EffectiveUI Blog

During a recent internal meeting at EffectiveUI, a colleague explained to the group how a client would not implement a certain feature (fairly integral to the overall user experience) because of SEO concerns. At the time, this led me to label the SEO industry as nothing more than snake oil salesmen. After that fairly knee jerk reaction, I would like to revisit that assertion.

To clarify, it is not that I believe all SEO professionals to be modern day swindlers, but I do think that clients and brands should never delay or kill features, aimed at meeting the needs of their users, based on concerns over a SERP ranking or SEO. In fact, I would encourage brands to reallocate their SEO budget altogether as the entire field of SEO is becoming irrelevant.

The truth is that the World Wide Web and its users are going through some fundamental changes. People are no longer primarily interacting with the Internet through a search engine, nor are they relying on search engines for their basic information needs. Instead, users are finding new and better ways to access more relevant content. This shift in behavior has led to search engines abandoning old SEO practices as they seek to refocus and redefine user relevance. It is based on these changes that I believe SEO to be approaching irrelevancy, and something that brand managers and product owners should no longer prioritize over other concerns.

A New Definition of Relevance

Traditionally, a user’s primary interface to the Internet has been Google or another search engine. As time and the Internet have progressed, we are now far more likely to interface with the Web through a social network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, even a browser bookmark). According to Facebook, people “like” more things on Facebook on a daily basis than they search for on Google, and that figure is rising quickly. Recent reports say more than half of Americans find their news through friends. It is also true that teenagers spend 79 percent of their online time on social networks, with 50 percent checking their status when they wake up (27 percent before they even get out of bed). These facts underlie the shift in the way people are using the Internet – from search to discovery.

Think about how you found this article online. Did you search for the content or did you discover it through one of your many social connections on the Internet? It is probably unlikely that you found this on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP), and if you did it certainly had nothing to do with any SEO tactics that were employed.

In response to this shift in behavior, search engines have begun changing the way they serve content. In early 2011 (with the introduction of Panda), Google made changes to their search algorithm in an attempt to raise the rankings of high quality sites, lowering that of poor quality sites. Following Panda, last month Google introduced Penguin, an additional tweak to the search algorithm that further condemns sites with poor quality content and underhanded SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing and irrelevant link schemes.

In addition to changing the way sites are indexed and served up, Google also released comprehensive documentation aimed at providing clarity to Web developers, designers and marketers on how to best navigate the new search. Within this documentation they place a renewed emphasis on the user experience, stating in their Technical Guidelines, “(Our) goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience.” Google further clarified their position on Web design and the influence of SEO in a basic principle in their Quality Guidelines: “Make pages primarily for users, not search engines.”

Seemingly following suit, Microsoft’s Bing has just begun a rollout of the “most significant update” to its search algorithm since Bing launched three years ago. In a recent interview with Fast Company, Bing Director Stefan Weitz explained the key philosophy behind the revamp: “…people are as important as pages.” He pointed to the influence of social recommendations as a key theme in their redesign. Weitz stated that the latest Bing attempt is to “…mimic that natural tendency to ask questions and have people answer them.” This admission to the fundamental change that is occurring in search and the Web is further proof that we should not be concerned with designing content for search engine relevance, and instead focus on providing relevant content to our users.

Here at EffectiveUI, we are constantly working under constraints (technical limitations, archaic business policies, unique user behaviors or contexts, legacy systems, etc.), compromising where we must, all in an effort to create the best experience possible for users. When it comes to prioritizing features in any UI design project, nothing should outweigh those intended to solve specific user needs or improve the overall user experience, least not the increasingly irrelevant field of SEO. With people consuming content in new ways and search engines clearly disregarding blatant SEO tactics, SEO should never again become a restraint or reason for not adopting UX recommendations.

I’ve never been a fan of long, exhaustive proposal documents. Reams of paper filled with jargon and buzzwords frustrate me; as someone with a development background, I value simplicity in communication above all else.

Early in EffectiveUI’s history, we would respond to RFP’s with such big proposal documents. We’d assign three or four people to a proposal, and each of us would take a section. The sections were inevitably redundant and frequently verbose, and it wasn’t unusual for us to send a 50-100 page proposal.

