicks her browser’s Back button. End of experience – for now and perhaps forever.

If our “one question” were asked, she’d have the choice (and who doesn’t like choices?!) to express her questions and concerns. Even if Judy decides to go with another dog boarder this time, there’s a decent chance that a thought like, “Ah yes… Camp Bow Wow… they were the ones who asked for my input,” will get lodged in her longer-term memory. If she were not completely satisfied with the other boarder’s services or staff, a couple weeks before her next trip she might just give Camp Bow Wow a call.

Summing up

Whether or not you consider your organization “customer centric”, you need to start a dialog with your prospects. And the sooner you can do this, the better (both in the experience, and on your website release roadmap). By doing so you’ll discover expectations that your site is not meeting so that you can better address them through user experience and copy updates, and thereby grow your bottom line.

About Mark Hall 

Mark is Research Director at Hallmark Experience, an agency that focuses on voice of prospect research, usability testing and expert design reviews. He’s had the privilege to work with top brands like Macys, Kaiser Permanente, American Express and AutoZone, as well as smaller, fast-growing companies in the San Diego area. You can reach him here.

The Essential Checklist for Much Higher Converting Checkouts

One thing has become obvious to me in the eight years I’ve spent researching and designing eCommerce site checkouts:  many checkouts today are still doing a poor job of convincing visitors to click the “place order” button. While there will always be many shoppers who are just curious ‘tire kickers’, the tragic fact still remains that many checkout bailouts are by people who had fully intended to purchase, but for some reason didn’t feel confident enough to pull the trigger.

During this time I have learned many things to ensure a higher percentage of visitors get through website checkouts and pull the trigger. I’ve decided to help you by turning these learnings into a ‘test-proven’ essential checklist for higher-converting checkout.

Many of these can significantly grow revenues, like at an auto-part seller where I increased“add to carts” by 2%, translating to a yearly revenue boost of $3M! This is not an isolated case; you can realize similar results for your site by trying these test-proven techniques. Let’s get started with the 10 essential techniques:

10. Consistently Expose Your Value Propositions

My experience moderating dozens of Category > Product > Checkout usability test sessions (and seeing changes top brands have made to their checkouts) has convinced me that your core value propositions need to be shared visibly and repeatedly during the purchase process. And “sidebar” exposure is not enough; to ensure most of your prospects notice and internalize your selling points, your value props need to appear in the user’s main scan path.

Keep in mind that the purchase experience actually starts on the Product page, where the prospect is engaged enough to peruse images and details before adding the item to their cart. So you should start exposing your propositions at this point in the experience, if not before (on Category pages). Don’t feel that you need to make your value prop copy or graphics dark grey or colored; mid-grey tones are sufficient to be noticed, yet won’t distract from the primary interaction elements on the page.

Another point: Don’t rely solely on page footer exposure. My experience and click heat maps show that most users don’t scroll past the “false bottom” of the page (typically just below the product details and any applicable customer reviews). Place your key selling points in one of the main columns to ensure that they’re seen and tilt the benefits/objections scale in your favor.

Here are examples screenshots from the REI.com checkout, who do an exceptional job of communicating value proposition:

9. Don’t Require Registration During Checkout

A case study from a leading conversion optimization agency, whose team has done extensive testing of checkout flows, confirmed the suspicion I’ve had for years: requiring registration during checkout is a conversion killer, so be very wary of doing this. Remember, your first goal during checkout is to get your prospect to buy now, not necessarily to make it easier for her to make a later purchase. So make account creation during checkout optional or, better yet, don’t present this option until a later time, such as on the order confirmation page or in a separate marketing email.

What about “member only” sites like dollarshaveclub.com and myhabit.com, you may ask? Well, these companies are exceptions to the rule since they have made a very conscious decision to require membership in order to do business with them by making it a key part of their value proposition (you must become a member to get their special pricing).

Great examples of this below show how Macys.com allows visitors to checkout as a guest, and how MyHabit.com makes joining easy for existing Amazon.com members.

8. Cross Sell At The Right Place And Time

I recently asked five seasoned eCommerce Directors for major brands “Where’s the best place to cross sell (offering complementary, relatively low-priced items)?” Based on testing they had done, the consensus was that these items should be offered “as close as possible to the user’s decision point” – i.e. either on the “added to cart” layer, or in the cart. After that point, most prospects have “mentally checked out.”

