Usability: advertising investment protection
“I can only hear: attracting customers, attracting customers, attracting customers. ... Well, well, you have attracted all the customers you could. And then what? "
Replica on one of the western e-commerce conferences
Advertising budgets of commercial sites are several times higher than the budget for their development. The competition for visitors is very high. In contextual advertising, whole battles are played out for the first places in the list of sponsored links, because of which the cost of attraction becomes comparable to the income that can be obtained from the attracted visitor. At the same time, the percentage of loss of visitors on the very first page of the site remains unreasonably high for everyone. In an effort to get all new visitors, site managers often overlook the most important thing - site efficiency.
')
Usability, as an approach based on taking into account the interests of users, allows you to fully realize the reserves of the site, and improve business efficiency several times, without attracting additional traffic. And if the profit from attracting new visitors is fraught with hidden costs to increase the load stability of the site, then an increase in user experience (net satisfaction) brings a net profit, since the load on the servers does not increase.
Those who do not like to read, can watch the video of this speech .
Contrary to popular belief that an Internet user is guided mainly by price when choosing a product, it is noted that he is more likely to make a purchase on the site that inspires confidence in him, even if the price on this site is higher than on the competing one.
This is because the user projects the convenience of the site to the entire service of the company, even when he has no reason to do so. He expects that if the site is convenient, then the service that will be provided to him will be convenient.
Work to improve the usability of the site requires less financial investment than advertising. And the benefits derived from this work can compete with advertising revenue.
Of course, this rule is best illustrated by the example of popular sites. For beginner site builders, this may not be so obvious, although it is to them, who do not yet have large advertising budgets, that it is advisable to pay great attention to usability in order to make the most effective use of the traffic of visitors that advertising can give.
Usability is taking into account user features, focusing on their needs, understanding the context in which they work with the site.
To implement this approach, we need real users who show their behavior, where they face difficulties, and why they leave the site before they reach the point of purchase.
At the same time, users are not asked for their opinion, but are asked to complete tasks corresponding to the business objectives of the site. Observation of their behavior gives the necessary level of objectivity of the data.
This method of detecting site problems is called usability testing - testing with the involvement of end users.
This method is becoming more common, but there are still quite a few managers who find this method expensive and who believe that they themselves can appreciate the convenience of the site.
There is danger here! A manager, programmer, marketer, like any other project participant, are not users of the resource that they develop or promote.
Firstly, they may not fall into the target audience of the site. If, for example, men over 50 are using the site’s services, then none of the young team members will be able to see the site through the user's eyes. And, most likely, the lack of obviousness of certain pictograms, lack of readability of the text, or the presence of jargon, incomprehensible to the user, in the texts of the site will be ignored.
Secondly, only end users have a specific motivation, which leads them to one or another website. This motivation and specific previous experience form their specific needs and expectations, which are completely deprived by those who are just trying to be in the user's place.
For example, a person who did not have experience using video cameras does not know what is essential and what is not very good at choosing a camera. A large number of product options can make an impression on someone who does not understand anything in them, or, on the contrary, to cause heavy thoughts that impede the purchase. It is obvious that the form of representation of professional equipment should differ from how it is advisable to promote amateur equipment.
Therefore, “corridor testing” (the so-called programmers who test the user’s qualities of the developed site conducted on their employees) should be prohibited, since it can do more harm than good, creating illusions about the convenience of interfaces.
If the managers who manage the development of the site are not “ripe” before usability testing, believing that attracting users is expensive, then you can use a cheaper alternative - evaluation by criteria.
Usability testing is often contrasted with peer review. It remains unclear who should act as an expert, and what qualities an expert should possess.
For the reasons described above, it is impossible to rely on the opinion of an expert who poorly understands the specifics of users. And no matter what experience in the assessment he did not have, before he starts to work, you need to find out by what criteria he is going to evaluate the site.
Criteria must be defined in advance, otherwise there is a high risk that the “expert” will pay attention to the little things and miss something really important.
Many of the criteria by which a site should be evaluated are already described in the literature. Their description can be found on the Internet.
From the most basic evaluation sheets to heuristics that need to be checked. Their purpose is to standardize the assessment procedure and exclude, if possible, the human factor of the person who conducts the assessment (his forgetfulness, enthusiasm, etc.).
One of the easiest ways to standardize an assessment is to use one of the evaluation sheets.
Here is a list of objects subject to verification:
Verification of each of them consists in finding answers to questions that evaluate the various user qualities of the site.