Lately we’ve been following a trend started by our Director of User Experience, Tim Wood, and building our proposals as 5-10 slide presentations in Keynote. Moving to Keynote has had obvious benefits in allowing us to easily add graphical visualizations to our proposal and focus on simplicity, which has been great. It’s also been much easier to write; rather than sending people off with individual assignments, we whiteboard a combined approach as a team, and then assign one person to build the slide deck. We save a lot of time on our end, and the potential client receives an example of our data visualization and organizational skills instead of a giant document.

Recently I was assigned a proposal where, for whatever reason, we weren’t using this method and had to produce a written document again. It was then that I became aware of one of the less tangible benefits to our Keynote approach: a greater ability to boil down key points to just a few sentences. I’ve never been extremely verbose, but after doing three or four proposals in a visual design language, it was amazing how different the experience of writing was, and how much harder I worked to cut out the fluff and present the proposal in its most pure and refined form.

In a culture where written communication is our primary means of interaction (i.e., email, status messages, chat, etc.), the ability to write well is one of the most valuable assets anyone can have. I’m glad to have the opportunity to continually improve this skill at EffectiveUI.

Last week I was involved in a kickoff meeting for a quick hit project with a small travel company. As with every project, we gathered all client stakeholders, subject matter expert, and members of our research, design and development teams in one room to level-set on expectations, goals, methods and timelines. Halfway through the meeting, we began to ask questions around the typical customer profile and what the customer journey looks like when interacting with the product. We were met with blank stares. I heard a few mumbled, “we’re looking into that” and, “that’s why we’ve hired you” remarks. “OK,” I thought to myself, “so we are starting from the very beginning.”

Actually, this has become an all-too-familiar occurrence so, guided by past experience, we began directing our questions to the two customer service representatives sitting quietly but attentively in the back of the crowded room. Within minutes, a myriad of insights about customer behavior and common frustrations came flooding out of these front-line employees. We heard about unintuitive calendar functionality and unmet booking expectations; they shared small but frequent issues with understanding property availability, and detailed accounts of customers who had misunderstood the company’s service offering altogether. Maybe the most telling insight was the plethora of valuable information and useful tools available on the site that the users just didn’t realize was there. The executives in the room couldn’t believe what they were hearing and noted how easy it would be to fix some of the issues. All it took was a conversation.

This particular company realized what needed to be done almost immediately, and took the proper steps to quickly make the necessary changes (even before we had presented our formalized findings). But, keep in mind, that this particular firm is a small, agile company of about 100 people. Executives sit beside customer care representatives who sit beside their design and development teams. They are able to make changes to their site with surprising speed, but in this case they overlooked a critical factor: communication. As a company grows, the practice of inter-departmental communication (especially with those who have direct customer interaction) becomes exponentially more difficult, but remains critical to the organization’s success.

Many companies fail to recognize that their customer service team represents a vital trove of information on what their users find useful, usable and desirable. Creating a formalized structure and workflow that takes action based on information gleaned from customer service representatives ensures that customer needs are consistently being met as they are being realized. While individual CRM tools can be useful to collect data, the system must be able to filter throughout the entire process—how insights are presented to the design team (to determine how best to solve the problem), to the management team (to make a decision), and to the development team (for implementation).

In addition to collecting and sharing this information, it’s also a good idea to schedule routine collaborative sessions, such as  a quarterly workshop where members of each team come together, comments are sifted through, organized, ranked by importance/amount of times heard, and, where appropriate, made actionable. This gets the data off the paper, and allows the customer service representatives to add additional context to each comment being reviewed.

Not only will this result in happier customers and a reduced number of calls to customer service, it also keeps the voice of the customer top of mind even when traditional research is not being conducted. Additionally, this data also helps any user experience firm you might hire to quickly begin to understand the customer journey and focus their efforts. With this model in place, and the consistent stream of communication and customer feedback it facilitates, organizations can grow without losing sight of customer needs.

Source: beattiespharmacy.com

When was the last time you had an interaction with a company that truly made your day — the kind of experience where you felt like you wanted to shout from the rooftops about how good it was? For me that experience happens every time I visit my pharmacy. Beattie’s Health Mart is a locally-owned compounding pharmacy in Erie, CO. Despite their small size (and minimal digital presence), their excellent customer experience is something that any company can learn from.

Here are four principles of excellent customer experience that I’ve enjoyed as a customer at Beattie’s.

Good customer experience creates relationships.
Every time I interact with the employees at Beattie’s, I experience a moment of authentic human connection that goes deeper than a friendly smile and the cute dogs behind the counter. The employees actually get to know their customers. When my husband gets his prescription filled, the pharmacist automatically sends him home with mine, too. When I have a change in a regular medication, they notice and ask about it. The customer experience is excellent at Beattie’s because they develop a relationship with their customers.

