Mobile friendly websites are becoming crucial for your audience's experience

You’ve just scored a social media victory. The buzz about your brand / product is trending on twitter and it’s the hot topic for Facebook status updates. People are talking about you and they want more. Through their mobile phone your audience click on your link excited about what you have to say. However, the frustration sets in as they wait while the page loads, and when it finally does the tiny text and blank space, where a flash component used to be, serve only to create more frustration. Unfortunately this scenario is far too common.

Two trends are driving this frustrating user experience. First, people are sharing links on a huge scale, and second they are increasingly using mobile phones to access the internet. Consider this, the service bit.ly which is used by many to shorten URL’s for status updates on facebook and tweets, reports that their shortened URL’s are getting 2 billion clicks a month. (And this is just one of a handful of services to shorten URL’s) While at the same time mobile browsing has more than doubled its share of all browsing over the last year according to figures by Net Applications.

Are you ready for your audience when they click on a link to your site from their mobile phone? Or are you creating barriers for them by not having a mobile friendly site?

At Trioro we design, build, and integrate internet technology to help you connect with the people that are important to you, regardless of device. We have experience creating mobile web and mobile applications for clients such as Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, and Sweetspot.ca. Ask us how we can help you make these technologies work for you too.

Did Skittles do it right?

From a buzz point of view, I think Skittles made their mark. Their new website which consists of a branded navigation bar that hovers over social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia has received a lot of attention lately. From a marketing effectiveness point of view I'll let others be the judge, see Ad Age's take on it (membership required for older articles) or Bite Communications blog. However, from a usability perspective how does it rate? There is a lot that goes into good usability, but for this lets keep it simple - does it make it easy for the audience to do things they want to do on your site. Here's my take on Skittles usability:

What's Good:

Flexible home Page
Whether they've done this on purpose or not their home page can be easily changed from Twitter to YouTube (as they've recently done) or to Facebook, depending where the most action is. This can be used to make YouTube the home page when they release a new video, or Twitter the home page when there is a lot of chatter about all the ways you can have fun with Skittles, which helps them ensure the home page is as relevant as possible to their audience.

Simple Navigation Bar
It's straightforward without too many levels and very easy to use.

What's Bad:

The Navigation Bar blocks important content
Unfortunately the navigation bar blocks content and important links on the social media sites, esspecially on small screens (like the 13inch tablet that I have). Usually I like to be able to click on the Videos or Channel links in YouTube's main navigation, or the discussion tab on Wikipedia, or see that the Twitter stream is based on a skittles search. Even on larger screens some of these are blocked. What could have been done to make the experience better is allow you to move the box around the page. This was already done on Modernista's site, on which this design is based, so I am not sure why they didn't include this feature.

The Ad Box below the Navigation bar opens on every click
Every time you click on an item in the navigation, a Skittles ad pops up below the navigation bar. This is quite annoying for me because it blocks even more content, and needs to be closed on every new page I view. This could be easily addressed by making it smart enough to remember if I've already closed it and keep it closed until I return to the home page. Though of course that would mean I wouldn't see their Transplant the Rainbow ad, and get annoyed, as many times.

What do you think?

Web Design - the OXO test

“User-centered design” is often used to describe designing products and services from the consumer’s point of view, which is something we are very fond of here at Trioro.

Recently the User experience arts blog outlined the 4 criteria that OXO use to evaluate which consumer product ideas to commercialize. I think these criteria also work well to evaluate websites.

So does your website pass the OXO test?

• You must be able to understand what it does [or what type of information it contains] just by looking at it
• Knowing how to use it has to be obvious (no instructions!)
• It must be thought provoking
• It should warrant consistent use (not a use-once-and-put-away product)

Source Michael Grossman, User Experience Arts

Comparing auto manufacturers’ websites

J.D. Power and Associates recently ranked auto manufacturers’ Canadian websites. The ranking put Subaru first, Hyundai last, and Mini right in the middle. The ranking was based on a shopper survey which took into account four areas: information/content; ease of navigating; appearance; and speed of page load.

Take a look at these sites yourself, and see what you think.

www.subaru.ca

www.mini.ca

www.hyundaicanada.com

What I find particularly interesting is that with all the flashy bells-and-whistles that are included in the Mini site, it only ranks as average. I think this is partially a lesson in the effective use of motion and animation on websites, which many people have yet to learn.

Web metrics help deliver a better experience

Back in December the Economist wrote about Web Metrics, highlighting the vast amount of data that can be tracked to measure a websites success. However, they bemoaned the lack of a singular and simple measure for Advertisers, like the audience measures used in the offline world today.