Each site has its own purpose, which is expressed in tasks that the user can solve with its help. The feasibility of these tasks must be verified, and the obstacles to their solution must be removed.
There are several common scenarios for evaluating, one of the most popular is the heuristic estimate proposed by Jacob Nielsen as a “cheap” method.
Experts, of whom there must be a few, preferably with experience in conducting such an assessment, follow scenarios - formal descriptions of the tasks of the users for whom the site was created. In the process of "playing" pre-compiled scenarios, they fix all the problems they have encountered. Problems are identified and classified based on the so-called heuristics:
The site should always allow the user to understand what state he is in, the response time to user actions should be acceptable.
The site must "speak" in the language of users, words, phrases and concepts should be familiar to users. Information should be presented in a natural and logical way.
Users often use the functions of the site by mistake, not fully understanding its purpose, so it should always be available to the possibility of a painless way out of an undesirable situation.
Users are lost when faced with the fact that the same things, actions, situations are called different words. The site must also meet industry standards.
Better than a clear error message can only be to prevent an error before it occurs. The site must restrict the user to make a mistake, or warn him in advance about the possible consequences before the action is committed.
The site should not create a load on the user's memory, clearly representing objects, actions and choices. The user should not be faced with the need to memorize information between parts of a dialogue or a sequence of pages. Instructive texts should be clear and easily perceived wherever possible.
Hot-key combinations, which are usually invisible to the novice user, increase the speed of the experienced user. Due to their use, the site becomes highly effective for both new and experienced users of the site. The site should allow customizing frequently used operations so that their simplicity of calling them is optimal for the user.
Site pages should not contain information that is irrelevant to the context of the user's work. Each additional page element competes with relevant information and reduces its visibility.
Error messages should be expressed in natural language, without the use of technical terms. Also error messages should always contain suggestions for solving the created problem.
Although it is better to dispense with the need to use help and documentation, it may be necessary to provide user assistance. Such information should be easily accessible, focused on the user's task, contain a list of specific steps and should not be too large.
After conducting a heuristic assessment, all experts who participated in it, exchange the results, and discuss the differences that have arisen. Together they choose the most significant problems and make recommendations for solving them.
Assessing usability before launching a site or an existing site is necessary, but such a check always brings disappointment, as it reveals flaws, some of which are already difficult to correct.
You need to be courageous to calmly accept the results of testing or evaluation, and take up the correction of errors and improved usability.
To avoid such disappointments at the end, and at the same time reduce the costs of developing the site, it is advisable to use UCD (user-centered design), an approach based on the early involvement of users in the development process.
The main stages of user-oriented design are schematically as follows.
As a result of the analysis, the target audience of the site, its age structure, computer skills, cultural peculiarities, the context of work with the site, their design preferences (analysis of sites they most likely use) should be clearly defined, i.e. All features of the target audience that may affect how the site will be used. At this stage, the user requirements are fixed to the site.
All (at least, basic) tasks that the user will solve on the site should be described as scripts. Scenarios should describe the actions of the user, at the business level, and not interaction with the site, the type of which at this stage is not yet defined. Scripts record the functional requirements for the site.
The prototype is a site layout whose purpose is to visualize how the scripts will be implemented. The created prototype should be checked for the feasibility of user scripts. The degree of detail of the prototype is determined by the terms of the project. In any case, the prototype must be developed very quickly. If it took more than a week, then something goes wrong, and the prototyping is misunderstood.
The prototype allows you to see for the first time how convenient the site is. The test and evaluation methods described above can be applied at this stage for the first time.
After making changes based on the results of testing and evaluation, the prototype is specified. A document appears corresponding to the notion of TK, but describing only the user interaction with the site.
From this point on, the project can move into the development phase. The main purpose of the described process is to focus as much as possible on the users of the future site.
At the end of each stage, checks (negotiation, evaluation, or testing) take place, which may lead to the fact that the results of any phase will have to be revised, remaking what may have already begun to be liked by themselves, but it is not clear to users or does not meet their requirements. This expresses the iterative nature of the user-centered design approach.
Iteration does not mean infinity. On all design work, on average, it takes no more than a month. More time may take coordination with the customer (internal or external).
In addition to the usability effect, this approach has at least two additional positive aspects:
1. Developers can more accurately plan their work, having such input data.
2. Testing can start to work even before the development is completed, because based on the scenarios and the prototype, you can begin to make test plans.
All this allows you to meet the deadlines and budget of the project.
Consider an example demonstrating how usability problems can be identified and corrected.
