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Navigation Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle

by admin on 19. Aug, 2008 in Information Architecture, Usability

One thing to consider when defining the navigational structure is the different target groups.
The other important thing is the stages of the customer life cycle.

What do I mean by this? Let’s go on the customer journey:

1) The first time visitor
The customer visits your site. He wants information about your products, prices, service and so on. He needs all this at his finger tips. Try to imagine all the potential questions a customer might have and make sure to answer them – and that those answers are easily accessible.

2) You are lucky
Your potential client has done all his online research and you are the lucky winner – that is why he is back. This usually happens not within the same day. So make sure that the returning customer is able to find the product again fast. In some instances it makes sense to offer a wish list or basket functionality.

3) The unlucky one
The product unfortunately did not get delivered properly. Or in the case of an insurance company – your client had an accident. So this is still the same website user but he again has totally different needs. He is rather likely upset right now and needs help and support fast. Make sure he can access it directly. And yes – in case the answer is a phone call – offering a real voice, without long waiting lines can increase the customer satisfaction and therefore the perception of your brand in many ways.

A good exampe offers Norwich Union. It is very easy to receive a free quote. In addition they offer the button “Existing Customers” on the upper right hand side where clients can “Make a claim”, “Manage their policy online” and much more.

Usability Navigation

Read the entire series:

Part 1: How to structure content
Part 2: How many navigation points
Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation
Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle
Part 5: Global Navigation

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Navigation Part 1: How to structure content?

by admin on 23. Jun, 2008 in Information Architecture, Usability

In this series I will talk about different topics regarding navigation I have been asked over the last years.

Part 1: How to structure content
Part 2: How many navigation points
Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation
Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle
Part 5: Global navigation

First of all you need to define all the content:

  1. your target group wants to know
  2. is important for your business to be communicated

Then the crucial question is what will your target group be looking for? What are their expectations? Are there structures they are familiar with because all of the competitors are following a similar pattern?

There are several ways to structure content – By:

  1. topic, genre, product groups
  2. target group
  3. activity
  4. search patterns

1) Topic, genre, product group navigation
As the title implies – this makes mainly sense when you are selling products or services which can be grouped logically.

navigation_topic_1.jpg

navigation_topic_3.jpg

2) Target group navigation
This one is very helpful when you offer information that is of interest to particular target groups and the all need to find information fast and directly. You often see this on websites of major banks with navigation points such as:
Private Banking | Business Banking | Press | Investors | Jobs
Sometimes it is very helpful to offer this kind of entry on the homepage in case your main navigation is structured by topic. You see this rather often on university sites. See the two examples below:

navigation_target_group_1.jpg

navigation_target_group_2.jpg

3) Activity based navigation
This one is more prominent in software where often activities are more prominent than categories since users want to fulfil certain tasks.

navigation_activity.jpg

4) Navigation based on search patterns
In case people might look in different ways for a product this navigational structure is suitable. It basically means that for example products in a gift store are searchable by price, by category and by gender.

navigation_search_pattern.jpg

Sometimes combinations of the above are the best approach. However, always make sure to label the categories precisely with a short verb and noun and avoid jargon and long labels.

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Usability and e-commerce Part 3: Product detail page

by admin on 08. Apr, 2008 in Usability

Once your customer is on a product detail page he made it half way. Now it is important that the customer can get an understanding and feeling for the product, try to make it tangible. 5 points which are important for product detail pages:

  1. Good product visualisation is crucial. Show the products from different angles, the front and the back and allow the user to zoom in. Show different colour versions. Close ups are especially important where the texture or surface of the product is important such as clothing or jewellery – make the product as tangible as possible. Let the user “touch” it.
  2. The presentation on all the product detail pages should follow the same pattern throughout the site so that the user can learn your site and get accustomed to it.
  3. The most important product details need to be in the visible area without having the user to scroll down.
  4. This is also a great time for cross-selling: Show the customer what other users bought and make pro-active recommendations. It is better to make recommendations on behalf of the behaviour of other users than by yourself. Say: Customers who bought A also bought B instead of We recommend B for people who are interested in A.
  5. The user needs to be informed about the availability of the product. (in case this has not happened on the overview page yet).
  6. If your delivery times are much faster than business standards or much longer mention it.

