So Kay asked me to do this talk about site audits
I thought it was best to just tell you my experience going from not knowing how to do it at all, to knowing a wee bit.
So the talk’s only what I know so far and many of the things are not my idea, they come from others, I’m just passing them off as my own.
But hopefully it’ll help you and you can use the goodies everyday.
I have been asked what I think a lot and it’s a bit scary, especially when you’re on the spot. You don’t want to offend. I’ve you’ve been in a similar situation your repsonse may be similar to mine…
Well, I didn’t want to offend anyone, did I!
But I realised that this made me look like an idiot. I was being asked for my expert opinion; they were not looking for blind agreement. So, you see, the question is really a searching one – to find out what you know.
So I started ripping the sites to shreds, but I realised that there’s a big problem with this…
If you review design work in a subjective way you very quickly get into hot water. Because subjective comments, like “I don’t like the colour” have no solid foundation and are received very personally by the person you’re talking to.
We have had many experiences where the lack of solidity in subjective comments give way to emotional attachment and seniority becoming deciding factors – not necessarily the best way to get an effective outcome.
What I realised is…
So I stopped expressing my opinion and started talking about my experiences and things I know that relate to the project. And if I didn’t know, I’d ask questions like.
I quickly realised I was using the design process.
No, no, no! Design isn’t really like this. It’s much more organised than that, and surprisingly objective.
The subjectivity comes in when you try to do good design. When you need to create beauty, as Dexy kindly demonstrated for us.
Good design is making the right decisions and bringing them together beautifully. But you don’t need to bring them together beautifully when you’re talking to a client, you just need to understand how to make the right decisions.
So here are the 7 key things that I think are the cornerstones of this.
Step 1 is to get a point of view. I realised that if the client doesn’t know where you’re coming from then its harder for them to identify with your comments. So I thought about it a bit and settled on the idea that we put the customer first and that our approach is effective because of the effort to which we go to make sure we understand how to treat them right.
The next thing I realised is the easy win that getting the brand right can offer. It is different enough from offline that thinking about how our clients’ brands work online can offer real added value. The online environment is different because:
- Online is massively frantic
- Customers are fickle
- Our clients are surrounded by liars and cheats
- You need to communicate in many channels to many different people at different stages of engagement
So what do you do:
- Create a genuinely unique proposition
- Don’t talk about it, demonstrate it. Change the offering to support it
- Keep it simple, punchy and open to lots of applications
The example shown is the OXY site whereby I developed messaging that expressing in a memorable way, their unique proposition of spot cream formulated just for guys’ skin. This lead to designing the website, creating pack copy and making the TV campaign. The product when to market in Q4 last year and has been immensely successful -year on year sales are up even though they are no longer selling to girls and boys.
The next thing to consider is the architecture and navigation. This is the backbone of any site. It can make or break the user experience.
The key? “Don’t make me think” as in the title of the book.
- Do buttons make sense without any knowledge?
- How many pages do I have to click through to reach the end result?
- Is the naming convention related to the customer end-goal?
- Does the suggested content overlap?
For a while we were creating complicated user scenarios for our pitches. We realised that, simply put, every page has an objective. If it doesn’t you can confidently question whether it should be there at all. If it’s there and doesn’t have an objective it’s just:
- Cluttering the architecture
- Confusing customers
- Losing business
The question is – Is the action that relates to the core objective above the fold and clearly labelled? If not it will never be as effective as it could be
Working on the Dunfermline building societ site we created:
- Clear calls to action and bullet summaries to make content clear,
- Included a product guide that helped made sense of the products
- Included the ‘Bob’ feature if users needed more help
- We also helped them brand product categories and products
The bit that was right about the user scenarios was that a page also has to take the user on a journey starting from their objective and ending with the site objective.
If done right this journey should be:
- Short – the right people landing on the right page
- Simple – journey made really clear
Page hierarchy and content achieve this:
- Google golden triangle – This defines the hierarchy of importance. So that things that are important are always in the users eyeline.
- Clear purpose
- Succinct, convincing information
- Helpful, engaging tone
The content is just dropped in too often just dropped in. Getting this right is a potential big win in a competitive environment as there are so few people doing it right. But how do you do it right. I think the simple rules are these:
- Keep it concise
- Use short paras
- Interesting – do you hear blah blah blah > happy talk
- Snappy sentences
- Good attention grabbers
- Very informal
- Subheads and actions
Mr and mrs smith is a great example of good copy. It’s one of the only sites in recent times whose copy has made me go looking within the site for more to read. More recently we’ve been helping a friend of Equator develop a new luxury travel brand with a unique proposition – that of a genuine expertise in where is good to go and a selection of destinations that contains only places they know to be the best of the best. We have developed a content strategy for them that hinges on opinion pieces rather marketing-speak. The company is Eden - keep a look out for the full website coming soon, or have a look at the lovely microsite that we’ve done for them now.
We’ve done lots of usability sessions over the years that have taught us alot about what makes a site effective. However there are a few top-level rules of thumb to guide you when looking at a design and trying to determine whether it might be effective or not.
The first thing is to remember that users have very short temper when interacting with your site. When something goes wrong, it’s the site that they think is at fault.
What to do (obviously this advice is incomplete, entire books have been written on the subject):
- Make it impossible to make a mistake
- For unusual features – explain the benefits concisely
- Make it relevant – user’s have a secret identity that they use when they don’t want to give away personal information.
- Necessary – drop visitors [when you ask for information email address at the start, vs at the end]
So now you know…
- to ask questions to understand the target customer.
- to find out about the market sector and what the competitors are doing?
- whether the unique brand proposition is clear.
- if the navigation makes it easy to reach the user’s end goal.
- whether the page objective is clear.
- if the gap between customer and page objectives is too big.
- whether functional elements and forms will be easily understood by target customers.
- whether content is succinct and scannable to engage, and interesting enough to make it sticky.
- You know what makes their customers click.
Not bad eh?!
I hope you find this useful and I’m looking forward to a barrage of comments explaining important things that I’ve missed – fire away!