The owners of one large online store were puzzled by the stagnation of sales. After a quick analysis, a problem was found that had an interesting character.
The online store has been integrated with product and price catalogs, such as price.ru and Yandex.Market. The main traffic of visitors to the site came from these sites, because this online store has fairly affordable prices that attract people who view lists of similar offers.
Links from these directories led the visitor directly to the product page. However, the majority of users who were so quickly brought to the goal, did not click on the "Buy" button.
And at the first look at the product description page, it became clear why. Most of the page occupied a catalog of all that is in the store, and banners with "hot" offers.
The "Buy" button has always been outside the visible field. In addition, she was a vaguely greenish color that did not give her attractiveness.
You can recreate what happened to the user seeking to buy, for example, a mobile phone, and who saw an advertisement for an MP3 player. “By the way, Tanya has long asked to buy her a player. Maybe this one? We'll see. No, how do I know which player is better. I will look for more! ”And the user left the site, forgetting why he came. And the user did not do what he wanted, and the store was left with nothing.
Obviously, a site that integrates so closely with catalogs should have very light pages describing the product; there should not be anything on these pages that could distract the visitor from the purchase.
But the store could not immediately go for it, since in such an approach there was a risk of losing its identity. The store was proud of both its name (brand) and its rich assortment, which he wanted to show to the user. This confusion of interests led to the fact that navigation on the site was detrimental to business.
This case opened an unexpected phenomenon. It was generally recognized that the user should be given maximum freedom of choice. But this approach leads to the fact that the user is lost and suffers both himself and the business, which does not receive its profits.
In another project (dating site) a technical error was made, on the profile that the user got from the search results, there was not only a list of other profiles, but also a link that returned to the search results.
This seemingly gross violation led to the take-off of registrations on the site. Users had no unnecessary distractions, and they voted for this decision by registrations. Although if you ask any of them whether he prefers non-alternative interfaces to those that provide a large selection, then surely he would answer that the choice is better.
This example well illustrates the rule, do not ask the user how he prefers, but follow his behavior.
Replica on one of the western e-commerce conferences
Advertising budgets of commercial sites are several times higher than the budget for their development. The competition for visitors is very high. In contextual advertising, whole battles are played out for the first places in the list of sponsored links, because of which the cost of attraction becomes comparable to the income that can be obtained from the attracted visitor. At the same time, the percentage of loss of visitors on the very first page of the site remains unreasonably high for everyone. In an effort to get all new visitors, site managers often overlook the most important thing - site efficiency.
')
Usability, as an approach based on taking into account the interests of users, allows you to fully realize the reserves of the site, and improve business efficiency several times, without attracting additional traffic. And if the profit from attracting new visitors is fraught with hidden costs to increase the load stability of the site, then an increase in user experience (net satisfaction) brings a net profit, since the load on the servers does not increase.
Those who do not like to read, can watch the video of this speech .
Contrary to popular belief that an Internet user is guided mainly by price when choosing a product, it is noted that he is more likely to make a purchase on the site that inspires confidence in him, even if the price on this site is higher than on the competing one.
This is because the user projects the convenience of the site to the entire service of the company, even when he has no reason to do so. He expects that if the site is convenient, then the service that will be provided to him will be convenient.
Work to improve the usability of the site requires less financial investment than advertising. And the benefits derived from this work can compete with advertising revenue.
Of course, this rule is best illustrated by the example of popular sites. For beginner site builders, this may not be so obvious, although it is to them, who do not yet have large advertising budgets, that it is advisable to pay great attention to usability in order to make the most effective use of the traffic of visitors that advertising can give.
Usability testing
Usability is taking into account user features, focusing on their needs, understanding the context in which they work with the site.
To implement this approach, we need real users who show their behavior, where they face difficulties, and why they leave the site before they reach the point of purchase.
At the same time, users are not asked for their opinion, but are asked to complete tasks corresponding to the business objectives of the site. Observation of their behavior gives the necessary level of objectivity of the data.
This method of detecting site problems is called usability testing - testing with the involvement of end users.
This method is becoming more common, but there are still quite a few managers who find this method expensive and who believe that they themselves can appreciate the convenience of the site.
There is danger here! A manager, programmer, marketer, like any other project participant, are not users of the resource that they develop or promote.
Firstly, they may not fall into the target audience of the site. If, for example, men over 50 are using the site’s services, then none of the young team members will be able to see the site through the user's eyes. And, most likely, the lack of obviousness of certain pictograms, lack of readability of the text, or the presence of jargon, incomprehensible to the user, in the texts of the site will be ignored.
