A few weeks ago, we had our first virtual conference, and we had the privilege of hearing from Craig Sullivan (@optimiseordie) about crimes of user experience and how to fix them. Craig has been blending Experimentation, UX, Analytics and Customer Research for over 13 years, powering growth for companies like Google, Amazon, Spotify, Eurostar, Lego, Asos, Facebook and Red Bull. He has helped over 400 clients to unlock the latent value and growth inside their products or services. Using a mixture of Design Thinking, Lean, Agile, Analytics, User Research, Experimentation and Cultural Change, he’s found over £4Bn additional revenue for his clients.
In a two part series, we will take a look at some of those crimes and their solutions that could help you increase your revenue.
Crime 1: Not testing with real people
The ultimate test of a great user experience is whether your mom or grandmother can use your digital product with ease. This doesn’t mean you need to test using your family, but the principle remains. Real people will be using your site and you need to ensure that people who have never visited your site can navigate and find what they’re looking for but most importantly purchase the product.
There are several ways to do testing on your website:
- Online user testing sites like usertesting.com or userzoom.com
- New staff members who are unfamiliar with your product and website
- Friends and family who are unfamiliar with your product and website
- Speak to a local college or university to see if they have students who are studying a usability degree about testing
Pro Tip: Make sure that you are screening users properly. You do not want people with design or development experience testing, as they may give feedback and critique based off opinions which could skew your results.
Crime 2: Not testing with real customer devices
Although there are device simulators out there that would allow you to test your website or product relatively well, they are not fool proof and sometimes don’t react in the same manner as the device would. There is a hierarchy of needs for testing on real customer devices.
You need to make sure that:
- Your site works on customer devices
- Your site loads and runs quickly
- Customers can read it
- Customers can use it
If you’ve not validated your site against these criteria, chances are you’re not only losing customers, but turnover as well.
The below is the minimum viable testing list of devices :
- Smaller iPhone (eg. 6s/7/8)
- Mac & Windows Laptop
- 2-year-old iPad & 2-year-old Android tablet
Crime 3: Your content and adverts don’t work on devices
Buying prime advertising on Facebook, or on Google, but not having your advert work on iPhone devices (as an example) is a common crime of user experience. Craig compares this crime to buying an underwater billboard, nobody is going to see your work, and nobody is going to take up your offer.
Always make sure it works when you:
- Create a new ad campaign
- Add a new page template
- Change Page Layouts
- Add a new feature
- Redesign your website
By making sure that you’re always testing after any of these changes, you can have assurance that your site is working as expected and avoid high bounce rates.
We hope that today’s crimes of User Experience have given you some food for thought for your website. Keep an eye out for part 2 where we’ll finish off with the last 3 things you should avoid on your site to ensure a great User Experience. If you’d like to find out more, or have a discussion about how Taopix can help you through your entire journey of establishing a photo-gifting or personalisation business, get in touch today!