Website Design & User Experience
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009So your company has a website, fantastic – this is step one in managing your online presence, but how OLD is that website? When was the last time you watched/asked people about it’s ease of use and functionality? Sure you know what you think the website should do and be used for but are you aware of how your customers use your website?
YOU ARE NOT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.
As marketers we all feel as though we know what the customer wants, how they use and navigate the website. We feel as though we have the ability to see through their eyes and can put ourselves in the customer’s position – YOU CAN’T. (ok maybe some of us have the ability to remove ourselves but not many)
So what should you do? Watch. Your mom, your best friend, anyone that’s never been on the site before. Set up a list of tasks you wish to have the user accomplish and take notes, use SnagIt and capture all of their mouse movements. Watch a few people and see where they get caught up. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to them and it’s important for you to see this. Resist the urge to help. Say absolutely nothing. You are simply there to observe.
AMERICAN AIRLINES WEBSITE = FAIL
User experience is important. It’s how your customers interact with your brand when you can’t be there in person and you want this to be the best experience possible. Recently Dustin Curtis was booking a flight on the American Airlines website and had a terrible experience; so much so that he felt compelled to send them a letter complete with a mockup for a redesign of their homepage.
How embarrassing. Not only are your customers unhappy but they actually redesigned your homepage for you! The response from the lead UX architect was even more surprising – he agreed with Curtis. The architect admitted that the website was horrible and then explained to him why – over 200 people touch and have input on the AA website. 200 people! and that’s not the UX team – this includes the marketing people, product people, code development, business analysis, etc. etc – and each group with their own agenda, no wonder the site is a mess. Read the UX response letter and see if it’s similar to the process that your website goes through. If it is, it’s time to re-evaluate.
I understand that many people have an idea of what purpose a company website serves but if it’s not inline with what your use wants than it doesn’t matter what what you think. If you lose people on the homepage what’s the point? A website needs to stay fresh and serve the needs of it’s users. If you’ve received feedback that the website is hard to navigate, maybe it is. If Google Analytics is showing that the top landing page is not your homepage maybe there’s a reason and you should investigate further.
LANDING PAGE LESSON
A while ago I had created a landing page with a store locator for a paid search campaign, the page did well and had high traffic. One day I noticed that there were very few new customers and a lot of direct traffic using the page, meaning that the page had to be either bookmarked or the url directly typed in. Why was this? Turns out that users found it easier to google the brand name, click on the text ad and use this landing page rather than navigating the website to find the store locator there. This is a problem for the website. It should never be easier to click on an ad than use a company’s website. EVER.
No one likes to hear that their website is ugly or difficult to use but if you do hear this do something about it. Your customers are savvy, we know what an old, outdated website looks like and this will reflect poorly on you. Take the time to audit your site – pay someone – do it in-house – but do it. (While you’re at it audit your SEO/SEM initiatives as well.)
A positive user experience will reward you tenfold and there’s nothing more powerful than happy users and word of mouth.
Elise