Secondly, only end users have a specific motivation, which leads them to one or another website. This motivation and specific previous experience form their specific needs and expectations, which are completely deprived by those who are just trying to be in the user's place.
For example, a person who did not have experience using video cameras does not know what is essential and what is not very good at choosing a camera. A large number of product options can make an impression on someone who does not understand anything in them, or, on the contrary, to cause heavy thoughts that impede the purchase. It is obvious that the form of representation of professional equipment should differ from how it is advisable to promote amateur equipment.
Therefore, “corridor testing” (the so-called programmers who test the user’s qualities of the developed site conducted on their employees) should be prohibited, since it can do more harm than good, creating illusions about the convenience of interfaces.
Evaluation of usability by criteria
If the managers who manage the development of the site are not “ripe” before usability testing, believing that attracting users is expensive, then you can use a cheaper alternative - evaluation by criteria.
Usability testing is often contrasted with peer review. It remains unclear who should act as an expert, and what qualities an expert should possess.
For the reasons described above, it is impossible to rely on the opinion of an expert who poorly understands the specifics of users. And no matter what experience in the assessment he did not have, before he starts to work, you need to find out by what criteria he is going to evaluate the site.
Criteria must be defined in advance, otherwise there is a high risk that the “expert” will pay attention to the little things and miss something really important.
Many of the criteria by which a site should be evaluated are already described in the literature. Their description can be found on the Internet.
From the most basic evaluation sheets to heuristics that need to be checked. Their purpose is to standardize the assessment procedure and exclude, if possible, the human factor of the person who conducts the assessment (his forgetfulness, enthusiasm, etc.).
One of the easiest ways to standardize an assessment is to use one of the evaluation sheets.
Here is a list of objects subject to verification:
- Information Architecture and Navigation
- Page structure and design
- Content (content)
- Forms and Dialogues
- Graphics
- Colors
- Text decoration
- Error tolerance
- Browser compatibility and implementation features
Verification of each of them consists in finding answers to questions that evaluate the various user qualities of the site.
Scenario usability assessment
Each site has its own purpose, which is expressed in tasks that the user can solve with its help. The feasibility of these tasks must be verified, and the obstacles to their solution must be removed.
There are several common scenarios for evaluating, one of the most popular is the heuristic estimate proposed by Jacob Nielsen as a “cheap” method.
Experts, of whom there must be a few, preferably with experience in conducting such an assessment, follow scenarios - formal descriptions of the tasks of the users for whom the site was created. In the process of "playing" pre-compiled scenarios, they fix all the problems they have encountered. Problems are identified and classified based on the so-called heuristics:
Visibility of the system state
The site should always allow the user to understand what state he is in, the response time to user actions should be acceptable.
Connection to the real world
The site must "speak" in the language of users, words, phrases and concepts should be familiar to users. Information should be presented in a natural and logical way.
Manageability and Freedom of Action
Users often use the functions of the site by mistake, not fully understanding its purpose, so it should always be available to the possibility of a painless way out of an undesirable situation.
Consistency and standards
Users are lost when faced with the fact that the same things, actions, situations are called different words. The site must also meet industry standards.
Error prevention
Better than a clear error message can only be to prevent an error before it occurs. The site must restrict the user to make a mistake, or warn him in advance about the possible consequences before the action is committed.
Recognition vs. Memorization
The site should not create a load on the user's memory, clearly representing objects, actions and choices. The user should not be faced with the need to memorize information between parts of a dialogue or a sequence of pages. Instructive texts should be clear and easily perceived wherever possible.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Hot-key combinations, which are usually invisible to the novice user, increase the speed of the experienced user. Due to their use, the site becomes highly effective for both new and experienced users of the site. The site should allow customizing frequently used operations so that their simplicity of calling them is optimal for the user.
Aesthetics and minimalism design
Site pages should not contain information that is irrelevant to the context of the user's work. Each additional page element competes with relevant information and reduces its visibility.
Foresight and error recovery
Error messages should be expressed in natural language, without the use of technical terms. Also error messages should always contain suggestions for solving the created problem.
Help system and documentation
Although it is better to dispense with the need to use help and documentation, it may be necessary to provide user assistance. Such information should be easily accessible, focused on the user's task, contain a list of specific steps and should not be too large.
After conducting a heuristic assessment, all experts who participated in it, exchange the results, and discuss the differences that have arisen. Together they choose the most significant problems and make recommendations for solving them.