Could it be that those simple metrics in the offline world have been in part responsible for leaving a bad taste in the mouth of many potential customers?

Over-advertising, forcing messages, lack of respect for the customer’s time, many of these sentiments have been expressed frequently towards advertisements and advertisers (rightly or wrongly). For TV this has lead to use PVRs to avoid commercials, and DVD and Home Theater sales continue to do well while the groans during the first 20 min of advertisements at the movie theater are audible.

Maybe that is why Professor John Quelch, in Harvard Business’s look at the year ahead, predicts that 2008 will be the year that Advertising Companies Will Learn to Love Google. Though more time consuming, analyzing the numerous online metrics may result in online advertising that is more tailored and in-tune with potential customers, delivering a better experience for the audience and in-turn a better return on investment … wouldn’t that be nice.

No Click Rule

In several meetings recently people have told me that they understand usability because they "know about the three click rule".

That three click rule can be blamed for so many websites that have too many pages.

I propose: The No Click Rule

If you're unfamiliar with the Three Click Rule, it essentially says that a website visitor should be able to find the content that they're looking for without having to click the menu more than 3 times. Other's argue that it's okay to make that at 5 click limit.

Off the cuff, the Three Click Rule seems rather sensible. Wouldn't you think? Now, I concede that if you're building a new website for Microsoft that this is a good rule of thumb.

Before the arrival of technologies like AJAX, developers were forced to make people click through sequential forms that collected data. It's now possible to design websites to be much more dynamic.

The purpose of the "No Click Rule" is to force a change in mind-set. Don't strive for a 3 click setup. Aim for NO clicks - at all. Very few websites will be able to achieve that, but designing with the No Click Rule in mind will force you to think of short cuts and usability optimizations.

Usability Defined

A key focus of what we do at Trioro is ensuring the websites and solutions that we build are "usable".  A few posts that will come in the near future will help define how we interpret some of the terms used to understand usability.  I'll start right there - with the definition of "usability".

Usability is an understanding of how easy it is for a person to interact with a computer.

At Trioro it is important that we build websites that make sense to the people using them. It is important that the websites we build are easy to use and effective at getting the job done.

A usable website has the following qualities:

• easy to understand
• easy to navigate
• very obvious functionality
• familiar (even for new visitors)
• pleasing

For anyone using a website they should be able to get what they came for in a fast, effective way. You're probably familiar with the term "user friendly" which implies that a website is highly usable.

Understanding your audience is key to building a good, usable website. The resources on a website must be presented accordingly. Casual web users need overly obvious navigation. While financial investors need advanced analytic functionality that behaves just like the spreadsheets they're used to.

At Trioro we use scenarios to make sure that websites are highly usable. It is absolutely necessary to describe and understand your audience by "walking in their shoes". Describing scenarios which detail the interaction a visitor has with the website will ensure a usable tool is built.

If you're interested in more on the topic, check back here for continued posts. And in the mean time, check out these web links on the definition of usability:

• ISO Usability Definition
• Wikipedia
• Usability.gov

Designing customer experiences - New?

To some it seems that designing customer experiences is a completely new phenomenon.

I've been reading Polar Unlimited's blog, since being introduced to them through a mutual client, and have been reminded again of the business world's continued focus on "design thinking" and "customer experience".

In 2002, Roger Martin (Dean of the Rotman School of Management) created the Desautels Center for Integrative Thinking to bring together design and business thinking "to change the way business schools teach business". P&G's CEO has over the last several years been leading a transformation of the largest package goods company in the world to a design focused company. And more recently, Microsoft has launched Expression Studio, a suite of tools to make it easier for designers and developers to work together to create better user experiences for web and windows applications. The launch in Toronto was accompanied by a presentation from NextD on the future of design to solve the worlds "wicked problems".


However, designing customer experiences is not new.

From Shakespeare and Motzart to George Lucas, Cirque du Soleil, and Nuit Blanche (which I had the pleasure to attend this year in Toronto). Individuals and organizations have aspired to capture the hearts and the minds of their audience. To engage and delight, to awe and inspire; sometimes for purpose and sometimes for play. (there is a reason that the word "art" appears in the title of Roger Martin's The Art of Integrative Thinking)

A focus on design and experience is not new, but it is incredibly important.

What is new is the means. The tools and technology to design customer experiences is ever-evolving, and the online world is the new stage. I don't think anyone can claim to have completely figured it out yet - and that's why Trioro exists. We're here to help our clients apply these new online technologies, and find the path to delivering great experiences online.