Also, you should present cross-sells only if you have integrated a recommendations engine (Certona, Monetate etc.) or your sales team has the insights to know which items pair best with each of your top selling “parent” products. Showing no recommendations is better than showing bad ones, since bad recommendations can compromise trust in your brand.

If you believe, as many marketers do, that repetition and persistence sells, and decide to ask for a cross-sell again later in checkout, be sure not to offer the item(s) more than twice, as the annoyance factor may outweigh the increased order value advantages. Here is a good example of a well-timed, relevant upsell on the bestbuy.com checkout.

 7. Offer Help Throughout The Checkout Process

While providing global (header) access to customer support is fine on other pages, during checkout you need to be proactive about offering user assistance. This means placing phone numbers and chat links on every page of checkout, and in a clearly visible location (the user’s main scan path). Here is a good example of this on the Zappos.com checkout page:

This does not mean always including pushing a chat window/layer to your users after a set period of time on the page (e.g., 15 seconds). In fact, when I recently did a user test for an auto parts seller that had this feature activated, nearly all of the participants found it annoying. Their post-test comments indicated they didn’t want help to “jump out” at them; they just wanted to know where to find help if and when a question or concern did arise.

6. Create Some Purchase Urgency

A key tipping point in the purchase decision is clearly the cart, and specifically the “start checkout” action. As a result, you need to be sure to address all common concerns and objections at this time to “tip the conversion scale” in favor of buying now versus maybe coming back later. In most cases you can create such urgency by:

• Emphasizing delivery speed (“In stock; receive by Feb 28th if ordered today”)

• Creating scarcity (“Only 3 of this item remaining”)

• Presenting a limited-time offer (“Offer expires February 28th”)

If there is any way to make the prospect feel she will be “missing out” – or the price will go up – if she does not buy here and now, consider mentioning that as well. This copy should be especially compelling to prospects who often need your product ASAP, and thus would prefer not to do more comparison shopping.

Just like your value propositions, it’s best to start exposing these urgency triggers earlier in the process (Product and Category pages), then to reinforce the factors throughout the checkout process. Here is a good example of the Macys.com checkout doing this well:

5. Remove Header Navigation During Checkout

Admit it – the U.S. has become an attention deficit nation. While some of us actually have an attention-deficit disorder, the rest of us are bombarded with so many messages and choices that we can easily lose our focus when surfing the Web. One minute you’re researching background for your term paper; the next minute you’re watching cats twerking on YouTube.

In order to decrease distractions that can cause users to bail out at the most inopportune time, you should remove all unnecessary distractions during the checkout process. This is not the time to actively seek social validation (Facebook likes, Twitter followers). It’s also not a good time to invite your prospect to continue shopping (except, perhaps, to consider a couple highly relevant cross-sells).

To minimize distractions and the revenue bleeding they cause, I recommend that during checkout you:

• Remove all global navigation from the header
• Remove all highly visible social media icons

MyHabit employs this “less navigation is more” philosophy during checkout:

4. Reassure the Prospect That The Price Is Right

If your prospect has added an item to their cart based on a referral from a coupon code (e.g., email) or price optimization tool (e.g., Runa), you don’t need to offer them a lower price incentive. Your marketing efforts to this point have already pushed this person over their “price concerning hurdle.”

If your prospect hasn’t seen a promotional offer (and one applies), it’s OK to include a “Promo Code” field in your cart. But if you do include this field you also need to provide the answer to the “Am I getting the best deal?” question that will likely arise in the prospect’s mind.  Macys.com does this by including a “find one now” link that, when clicked, brings up a new window showing all applicable promotional codes, along with the ability to “apply to my order.” If no promos apply for any items in the cart, you should suppress the display of the code entry box and use other strategies to ensure that your pricing is competitive.

By implementing this logic, you’ll avoid giving away your precious margins to prospects who either don’t expect – or aren’t willing to expend the extra effort – to get the lowest price.

3. In Some Scenarios, Try Bypassing the Cart Page

(Note: The following assumes that in your checkout process the prospect can select their shipping option somewhere besides the cart, or you can easily move these options to a later step in the process.)

