'Net Features : user experience

Get User Experience Insights with YouEye

Allison Howen — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:40:00 GMT

YouEye is looking to make a splash in the testing industry.

The company, which was the winner of 2012’s Launch Conference Best Technology 2.0 Award, is an online user research platform that features remote usability testing with emotion recognition. As the company recently raised $3 million, it looks to disrupt costly and slow in-person user testing.

The platform features webcam and audio recording, which allows companies to view participants as they browse through sites and listen to spoken feedback. Since testing is remote, participants can take studies at any time and in any environment. Additionally, the Emotion Recognition functionality is trained on a dataset of 50,000 micro-expressions, which allows it to accurately identify when a user’s facial expression aligns with a variety of feelings, including happy, surprised, puzzled, disgusted, afraid and sad.

Furthermore, YouEye has its own participant pool, which chooses participants to complete studies based on the specific demographics that the tester desires. For example, companies can select the demographics of their ideal tester, including age range, gender, education level and income.

In addition to recent funding news, YouEye is launching Insite, which is a new product that delivers automated user experience insights. Companies can use this product to prompt site visitors to take a study, and capture full webcam video and audio from those who participate. To enable this feature, companies are required to insert a single line of code on their site. However, it is important to note that Insite is currently in Beta, and companies interested in trying out this tool must request an invite here.

Brands Knowingly Fail Users

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:45:00 GMT

With all the talk about user experience - optimizing for it, designing for it, etc. - more than 60 percent of brand owners still freely admit to offering their online users only an average or below-average digital experience.

This finding, from WhatUsersDo's User Experience Survey report, could have a number of different implications. It does not mean, however, that brands are not committed to delivering the best possible online user experience. The research found that eight of 10 (78 percent) of companies were "extremely" or "quite" committed to delivering the best possibly user experience. This large percentage makes sense, especially when 93 percent of respondents believe that optimizing the user experience will improve conversions. The problem, however, seems to be in the execution.

"The digital landscape is changing faster than it ever has and is becoming more complex," said Lee Duddell, head of user experience and founder of user-testing company WhatUsersDo. "Companies are grappling with not only how they can improve user experience, but also how they find the budget, get board buy-in, embed it into their processes and prove the ROI."

Many of the brands are failing in one key area - testing. Only 55 percent actually conducted any user-experience testing, with 39 percent of these only conducting it on major releases.

"Even though the majority of companies are committed to offering the best possible user experience, it appears that the approach taken to user experience is reactive and based on hunches, rather than a planned approach to testing that begins at the start and continues throughout any improvement project," said Econsultancy Senior Research Analyst, Andrew Warren-Payne.

For 100-plus tips, tactics and tools for optimizing websites, check out Website Magazine's February feature article.

Looking For a User Experience Expert? Look In The Mirror

Administrator — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:20:00 GMT

By Jeff Hunt, Snap36

Each morning I wake to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and eagerly make my way downstairs to fire up the MacBook. I start my daily online journey exploring the countless stories and pieces of wisdom bestowed by newswires, blogs, tweets and occasional self-proclaimed guru friends who send me their daily soapbox. And, every day, as part of that process, I sift through the overwhelming amount of industry fodder on how to increase conversions, reduce returns, enhance the online user experience and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. How to drive more sales and grow my business. It seems everyone has an angle.

Information overload is now the norm, no longer the exception. We're constantly bombarded with so much information it becomes impossible to keep it all straight. So, it's no wonder many marketers and website owners are enlisting the help of interactive agencies to sort it out.

While I believe there are many brilliant minds across these agencies that produce unbelievable creative content, I'm also continuously amazed at the lack of confidence extremely qualified, high-level marketers have in deciphering the best ways to address their own customer base. They turn to the help of "experts" when in fact, they may very well be the best case study to follow. Let's face it, if you are a marketer working in an online, e-commerce environment, yet you're not considered a power user or shopper on the Web, you may very well be in the wrong business.

Amazing things can happen when you truly know your customer base and how they measure success. You'll develop better solutions to their problems and understand how to sell to them. Yet, instead of believing you need to immediately enlist the experts to help you get to know what your customers want, first take the time to look inward. Grab your magnifying glass and examine why ‘you' bought that pair of shoes on Zappos.com last night, or that great new plasma TV from Abt or the beautiful new outfit from Ann Taylor's website. What inspired you to get to the point of purchase? What led you to have confidence to hit the "buy it now" button? Your answers to those very important questions are the same answers that inspire the masses. Deep down, we all share many of the same basic instincts when it comes to our online needs:

I want to quickly and easily find what I came for
I want the ability to see and experience the product I seek to buy
I want to trust in what I'm buying based on my peers and their reviews
I want to be ensured a competitive price
I want the check-out process to be seamless

These fundamentals haven't changed in 10 years. The problem is, we often get distracted by the latest and greatest technologies and trends - mobile, social, virtual and so on - all of which are valid and should be incorporated into long-term planning. But, it is important not to neglect the aforementioned five basic principles when driving toward the ultimate online customer experience.

