The document discusses the importance of usability and user experience in digital marketing. It notes that while companies spend large portions of their budgets on digital marketing, very few allocate dedicated budgets to usability testing and user experience design. The document outlines common usability failures and provides tips for measuring the costs of bad usability. It emphasizes that improving usability can significantly increase conversions and that usability testing and design should be a priority alongside digital marketing spending.

1. #UsabilityFail
Stop wasting your marketing
budget on bad usability
#PrecSem
Mark Russell

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#usabilityfail

10. Usability and user
experience

11. User experience
It starts by being useful...
Desirability
Functionally people must Usability
be able to use it...
Utility
The way it looks must be
pleasing... “Is the product
useful to me”
“I can easily use it”
The overall experience
“I like the way it looks and feels”
“I like the product”
Executing well on all of these areas creates a positive user experience.
Research and testing is needed for each.

12. More than two thirds of companies
(68%) recognise a strong link between
long-term business performance and
customer experience.
Econsultancy Multichannel Customer Experience Report, 2010
http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/multichannel-customer-experience-report

13. Quick straw poll:
Hands up if you have a digital
marketing budget

14. Quick straw poll:
Keep your hands up if you also
have a usability or user experience
budget

15. Quick straw poll:
Keep your hands up if your
usability budget is the same or
more than your digital marketing
budget

16. ― Pay per click advertising
― Referrals from groomed sites
― Engaging social media
― Mobile sites & mobile apps

17. ...and it’s a utter
waste if they fail
to convert

18. “Online ad spending set to hit $50B
in 2015” – eMarketer, 2011

19. But it can still all visitors to your site inherently more
Is attracting be ruined by poor usability and experience
valuable than making sure they have a good
experience when they are there?

20. Conversions
The funnel is
getting fed but the
wastage is high

21. Doubling conversions
=
3,455 extra visitors
---- or ----
53 extra conversions

22. Put another way, do you want to:
Increase non-converting (bad?)
experience to 6,804
---- or ----
Decrease the bad experiences?

23. Measuring the value of
usability

24. Spend 10% = improve 83%
Jakob Nielsen

25. Why usability fails
1. Lack of consistency
2. Lack of clear navigation to common
goals
3. Lack of orientation in the process
4. Lack of error handling
5. A lack of clear closure
6. No easy reversal of actions
7. Lack of control
8. Content is unclear and hard to read
9. Too much information/memory
required to perform an action
Jakob Nielsen

26. Measuring the cost of bad
usability

27. 1. Use your analytics – check
exits and bounces

28. 2. Use DIY usability methods
― Brainstorm analytic findings
― Heuristic evaluation (“rules of thumb”)
― Conduct a (short) user survey
― Ask your customer services team/front line staff
― Track customer complaints (inc. on social media)
― Ask a (non-technical) colleague to do a task
― Assess site against your market/competitors
― Check how your site works without CSS
― Check what the experience is like on a mobile phone
― REMEMBER: You are not “normal” – you know too much

29. 3. Commission a professional study

30. What does it cost?

33. Examples

34. The University of Texas at Austin
How NOT to present a campus map http://bit.ly/eJOh8e
(Expand) Sheesh! #UsabilityFAIL

36. Testing would have found this out

37. Mental model
fail

38. Common sense failure

44. Your examples?

45. Some usability questions:
1. Nothing should be more than three clicks away
2. Your home page is seen the most; it deserves
more usability attention than others
3. Written instructions simplify any online
process
4. People don’t scroll; anything “below the fold” is
missed
5. Every process must be simple

46. The golden rules

47. 1. Users

48. You are not the user. Neither is your
boss
• What do they want to do?
• What do you want them to do?
• What barriers do they face?