Why must all checkout roads go through the Cart page? In many scenarios (e.g., you sell only one product, your average number of products per order is less than two, or you have implemented an “item added to cart” layer), your prospect has a clear mental image of what she’s buying, so it makes sense to test skipping the Cart page and taking her directly to the Shipping/Billing/Payment step.

If you have concerns about skipping the cart entirely, you can hedge this by testing a “continue shopping | view cart | start checkout” branch, as shown in the below REI.com example.

The “less is more” principle applies here: giving the user one less chance to view and reconsider their purchase decision might just improve your conversion rate.

2. Implement a One-Page Checkout

While I have designed several multi-page checkouts, given the advent of slick Ajax form interactions like expand and collapse controls, and background page refreshes, their cons now outweigh their pros in most cases. So I’m a strong advocate of keeping all of your checkout steps on a single page.

This does not mean, however, that you should omit the steps in the process. It’s a good idea to reinforce them, especially if you decide to use an “accordion” model (expanding/collapsing steps, as shown below for DollarShaveClub.com), since this parses the user’s reading and data entry into more intuitive “chunks”.

So, should you still have a separate “review order” page? Most often, No. I’ve tested two checkout designs with and without these pages and in both cases the “without” versions won. While you may be concerned (as I have been) that omitting this step will cause some users apprehension and/or lead to some “accidental orders,” based on my discussions with Customer Service managers this is rarely the case. The vast majority of users who get to this final step fully expect  their order to be processed after entering their payment information. For this majority of your prospects exposing this extra step could cause some pause – the last thing you want to happen at this late juncture in the checkout process.

1. Think Outside of The Testing Box

Lastly, always try to think of more unusual checkout tests – you never know what will work well for increasing orders on your website (but maybe not work on another).

One of the most surprising findings to me over the past two years is this: a client of mine achieved a 5% checkout conversion lift simply by increasing the default font size on all of its checkout pages (see example below). Not a bad for a change that required no development effort, just a quick CSS update and server refresh.

Too often, designers use font sizes simply too small for a significant percentage of visitors to easily read. Of course sizes will vary widely based on screen resolution, but a good guideline is to use a “body” font that is 14-point or larger if a significant percentage of your site’s users are over 40 or may have vision impairments (and 12% of the population, or 1 in every 8 adults, has some kind of vision impairment).

“But that’s too big – it will mess up my layout!” you may say about this unusual test. Actually, you’ll find that it won’t if you have a responsive design that adapts well. Don’t worry about your users having to do a bit more scrolling during checkout; this is not the conversion detriment it is for sales pages.

Wrap Up: Higher Checkout Conversion Is In Your Future

Don’t continue leaving thousands – if not millions – of dollars in yearly revenues on the table due to a poor checkout experience. Reduce the guesswork involved (and those endless design debates) by testing trying one of the checklist items I have covered.

Be pragmatic; start with the techniques that require the least development time, test variations and measure the conversion, revenue and average order value (AOV) lifts. The most important thing is to get some design variations and tests started ASAP so that you can learn which give you the highest revenue improvements.

Some questions for you to consider:

• Which of these techniques do you think makes the most sense to try given your business model and prospects?

• How soon can you convince your organization to prioritize, implement, test and profit from these improvements?

About Mark Hall

Mark is Research Director at Hallmark Experience and has been researching, designing and testing user experiences for over 15 years. He’s had the privilege to work with top brands like Macys, Kaiser Permanente and American Express, as well as several smaller, fast-growing eCommerce companies in the San Diego area. You can reach him here.

Words of UX Wisdom: Spend Some Time Upstream

If your organization is like most, as a UX designer you get more of your “design requirements” from other sources, such as business analysts, project manager, user researchers, etc. While this level of input can work OK if the features you’re designing are well contained (small scope, tactical), it will not work as well if you’ll be designing something that has workflow implications. Instead, you’ll eventually discover that your design vision is missing the "root" insights and rationale that will let you envision a more ideal solution. 

 While consulting at Human Factors International (HFI) I had the wonderful opportunity to perform data gathering activities that allowed me to “get inside the heads” of typical users of the site or application. And I was thankfully also the same person creating the UX solution. This gave me both a holistic view of not only the issues to be solved, but also the specific business objectives the design was meant to achieve, which made it easier to create a better end-product (and more satisfied client).