System approach to usability
Assessing usability before launching a site or an existing site is necessary, but such a check always brings disappointment, as it reveals flaws, some of which are already difficult to correct.
You need to be courageous to calmly accept the results of testing or evaluation, and take up the correction of errors and improved usability.
To avoid such disappointments at the end, and at the same time reduce the costs of developing the site, it is advisable to use UCD (user-centered design), an approach based on the early involvement of users in the development process.
The main stages of user-oriented design are schematically as follows.
Target User Analysis
As a result of the analysis, the target audience of the site, its age structure, computer skills, cultural peculiarities, the context of work with the site, their design preferences (analysis of sites they most likely use) should be clearly defined, i.e. All features of the target audience that may affect how the site will be used. At this stage, the user requirements are fixed to the site.
Custom scripting
All (at least, basic) tasks that the user will solve on the site should be described as scripts. Scenarios should describe the actions of the user, at the business level, and not interaction with the site, the type of which at this stage is not yet defined. Scripts record the functional requirements for the site.
Prototype development
The prototype is a site layout whose purpose is to visualize how the scripts will be implemented. The created prototype should be checked for the feasibility of user scripts. The degree of detail of the prototype is determined by the terms of the project. In any case, the prototype must be developed very quickly. If it took more than a week, then something goes wrong, and the prototyping is misunderstood.
Usability testing or evaluation
The prototype allows you to see for the first time how convenient the site is. The test and evaluation methods described above can be applied at this stage for the first time.
Prototype specification
After making changes based on the results of testing and evaluation, the prototype is specified. A document appears corresponding to the notion of TK, but describing only the user interaction with the site.
From this point on, the project can move into the development phase. The main purpose of the described process is to focus as much as possible on the users of the future site.
At the end of each stage, checks (negotiation, evaluation, or testing) take place, which may lead to the fact that the results of any phase will have to be revised, remaking what may have already begun to be liked by themselves, but it is not clear to users or does not meet their requirements. This expresses the iterative nature of the user-centered design approach.
Iteration does not mean infinity. On all design work, on average, it takes no more than a month. More time may take coordination with the customer (internal or external).
In addition to the usability effect, this approach has at least two additional positive aspects:
1. Developers can more accurately plan their work, having such input data.
2. Testing can start to work even before the development is completed, because based on the scenarios and the prototype, you can begin to make test plans.
All this allows you to meet the deadlines and budget of the project.
Consider an example demonstrating how usability problems can be identified and corrected.
“Freedom” that ruins a business
The owners of one large online store were puzzled by the stagnation of sales. After a quick analysis, a problem was found that had an interesting character.
The online store has been integrated with product and price catalogs, such as price.ru and Yandex.Market. The main traffic of visitors to the site came from these sites, because this online store has fairly affordable prices that attract people who view lists of similar offers.
Links from these directories led the visitor directly to the product page. However, the majority of users who were so quickly brought to the goal, did not click on the "Buy" button.
And at the first look at the product description page, it became clear why. Most of the page occupied a catalog of all that is in the store, and banners with "hot" offers.
The "Buy" button has always been outside the visible field. In addition, she was a vaguely greenish color that did not give her attractiveness.
You can recreate what happened to the user seeking to buy, for example, a mobile phone, and who saw an advertisement for an MP3 player. “By the way, Tanya has long asked to buy her a player. Maybe this one? We'll see. No, how do I know which player is better. I will look for more! ”And the user left the site, forgetting why he came. And the user did not do what he wanted, and the store was left with nothing.
Obviously, a site that integrates so closely with catalogs should have very light pages describing the product; there should not be anything on these pages that could distract the visitor from the purchase.
But the store could not immediately go for it, since in such an approach there was a risk of losing its identity. The store was proud of both its name (brand) and its rich assortment, which he wanted to show to the user. This confusion of interests led to the fact that navigation on the site was detrimental to business.
This case opened an unexpected phenomenon. It was generally recognized that the user should be given maximum freedom of choice. But this approach leads to the fact that the user is lost and suffers both himself and the business, which does not receive its profits.
In another project (dating site) a technical error was made, on the profile that the user got from the search results, there was not only a list of other profiles, but also a link that returned to the search results.
This seemingly gross violation led to the take-off of registrations on the site. Users had no unnecessary distractions, and they voted for this decision by registrations. Although if you ask any of them whether he prefers non-alternative interfaces to those that provide a large selection, then surely he would answer that the choice is better.
This example well illustrates the rule, do not ask the user how he prefers, but follow his behavior.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/17223/
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