49. The bad

51. What you can do

55. Persona 4: Alumni
“I keep an eye on upcoming events and research my old friends at the
University are doing. News feeds are important as I’m a busy man”
Dr Alan Mackintosh, GP, 40
Key tasks
Web usage • Alan is a busy man with little free time between work and
family life. He subscribes to updates from alumni relations
Access to other information platforms and the events section of the site to keep up to date with
new information
Use of your website • He keeps an eye on upcoming events and lectures, trying to
find time to attend one or two a year
Strength of relationship with you • He finds and keeps in touch with other alumni though the
website and especially enjoys reunions when they are
arranged
Alan is a GP, living in Hertford, Herts, with his wife Alana and • Research is another important area , keeping him up to
their two small children; Isla 9, and Hamish 7. Alana is date in his own area of expertise. Some old friends from his
pregnant, so there will soon be yet another addition to the student days are now work at the University, and he is
family. After Alan graduated his first job was in Scotland, always interested in reading work they publish
after which he moved to Cambridge for his GP training. His
main interests are art history and photography, but he also You would like to promote
enjoys bird watching, playing golf, art galleries, theatre, music • Alumni benefits and networking events/opportunities
and the pub - Alan is a big fan of real ale. He is not politically
• Upcoming events and seminars particularly alumni events
active, but he supports the coalition government.
and those related to medicine
He accesses the internet both from his PC at work and at
home using his laptop and his new iPad. Websites he visits are • New research that’s being carried out
Flickr, the Independent, Amazon, eBay, Waitrose, Expedia, • News feeds, so that Alan can subscribe
Wikipedia and Art. His parents live in Edinburgh so he is still • How, when and where alumni can donate to the University
in touch with the area and the local community. He has an
interest in distance learning.

56. The good

58. 1. You are not the user. Neither is your boss
2. Interactions

59. The bad

62. What you can do

63. Interactions checklist
• Labelling with explanations where required
• Mark mandatory fields clearly
• Let the computer handle errors
• Validate inline
• Informative error messages
• Clear calls to action
• Surrounding visual elements can support or impair
different aspects of user behaviour.
• If it’s not required, why ask for it?

64. The $300m button

65. The good

67. 3. Accessibility

68. It’s more than just disabled users
• Always remember users with physical
and cognitive disabilities
• Also consider technological and
cultural differences

69. What you can do

75. Culture, language and UX !
The
Arabic
Palestinian
Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-
Filistini
Son of
Abdulaziz
Father of Muhammad
The beautiful Son of Nidal
Karim (Given name)

76. Culture, language and UX !

77. Culture, language and UX !

78. 4. Consistency

79. Gently hold your user’s hand
• Users learn from other sites
• Don’t make them think
• Visual and linguistic cues make a
huge difference

80. The bad

85. What you can do

88. The good

91. 5. Familiarity

92. We prefer things
that are familiar
to us.

95. Increase conversions by 10%

96. Increase conversions by 20%

100. We need to sell
more savings
accounts

101. I need a savings
account

102. Decisions are
rational and
emotional

103. As a new parent, I want to save
money, so that I can have enough
put aside for when my son goes to
university.

105. 6. Strategy

106. How does your website
align to your core
business objectives?

107. Define your key
performance indictors
based on your goals and
measure them

108. Business objective Goal KPI
1 2 3

109. Business objective Goal KPI
1 2 3
Increase customers Monthly sales/revenue
Sell subscription
packages for
entertainment and Increase interest in Monthly unique visits
communications products and services
we
Build good will with Provide news and be an Number of returning
existing customers information resource visit
Effective marketing Build a CRM Number of registrations

110. So
 We’ve measured the problem
 We understand the range of techniques that
could be used
 We get what the trade off is between effort
and results
Now, who is going to own this?

111. Attracting people to the site
Marketing
Making the
IT Web Team Manage site
site work
Services /
Products
Delivering what people do on the site

112. Attracting people to the site
Marketing
Making the
IT Usability Web Team Manage site
site work
Services /
Products
Delivering what people do on the site

113. Spend 10% = improve 83%

114. Remember the golden rules!
1. Users
2. Interactions
3. Accessibility
4. Consistency
5. Familiarity
6. Strategy

115. @PrecedentComms
#PrecSem
#UsabilityFail