Good customer experience is flexible.
The first time I went to fill a prescription, I expected the big box pharmacy model: drop it off and wait 20 minutes for them to call you on the intercom (or pick it up later). Instead, they filled multiple prescriptions while I was paying, and it literally took two minutes of my day. Another time, my husband forgot his flex card so they told him to just call with it when he got home instead of having to come back. The customer experience is excellent at Beattie’s because they are responsive and accommodating to their customers’ realities.

Good customer experience goes out of the way.
When I went in recently for a refill, the medication was out of stock and they couldn’t fill the prescription until they received a delivery later that day. However, they turned this negative into a positive by offering to deliver it to my home after hours. The customer experience is excellent at Beattie’s because they look for moments where they can exceed expectations.

Good customer experience knows what matters.
Inventory and supply management is a reality for any local business, but it should never become the customer’s problem. When Beattie’s doesn’t have enough for a complete order, they’ll “owe me” one or two pills that I can come back in for later. They know it’s more important to get me out the door quickly with the medication I need now rather than making me wait for the medication I’ll need in 29 days. The customer experience is excellent at Beattie’s because they value my time and what’s important to me.

Beattie’s demonstrates these four customer experience principles in a brick-and-mortar environment, but they are applicable in the digital world, as well. Digital products that create a relationship with their users forge easier paths to adoption and loyalty. Good digital experiences must be flexible, responsive, and accommodating, especially in our multi-screen world.

Giving consideration to how your non-digital service model supports your digital experience allows your company to exceed expectations and create unforgettable, more human connections with your brand. And all excellent customer experiences, digital or otherwise, start with an understanding of and empathy for what is important to your user.

About a year ago, I had the opportunity to co-speak at the Interaction ’11 conference with my co-worker Lindsay Moore. Having come from different educational and practical backgrounds, we had very different approaches to interaction design. Mine was mostly informed by my industrial design training, while hers was perhaps a more roundabout education in painting, followed by a transition to a user-centered design program at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

Lindsay and I wanted to know how we could use our differently informed intuition, our unique training, and our divergent views of design to create engaging user experiences. To spice things up and go beyond our usual work, we decided to spend time after hours on some unusual projects using real products. The intent shifted from improving the experience of using physical objects, to more of a study of how to leverage the lessons learned in the past to solve modern-day problems that were not even on the horizon long ago.

While there is still a lot of work that could be done in this design experiment, we enjoyed getting out of our heads for a few hours a week and solving problems whose complexity is compounded by the very physical nature of the interfaces.

I documented the experiment in a new article for UX Magazine, “Intersection of the Physical and Digital Worlds.” Give it a read and let me know what you think.

Industry conferences provide an opportunity to share ideas, learn from experts, and network with our peers. However, with so many events in the digital marketing and technology space, how does one decide which conferences to attend? For many, proximity to the event is a factor, as well as cost. But the most important criteria is finding an event that suits one’s particular interests, which is not always easy. With this in mind, we would like to recommend two upcoming conferences that may suit your needs well.

RJ Owen

The first, for Web and mobile developers and designers, is Future Insights Live (#FILive), April 30-May 4 in Las Vegas. This comprehensive show combines several tracks – Future of Web Apps, Future of Web Design, Future of Mobile and Future of Web in the Enterprise – into one “mega” event. The fun starts on Monday, April 30 with a full-day workshop (choose from one of eight different topics,) followed by four tracks of sessions on May 1-4.

As part of the Front-End Developer track, EffectiveUI’s R.J. Owen, Lead Experience Planner, and Michael Salamon, User Experience Team Lead, will present “Design Basics for Developers” on Tuesday, May 1 at 2:05 p.m.

Michael Salamon

R.J. and Michael will share how developers can communicate more effectively when discussing and reviewing both high-level interaction design and lower-level visual design. Attendees will leave with a solid understanding of design techniques and principles that should be part of every developer’s toolset.

Our second recommendation is Digital Summit 2012 (#DSUM12) on May 9-10 in Atlanta. Billed as the region’s largest “Web, Digital Marketing, Social Media and Innovation Conference,” session and speaker topics include customer engagement, usability, mobile, online video and much more. This event is well suited for leaders and high-level managers who have a say in organizational strategy, marketing and technology decisions.