So, what’s a poor guy or gal embedded in a scrum team and fed only an occasional diet of user stories and technical requirements to do? My advice is to spend some time “upstream” in the process by persistently asking a lot of questions. If you did not previously, ask about the users - their profiles, mindsets and intents. If you don’t have these profiles, create them. These will be the “actors” in your user stories, so it’s essential you know where they are coming from psychologically. 

Start with asking the “why” questions about the requirements you’re given, such as:

• “Why is Feature A a priority?” “For which user?”
• “How does it fit into the user’s workflow relative to Features B and C?”
• “Has this need been validated by data, either qualitative or quantitative?”
• “How is success of this feature be measured after its deployment?” 

Yes, these questions were supposed to have been vetted by researchers and project managers earlier in the project, but often they either haven’t been asked at all, or not at a deep enough level. We need to realize that the main motives of the project manager and developers is get a well-defined feature deployed within the allotted time and with an acceptable level of quality. While your project (or product) manager is responsible for the overall technical solution and it’s performance (KPIs, etc), he or she is often does not (with some exceptions - Steve Jobs is one that comes to mind) have the in-the-trenches knowledge of what users need and, most importantly, want and expect in their features when integrated into your site or app. Your main task - in fact, your duty, as a diligent UX pro is deeply learn these user wants and needs so your design solution can fully address them - if not in the current sprint, at least over time.

So, whom do you ask these questions? The short answer is, anyone who will listen. After starting with your immediate colleagues on the creative and tech side, move to your project manager. If they don’t seem to have clear answers to your questions, keep moving outward and upstream to the people what really should know these answers - people with titles like Market Research Analyst, User Researcher, UX Analyst or Sales Manager. (When you want to speak with people with titles of “manager” and above, for political purposes it’s best to first get permission from your manager. If you don’t get permission, don’t despair - persist [in the more assertive, yet nicest, manner possible] ).

Asking these questions and learning the answers (and undoubtedly the new questions that will arise from these discussions) is an invaluable experience because it not only gives you insights - it also gives you personal connections and builds organizational accountability (as in, “Wow, Julie is asking a lot of questions. She really cares about creating a great design.”) If you’re the introverted type, this is a good time to push that shyness into the background. History has pretty strongly borne out that the most inquisitive and persistent (yet cordial) designers and researchers have delivered the user experiences that most make both their users and the company CFO smile.

Of course, the main point of asking these questions, besides gaining valuable user insights, is to inform the analysis you’ll be doing - workflows, interaction architecture, etc - the predecessors to the finished, polished product. I can guarantee that if you ask more questions upfront and do more analysis diligence, you’ll be able to both design more quickly (and with more confidence), and to create designs that produce better bottom-line results. 

I often think of what my first UX mentor said: You first need to define the problem you are solving. Solving the wrong problem, or even solving the right problem with insufficient understanding, is a waste of both your time, and the time of others in your organization. What’s more, designing without deeper insights will result in a UX that feels poorly thought out and more "siloed," which can leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

Here's something else to keep in mind: asking your questions and connecting with colleagues is FREE; it just requires you to allocate some time out of your week. I’ve found that about 2 hours a week (or about 5% of your time) is sufficient initially to get the dialog going. And if you establish the value of caring more deeply about your users’ core functional and emotional needs, you - or someone else in your organization who is better able to do so - will be allowed to devote more time and budget to research activities even further upstream, such as motivational interviews, usability testing, and customer journey mapping. If and when you get to this point, you’ll find that these activities will give you the biggest “aha” insights of them all.

So remember, if you’re feeling hesitant, or “not sure you have permission,” just repeat this UX mantra: “My users need me to ask these questions, and to be persistent in getting them answered!” By not doing so you risk your designs (and you) being judged as mediocre, and not evoking the positive emotional responses you want from the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who experience the result of your work every day.

How to Reach Mark

email: mark.hall99@gmail.com
skype: markhall_skype
twitter: @HallmarkUX
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hallmarkexperience

Words of UX Wisdom: Get Psyched!