One really good example is again Esprit.

Sizes, colours, product illustration including zoom and front and back images, addtional product information, availabilit, cross-seeling all is in place

Usability & e-Commerce: Product Detail Page EspritCheck out the entire series:
Part 1) Navigation and homepage
Part 2) Product overview
Part 3) Product detail page

To come:
Part 4) Search
Part 5) Check out process
Part 6) The shopping basket

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Usability and e-commerce Part 1: Navigation and Homepage

by admin on 01. Apr, 2008 in Usability

The real shop

Imagine you are in a convenience store such as Sainbury’s and you are looking for batteries. Where do you start to look for them? Kitchen supplies, the area where the stationary is, where could they be? Where the garbage bags are? You might walk around for a while and then ask a sales person for assistance.

Now online

Image the same scenario online. You click here, you click there. However, there is no sales person that can help and the competitor’s site is just one click away. That is why especially for e-commerce sites good usability is so crucial.

Usability E-Commerce

The above study shows, that a bad online shopping experience does not only mean that you have lost this one sale. The customer is also rather likely not to buy from you at all.

You suffer from:

  1. Lost sales,
  2. a weakend reputation and
  3. it harms the perception of your overall brand.

Some common issues on e-commerce sites are:

Navigation and start page

You need to consider that you have to types of people visiting your online shop:

  1. The ones who already exactly know what they want. They need to be guided directly to the product they are looking for. Structuring and clustering of the shop items in a clearly visible navigation bar is essential for them.
  2. The others are the users who just want to browse your site or inform themselves. They might be looking for the special offer, new products or seasional trends. Visual teasers and images usually guide those the best.

Give the visitors also a chance to concentrate on your main items. Cluttered sites are likely to overwhelm the user. In an online shop users prefer structure and visual guidance and do not want to feel like being on a flea market.

Creating the right structure

  1. Competitors’ analysis: Do you know what they are doing?
    Your users are very likely to also use other e-commerce sites. Over the last years, patterns of structuring, organising and labelling content have evolved. Your users have learned those patterns. Therefore we recommend not to re-event the wheel and to stick to conventions. The best way to find those patterns and conventions is a competitors’ analysis. In addition, a regular competitors’ analysis gives insight in new trends and strategies. You can only become the benchmark by knowing what your are up against.A competitors’ analysis can be done at any stage of the project. We recommend to perform it in regular intervals. Depending on the market every 1-3 months to at least once a year.
  2. Card sorting: How would your clients structure the content?
    One basic method is card sorting. Card sorting is used to develop the structure of Web sites. How does it work?
    Product categories or product names are written down on individual cards. Then (potential) users of the site are asked to structure the cards into groups or to sort them into predefined metacategories.

    • Structure: This gives valuable insight into how your customers would structure the content and therefore where they would be looking for the information when navigating through your site. This aids to define the ideal placement of individual products and how to create useful product categories. Recall the example with the matches from the beginning? Where would customers look for them the most likely?
    • Wording: Though it is not always the wrong structure that misleads customers. Equally important is to find the right wording for the individual categories and navigation items.

In the next entries the following topics will be covered:

Part 2) Product overview

Part 3) Product presentation

Part 4) Search

Part 5) Check out process

Part 6) The shopping basket

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Personalized start pages: Why I fulfil my information needs otherwise

by admin on 18. Feb, 2008 in Branding

Have you heard of those great Web sites, so called “Personalized Start Pages”, which will make life so much easier? There was a big hype starting in 2005, and almost all the big portals and news providers jumped on the band wagon – now we can see more failures.

The idea behind the concept sounds tempting at a first glance:
Personalized start pages allow their users to get all of their favorite websites, blogs, news, weather, maps, events, address books, to do lists, email accounts, social networks, search engines, video and photo networks – you name it – in one place, and users then can share the page with their friends.