Anthony Franco

EffectiveUI’s president, Anthony Franco, will be putting on a Workshop at Digital Summit. As part of an intensive pre-conference program, he will present “Avoiding Barriers to Business: UX Design as a Strategic Tool to Drive Business” on Wednesday, May 9 at 9:15 a.m. Participants at Anthony’s session will learn how to go beyond the “Laws of UX” to provide exceptional experiences for website and application users and drive the brand’s digital strategy.

If you have attended either of these conferences in the past, feel free to comment below regarding your experience.

The sales process has changed dramatically since I started out years ago selling commerce sites to consumer packaged goods and technology companies. Back then, the sales person was the face of the vendor organization, and 95 percent of the first sales call was to see if the buyer could trust the person sitting across from them – and by extension, the vendor. While building this relationship is still an incredibly important part of the sales process, the expectation has changed, and the role of the sales person in the process has become far more complex.

Forrester Research claims that 87 percent of companies today research potential vendors before ever speaking to a sales representative at the company. This isn’t a surprising statistic if you consider all the various sources of information available to buyers, including the vendor’s website and social media presence, podcasts, support forums, blogs and, let’s not forget, analysts, referrals, business partners and clients.

This plethora of information often means the sales person is introduced into the process after a lot of research has been done. Thus, the purpose of the first meeting between the sales person and the buyer has changed. Yes, there is absolutely relationship building and trust being created, but even in that initial meeting the sales person must begin to sell not just a product or service, but a vision. When Forrester asked 1,000 technology buyers about the most important actions a technology vendor can take during the selection process, 54 percent said the vendor must be able to supplement their knowledge of the problem they are facing. Knowing this, it must be the objective of the initial meeting to help the prospect understand our vision for solving their problem, and the value we offer toward this end.

To further complicate the process, “value” isn’t something the vendor just serves up in a package with a pretty bow. These days, value is actually co-created, shaped by interdisciplinary teams consisting of decision makers and influencers from both the prospect and the vendor. When selecting a user experience agency, the team typically consists of marketing or a function of marketing (design, UX, etc.), a technology buyer and a line-of-business owner. Therefore, the agency must also sell in teams and align our teams with the needs of the buyer.

This goes beyond simply being a trusted advisor, which has become the minimum benchmark for prospects and clients. To meet customer needs, vendors must have consultative sales people and teams who can navigate and map complex internal environments. While understanding and showing empathy for our clients’ pain is critical, the ability to sell a vision goes far beyond this. We must know the extent of the pain, as well as who is impacted and what success or failure looks like for those impacted.

As VP of account development for EffectiveUI, I’m pleased to help shape the process by which we go above and beyond to co-create value with our clients and solve their pain points.

Not long ago, Jonas Sodöerström caught my attention when he blogged about waitstaff using whiteboard markers to draw on their monitors since it was easier than interacting with the system using a mouse. His post was a great reminder of how much context plays into the way people use technology, and how no one is as focused on or limited to the interface as we assume.

Sodöerström is a UX designer who’s spent a good amount of time justifying the need for better design based on the stress that bad interfaces can cause. He’s put together a great presentation on the causes and effects of cognitive stress, and how better interface design can help reduce this source of stress. One really interesting anecdote in his presentation is that the Swedish National Passport Authority installed a “break-down chamber” for employees to use when the stress of their job, caused in part by a myriad of poorly designed and integrated systems, became too much to bear.

I can’t help but think about how much more important cognitive load and stress are for designers working in the mobile space (which should be everyone at this point). In addition to whatever task the user is actually trying to accomplish on their phone, they’ve got the added stress of their mobile context (walking, driving, flying, waiting in line, etc.), along with a variety of other distractions on the device asking for attention (local deals, checking in, rating something, etc.). When you add it all up, the smartphone is somehow more stressful than a traditional desktop, despite being much smaller and less powerful.

Designers can limit cognitive load (and reduce associated stress) by keeping interfaces consistent and simple. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for breaking ranks with tradition and doing something fresh and new, but designers need to ask themselves if the app they’re working on is that place. Or would your users be better served if your app reduced, instead of added to, their stress levels? My guess is they would.

Since my article in MSDN Magazine, “Develop Hybrid Native and Mobile Web Apps,” I’ve received a lot of questions on how to decide what kind of mobile application to build: mobile web, hybrid, or native mobile. This is a really thorny question, and I’ve spent a lot of time discussing with a few of my co-workers how to answer it.