The best UX researchers and designers I know have a passion for psychology - understanding how the human mind works, so that their design solutions can best be tailored to its capabilities and desires. And they take it to the next level - seeking to understand, as specifically as possible, the mindsets and motivations of their site or app’s target users. You can see it in their inquisitive eyes and attitudes, by the psychology-related study findings they cite, and by their eagerness to do usability testing. They truly care about humans (at least on an intellectual level) and know that through this caring they can create more successful solutions - both for the user and for the business. The “before/after” ROI results of their designs usually bear this out.

So if you want to integrate more “human-ness” into your designs you don’t need to read an academic journal article a week and have an advanced degree in cognitive psychology (although that doesn’t hurt). You simply need to be curious about humans think and feel, attend some local UX meetings, find a senior-level UX mentor, and read up on psychology as it relates to design, at the same time as you are honing your design skills. It’s all about adopting a mindset of continuous learning. 

In terms of reading, I especially recommend books on architecture (information, persuasion, content), emotional design, and neuromarketing. The latest wave of design books from publishers like ABookApart provide a great starting point if you’re short on time and attention span (disclaimers: I am in no way affiliated with ABookApart. I formerly worked as a consultant at HFI). If your work and interests are more on the “art” side there is much to be learned there at well. Read some books on visual design theory; Art & Visual Perception (Arnheim) and Designing Visual Interfaces (Mullet, Sano) are stand-out books in this realm for me.

If you’re saying, “I’m not a big reader,” that’s OK. I lieu of reading books you can learn from talented graphic design greats by watching their videos on the Web (YouTube or elsewhere), or even by watching any of the wide variety of interior design or home improvement shows currently on TV.  Within a concise 60-minute time slot these shows demonstrate how a home can be transformed from a confusing, undesigned mess into a beautiful space where all of elements work together functionally and aesthetically.

So don’t wait - if you are committed to becoming the best you can be in the UX field, get “psyched up” to become a student of how humans perceive, think and decide. You'll become a more successful designer as a result.

How to Reach Mark

email: mark.hall99@gmail.com
skype: markhall_skype
twitter: @HallmarkUX
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hallmarkexperience

UX at 50

Turning 50 recently has made me reflect on how UX has transformed over the last 15 years. Sitting in a Corvallis, Oregon apartment in 1995, I was absolutely awed by being able to virtually jump to the beaches of Rio deJaneiro, Brazil in a matter of about 10 seconds - a Web page “painting” before my very eyes, courtesy of Netscape Navigator, and some genius graduate work by Mark Andreesen’s at the University of Illinois that developed the initial Mosaic browser. In an instant the Internet was no longer a place where only geeks could control the landscape and push messages over gopher and ftp; instead it was a place with the only moderately tech-savvy masses could participate in a visually rich content and media sharing community. The “first Web” - version 1.0 - was born.

By the late 1990s, however, all was not well on the UX front. Jakob Nielsen, in his Alertbox articles, lamented the poor state of usability on a weekly basis (we let him do so, since he had considerable design consulting experience and had done a lot of usability tests; besides, we enjoyed hearing his “how many users to test?” debates with Jared Spool). As I did usability tests and heuristic reviews on a lot of websitessite, it was obvious that, while some websites had decent graphic design and usability, the vast majority had poor - even terrible - usability. And this was happening despite the fact that there was some good foundational books out there (for example, Cooper’s About Face, Nielsen’s Usability Engineering, and Rosenfeld & Morville’s Information Architecture for the Web).

By the early 2000s, when I worked at a healthcare eCommerce startup, “information architecture”, “visual design” (and many other variations on these monikers) became specialized disciplines under the umbrella titles of “web designer” or “web developer”. Best practice, research-based guidelines surfaced from organizations like IBM, Yale and usability.gov. At long last the disciplines of “usability engineering” had matured to the point where smart, talented folks could (if they were made aware, and cared) use prescriptive processes and tools to create more usable and “enlightened” sites and apps.

By the mid 2000s, when I was consulting for Fortune 500 companies while at Human Factors International (HFI), best-practice design standards had evolved to the point where design was primarily user-centered, focused as much on the target user’s goals and intents and as on having “good usability” and a nice graphical “look and feel”. Many of my clients were shrewd and demanding, and they should have been - they were plunking down 10s - some times 100s of thousands - of capital dollars for the promise of creating more efficient, attractive experiences that would both build their brand and augment their bottom line.