Not identifying customer needs correctly is like building a house on a weak foundation. But a good builder knows his stuff and draws from his own experiences and subject matter expertise before then consulting with specialists and contractors to help set a solid foundation.

Your customers look to you to understand their requirements. If you don't, you risk losing them for good. So, next time you review your online business offerings to ensure the very best customer experience, first take the time to look in the mirror before consulting with someone who doesn't know your business and customers as well as you do. Doing so will put you in a good position for building a strong, lasting foundation for success.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hunt is the founder and principal of Snap36, which provides professional full-service 3D spin photography. Its studio, automated technology, and post-production services make spin photography easy and affordable for retailers to enhance any number of SKUs.

User Satisfaction Scores Reveal Web Application Performance

Michael Garrity — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:45:00 GMT

Real-time IT management company ManageEngine is releasing a slew of new enhanced monitoring features for its performance monitoring software package known as Applications Manager, including standardized user experience (UX) scores.

These scores will give businesses managing their Web applications with ManageEngine accurate information about user satisfaction with the performance of their apps based on Application Performance Index (Apdex) specifications. Providing a standardized and meaningful UX metric that is compatible across all transactional applications allows companies the opportunity to assess the responsiveness of each application in an easily managed index.

Apdex scores will be measured on a scale of 0 to 1, with “1” meaning all users are satisfied, and “0” indicating that none are satisfied. Applications Manager also offers new options for transaction tracing and performance metrics of Java/J2EE components.

These additional features help IT teams and app developers gather greater insights into how their applications work for end users, letting them detect and resolve performance issues regardless of cause. Everything from URLs to SQL queries can now be viewed by network administrators, who can see the transaction trace history and performance metrics of all components. They can use a trail of Java method invocations to pinpoint the problematic code behind any degradation issues, as well as identify slow database calls, database usage and overall performance of the database.

All of these tracing capabilities and metrics allow them to quickly troubleshoot performance problems and deliver an optimal user experience.

Applications Manager 10.4 is currently available, and prices start at $795 for up to 25 servers or applications, but interested parties can try it for free with a 30-day trial version.

Usabilla's Design Templates Optimize User Experience

Linc Wonham — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Usabilla has introduced a series of new testing templates that enable companies to set up a number of diverse design tests for their webpages in 30 seconds.

The new templates allow marketers, designers, analysts and usability experts to use design feedback to optimize user experience (UX) and offers a dashboard that lets them see how their tests are performing in a clear overview. A video demonstration of the new feedback templates can be viewed in action.

The new Usabilla ready-made testing templates for design feedback include the following:

•    A call-to-action test to find out if users know how to contact you
•    A likes and dislikes test to collect feedback about what your users think about your webpage
•    A trust test to determine which visuals help to gain user trust
•    A priority test to measure what users think is the most relevant content on your page

Groups of participants answer questions about attitude and user experience with points and notes on top of a website page from their computers or mobile devices. The collected feedback and results of a survey are then analyzed and presented visually with charts and heat maps.

Usabilla’s customers involve their users and the public to create user-inspired design, and can use these visual insights to improve user experience and optimize their websites – all without slowing down development cycles.

E-Commerce Drivers of Success - Endeca Survey

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:38:00 GMT

Search and business intelligence software company Endeca released results of an e-commerce survey of business to consumer and business to business organizations which revealed that user-centric, multi-channel commerce will be a big driver for success in 2011.

Perhaps one of the most important insights to be gained from the survey is that merchants' investment in user experience is a top priority. 64% reported that optimizing the user experience with features like enhanced search, navigation, product content, and overall ease of use is a priority. Confidence-building elements that drive transactions like user reviews, communities, and personalization to further enrich the user experience is also an area of focus.

Some additional data of note from the survey includes:

- Improving and leveraging product content a top priority: 44% of respondents mentioned building out complete product content (like images, data, video, user guides, etc.) and purposing it across channels as a top priority for 2011.