What are the flaws
Have a look at the screenshot below: E-Mail, Flickr, Youtube, maps, etc.
Now consider the following scenarios and the users’ needs:

  1. He wants to check his E-Mail: Where does he go?
    His start page or his E-Mail account?
  2. He wants to check out the news on Youtube: Where does he go?
    His start page or Youtube?
  3. He wants to upload some images to Flickr: Where does he go?
    His start page or Flickr?
  4. He needs directions: Start page or Google maps?

You get the pattern.

So what are the benefits?
That is the big question. Users will fulfil their needs directly. The obstacles of configuring the start page and the loss of time do not match the benefits. A simple start page where a user can assemble all his favorite RSS feeds can offer a quick overview of all the sites’ news, and weather info is a feature many users appreciate. However, most features offered on those sites only mean a click more for the user, and therefore the user would rather go directly to the desired target such as Youtube, the E-Mail account or Flickr.

This is also why Flickr, Youtube, delicious, Facebook and many others got sold or received substantial venture capital. Despite the fact that several Personalized start pages got impressive media coverage, there is little business hype heard.

Lessons learned:
One of the most important factors for being successful is creating a business strategy that fulfils a concrete user need.
And yes, I am still wondering about the business models of today’s personalized start pages.

Who are the players?

Live

http://www.live.com/ Yahoo

http://my.yahoo.com/ Google

http://www.google.de/ig Netvibes

http://www.netvibes.com/ Start

http://www.start.com/ Protopage

http://protopage.com/v2 Pageflakes

http://www.pageflakes.com/ Inbox.com

http://inbox.com/ My AOL

http://feeds.my.aol.com/ My Lycos

http://my.lycos.com/ My Netscape

http://my.netscape.com/ My Earthlink

http://my.earthlink.net/Who has stopped their services? Mein T-Online http://mein.t-online.de

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Cultural differences: British versus German Web site content and wording

by admin on 14. Feb, 2008 in User Experience

Let’s assume business is going well and it is time for expansion. So, let’s simply translate our Web site and go live. This approach might seem logical and the most cost-effective.

However, deciding about which content should go on a site should not only be a matter of translation. Content also needs to meet your customers’ expectations, and those vary from culture to culture. Below is an example for companies which offer services.

Let’s do some stereotyping:

Germany
In a typical business meeting, you’d expect fast and efficient presentation of facts and figures followed by negotiations and then closing the deal. Your language should be formal; using the first name is only appropriate in some business fields. Then, in case precious time allows, you might go for a beer together.

England
You first get offered some tea, you talk about last weekend, your kids, sports, etc. You laugh and take your time. These days almost everybody addresses each other on first name basis. No Sir or Madam. Then you talk about business.

These cultural differences are reflected in the use of language and content on most websites:

Germany

  • Language: Often you find a rather abstract list of: We do X, Y, Z and optimize A, B, C. The facts. Straightforward.
  • Content: Factual and detailed presentation of content, whitepapers, references
  • Establishing trust: Presentation of know-how and skills

England

  • Language: A quite generous use of the imperative can be found: Improve X, Y, Z and you will benefit from A, B, C. The text is much more commonly written in the form of a dialogue with the (potential) customer
  • Content: More engaging content, proof of satisfied clients and customers
  • Establishing trust: Listing of testimonials of previous customers. This happens to a much further degree than on German sites. Some sites even include video interviews with their customers about their satisfaction of the services provided (for example: www.lcm.co.uk). Referrals are also important.

One example of “Establishing trust”: Xing versus LinkedIn
Cultural subleties are also visible in the business network communities of the two countries. While in England LinkedIn is the predominant site, XING is the commonly used one in Germany. Certainly the two sites’ business strategies are not exactly the same, and labelling is another topic in itself. Nevertheless, I found these differences to be a good example of the cultural subtleties.

————————————————————————————

XING
In XING users introduce one another (see upper right-hand side),
and the main profile navigation points are:
Business Details | Confirmed Contacts | About me | Guestbook

User Experience XING

————————————————————————————

LinkedIn
In LinkedIn the first navigation point is “recommend“ (see upper right-hand side.),
and the main profile navigation points are:
Profile | Q&A | Recommendations | Connections

User Experience LinkedIn

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