Fast-forward to the late 2000s. Don Norman and others introduced the era of emotional design, which emphasized that design should not just address our rational and behavioral goals, but should also tap into our visceral needs (how we wanted to feel at a gut level as we moved through these online experiences). This guided us (at least this practitioner) to think of emotional design and persuasion architecture in the same context as information architecture. While some users are bound to use applications (e.g. healthcare portal or CRM), if the app is inefficient and frustrating to use they now felt empowered enough to whine about their experience and advocate for something better. While using common websites (eCommerce sites, news sites, etc), we were harshly reminded that an uninspired, emotionally disaffected user can bail out at any time, taking their discretionary dollars with them.

Now that we’ve entered the 2010s, it’s apparent that old fashioned “can do” usability must be be closely coupled with “will do” user experience design and “excited to do” neuro design - the latter part being the site/app personality that keeps them coming back. Not only do we want to complete our tasks quickly, but we want to do them with a sense of pleasure (yes, that’s right, it’s OK to say “this should be fun, or at least pretty painless!”)  It’s a great melding of the architecture of design with the aesthetic side. To use a physical world analogy, UX designers have become a hybrid between an architect and an interior designer in that we need to deliver both form and functional seamlessly to make “the client” happy.

The status UX has had in organizations has also transformed. Personally, my work evolved from doing “guerilla” usability work (quick, or too often free, usability tests) within IT and Development groups to partnering closely with marketers, product managers, stakeholders and executives. And over the last 4-5 years I’ve been delighted to see companies give high exposure and importance to their UX work by bestowing senior UX staff titles like Chief Experience Officer and Chief of Customer Satisfaction. Even Chief Information Officers who were previously focused almost entirely on technology and development, have “seen the light” (and ROI) that better UX practices can give to the features they are delivering. UX design has truly become both a highly strategic and tactical discipline.

All in all, I am VERY pleased with “the current state of UX” today. It’s come a long way, baby, and designers, users and companies alike have reaped the benefits. It will be interesting to see where our profession will be another 15 years. Based on the foundation that’s been set, I’m that UX specialists will push their organizations to even higher, user-warming heights.

How to Reach Mark

email: mark.hall99@gmail.com
skype: markhall_skype
twitter: @HallmarkUX
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hallmarkexperience

Words of UX Wisdom: Don't Get Tripped Up By Pixels

Here’s my UX confession (which I end up stating often): I am a user experience designer, but not the graphic designer kind. Sure, I know my color theory fundamentals, know how to cut/edit existing graphics with the best of ‘em, and - having worked with a dozen or so very talented graphic/brand designers over the years - I definitely know the difference between “good” and “amateurish” visual design. It’s just that in my case I chose to focus more on user research, user testing, interaction architecture, and the strategic side - in other words, the rational and behavioral, rather than the more aesthetic and visceral, aspects of design. I have found during my career that, unless you’re some kind of modern-day Michelangelo, it’s a very rare thing indeed for one individual to be strong in the full spectrum of “user experience research and design” skills.

Over the past 7 years, while working at entrepreneurial and budget-conscious medium-sized companies, I have felt an explicit wish from colleagues for a “do it all” designer - someone who can whip up a compelling Photoshop comp, while also do great user research and render well-thought-out wireframes and workflows. While i’m the first to admit that grayscale wireframes aren’t particularly sexy, I strongly believe that the process that goes into creating them is as - if not more - important to the success of the ultimate website or web app than are its graphic design elements. Interestingly, I’ve found that it takes my colleagues and management about 6-9 months to come to this realization, usually after asking something like, “What’s the difference between your UX process and the Creative process again?”.

For me, it ultimately comes down to asking users to vote: If you had to choose one over the other (obviously having both would be ideal), which would you choose: a site with a smooth, intuitive workflow and mediocre color scheme, or a site with a great color scheme but awkward workflow? I’ve found that in the “app” world (and many new websites are much more “app” than “site”) the predominant answer is “workflow”. Ultimately it’s hard to fix a broken structural foundation, while it’s easier to embellish a less-than-pretty face.

The strategic companies get this and keep someone like me on board; the less strategic continue down the road of beautifying their sites/app, while making few user friends and brand advocates in the process.

How to Reach Mark

email: mark.hall99@gmail.com
skype: markhall_skype
twitter: @HallmarkUX
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hallmarkexperience