- Mobile ranks number one for new areas of investment: 35% state they have a mobile programme in place, while 30% are in early stages of implementation and 25% are investigating options and plan to have a live mobile programme in 2011. Less than 5% reported no mobile initiatives planned in the next 12 months.

“Consumers are demanding content-driven, multichannel commerce,” said John Andrews, vice president, product marketing, eBusiness at Endeca. “The majority of B2C organisations we surveyed are attempting to deliver dynamic user experiences, but are finding it hard to do so consistently across channels. The B2B community is also pulled by the rich consumer experience its users expect in their professional interactions, but face greater complexity in terms of content, channels, geography and brands.”

MSN and Yahoo's Perfect Content Storm

Mike Phillips — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:47:00 GMT

Yahoo and MSN are on a mission to produce un-fathomable amounts of content on the Web. Yahoo's acquisition of Associated Content -- since rebranded as Yahoo Contributor Network -- relies on thousands of freelancers (just about anyone can participate) to supply a never-ending stream of content. Yahoo pays for that content, albeit not very much. For the freelancers, speed is the name of the game. The more that can be produced, the more one can earn. One of the consequences of this model is that much of the content can be of questionable quality.

MSN has an entirely different problem; one of usability. For one, many of the story links on MSN.com look something like this: "Bing: German dog births 17 puppies". Click on that one and you get search results, not an actual story. In fact, any time you see "Bing:" followed by a story title you will get search results after a click. A quick scan of the MSN home page today shows that linked search results account for five of the first 10 "stories" on the home page. And that's not even accounting for the entire right side of the page which is all linked search results. This is hardly "content."

But the worst is in the form of the content itself -- excessive links, promotions and downright trickery. MSN, as it stands, is the worst offender. The image at right is taken from the MSN.com website. The familiar content slider is split into three parts. On the right you see an ad, in the middle is linked content and on the left are images. But a closer examination shows that the middle section is actually an overlay coming from the ad, designed to look like content. It doesn't stay there long, but long enough to be mistaken for content -- long enough for a click -- even by a Web veteran such as myself. That tricky ad didn't seem to last long, thankfully. I haven't seen it in weeks. Perhaps the folks in the editorial department suddenly remembered something about ethics in journalism and click fraud.

So what about the actual stories? Below you will find a screen capture from a recent story about the top earning actors in Hollywood, linked from MSN.com. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? It would be, if one could reasonably get through the entire article. The first two sentences contain three highlighted links (in hot pink, no less). After the fourth sentence is another recognizable distraction: "Bing: 2011 Oscar Predictions". Two sentences later, another interruption: "Also from Forbes.com: Photo gallery: Hollywood's highest-grossing actors and actresses". And so it continues throughout the article. All told, this piece of content contains 21 links. Five of those links break the content flow itself. That's one very difficult article to read on a very simple topic.

It appears that the drive for content (Yahoo and MSN) and search (Bing) are literally dominating their respective Web properties, and superseding the user experience. It's soiling the Web. And the Web is already messy enough. The last thing we need is it to be useless, too. This is why I have come to appreciate smaller, simpler and cleaner Web properties. And I know I'm not the only one.

User Experience, Erotic Services & Online Classifieds

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:06:00 GMT

A survey commissioned by Kijiji.com, eBay’s local classifieds site, revealed some interesting factors that users consider before visiting an online classifieds site.

Three in four U.S. adults (75%) said they prefer to buy or sell items from a Web site that does not host erotic ads or adult services, and more than half (53%) of consumers said they would prefer that a family member use a site without such listings.

Top attributes Americans are looking for in an online classifieds site include free listings, a safe experience and good deals, according to a survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey1. The positive qualities in demand are not surprising considering the variety of reasons consumers opt not to visit online classifieds sites such as apprehension that ads may be misleading or fraudulent (36%), email address might be spammed (28%), getting a computer virus (26%) and classifieds ads may have adult content (24%), according to the Kijiji survey.

However, nearly three-quarters (74%) of Americans are more likely to use a classifieds site if it has a customer service team that focuses on monitoring and removing fraudulent and offensive ads. Kijiji addresses these concerns and is dedicated to providing an easy-to-use, family-friendly and safe experience through safeguards such as community (such as Kijiji's Community Watch program), technology-based measuers such as fitlers and posting delays, site-based/policy measures (prohibiting personal ads or erotic services for example), and of course community based features.

Do you believe the survey? Does the presence of erotic ads and adult services dissuade users (or you) from visiting (or revisiting) a website? My gut says no but what do you think?