Overall, I’ve come to view the answer not as a black and white decision that can only be one of three options, but as more of a continuum, where the solution can sit anywhere from pure mobile web to pure native mobile, or anywhere in between. Starting from that perspective, below is a list of questions that will help lead you through the decision-making process.

• What does the user want to accomplish by using your application?
• Do you need access to device hardware capabilities like the camera, or accelerometer?
• Does the app need to be functional offline? To what degree?
• How sensitive is the app to variance in network performance?
• Does the app need to perform any processor or graphics intensive operations like 3D graphics or real-time calculations (i.e., most games)?
• What is the platform matrix you want to support?
• What is your tolerance for supporting multiple applications and operating systems?
• Do you need a presence in the app stores (Google Play, iTunes, Windows Phone Marketplace)?

While this isn’t a comprehensive list of the questions that need to be considered when making mobile architecture decisions, it provides a framework for beginning the discussion. Answering “yes” to some of these questions, such as “Does the app need to perform any processor or graphics intensive operations?” will automatically place the app into the native mobile category, but most of the questions are ones of degree.

The most important question by far is, “What does the user want to accomplish by using your application?” It is crucial to get the answer to this question right. A November 2010 mobile study by Harris Interactive for EffectiveUI found that “69% of your customers will think less of you if [the experience] is not great.” Even more importantly, the same study found that “15% of your customers will never trust you again if [the experience] is not great.” The message here is clear: a bad app is worse than no app at all.

The answers to the remaining questions determine what point on the continuum of solutions will best meet the needs of your users and you as a developer. For instance, do you need to access native hardware or have a presence in the app stores? If so, you’re in the hybrid or native range and mobile web is completely out.

The questions, “Do you need to be functional offline?” and “How sensitive is the app to variance in network performance?” address the issue of application performance and offline experience. While HTML5 provides some enhancements to improve the offline application experience using tools like the Application Cache interface, if you need significant offline capabilities, the best experience will still be in native apps. Once significant offline experience is required, the decision becomes whether to go fully native or how much functionality to build into the hybrid shell.

The final questions – “What is the platform matrix you want to support?” and “What is your tolerance for supporting multiple applications and operating systems?” – speak to development costs and ongoing maintenance. Without regard for cost, a fully native application will almost universally provide the best performance — but when was the last time any of us lived in that world? Plus, building a fully native application supported by iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Android tablets, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry can cost 3-5 times more for initial development versus a mobile web solution, and the ongoing support costs are nearly as high.

Thus, a mobile web application is the cheapest solution if you want to support the widest variety of platforms, but your answers to the other questions could push you into the hybrid solution. A hybrid app has the benefit of being easier to support than fully native applications (by leaving most of the code in the mobile web application), but still costs more than a pure mobile web solution.

These are challenging questions and there is no one right answer. With the rapid pace of change in the mobile technology arena, it is important to consider these architecture decisions carefully while keeping an eye on the needs of the user and the business for both the short and long term.

On April 1, 2005, EffectiveUI was founded as a three-person development shop. Much has changed since then – our industry has exploded, and our company has grown significantly. We’re now a 105-person user experience agency with full-service research, design and technology services. We’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing clients, including Boeing, National Geographic, TIAA-CREF, Discovery Channel and Navy Federal Credit Union.

For the past couple years, we’ve been seeking a partnership that would help fuel our company’s growth and our global reach, while allowing us to maintain our core focus on UX, technology services and our brand. We’ve found that partnership, and I’m excited to announce that as of today we are joining WPP, the world’s largest communication services group. WPP owns more than 350 agencies in advertising, PR and other marketing communications. With 158,000 employees, it has offices in 107 countries around the globe.

While we’ll now have the support of WPP behind us, we will stay EffectiveUI. Our focus remains on delivering meaningful, engaging, brand-elevating digital experiences and solutions for our clients. WPP recognizes the value in our brand, our talented staff and our core offering, and those things will not change.

The practice of UX has become more than a nice-to-have. More and more, companies are embracing our specialty as part of their overall strategy and have seen significant, compelling business benefit in focusing on UX. The fact that WPP has placed such value on our expertise is a testament to our success in the market and an additional proof point for the importance of our work. As we’ve always said: Experience Matters.

As we look ahead to new opportunities, we can’t help but take a look back to reflect on how we arrived here. We are grateful to our clients, who have given us the opportunity to solve challenges and create amazing experiences every day, and to our smart, talented employees, to whom we owe our success. We look forward to continuing on this journey with you all.