March 2016 Issue
The Outcome of Your Customer’s End-to-End Journey: Happy Ending or Dead End?
Published: February 22, 2016
As CX professionals, we understand the importance of delivering a holistic, end-to-end customer experience. It’s not just about exceeding expectations for a customer’s initial purchase. Those of us who care about customer experience preach the power and importance of making things right when a customer has had a bad experience.
We all have our stories about CX heroes. For example the owner of the restaurant who comes to your table and says, “I’m so sorry about the slow service tonight. Please have dessert and coffee on me.” Or the customer-service representative who stays on the phone with you for what seems like hours, making sure you get through some ungodly, techno nightmare with their product. These people are business-savvy CX heroes. They know that loyalty rules, and the customers who give you business deserve your attention. Oft-quoted statistics tell us that it’s 5 times more expensive to acquire customers than it is to retain them. Providing a good customer experience is not just a nice thing to do; it’s good business.
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Topic: Columns | User Experience (UX)
Five Best Practices for Becoming a Data-Driven Design Organization, Part 1
Published: February 22, 2016
A customer experience (CX) design strategy comprises intentional design activities and processes that, when taken together, enable a team to deliver exceptional customer experiences. When you create meaningful products or services, they offer unique value to customers and are distinguishable from those of competitors.
I lead a Customer Experience Design team in the Digital Marketing and eCommerce group at the one of the world’s largest Web-conferencing companies. Over the last few years, my team has undertaken several complete overhauls of the Web site and designed the customer experience for a new content-management platform. Upper management dictated extremely aggressive deadlines, and we launched on schedule.
One thing that initially seemed to surprise everyone in the company—except our team—was that our in-house CXD team was responsible for executing such ambitious research and design projects in their entirety rather than using agencies.
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Topic: Usability | User Research
User-Centered Design Artifacts
Published: February 22, 2016
In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel considers how UX professionals can create a narrative that connects their learnings about business and user needs to a design solution, in a way that is comprehensible to all project team members, regardless of their role. Our experts also discuss what artifacts a UX team should create during a design project to best enable the team to understand the design problem, then provide an optimal solution for it.
Every month in Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions to: [email protected].
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Topic: Columns | Communicating Design | User-Centered Design (UCD)
Mobile-First eCommerce: What Customers Expect and Value in Mobile Shopping Experiences
Published: February 22, 2016
Increasing conversion rates from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is a key goal of every ecommerce company. In 2015, the shopping-cart abandonment rate reached an all-time high of 70%, and it’s climbing. Since Morgan Stanley’s research suggests that 91% percent of adults use smartphones, why are only 14% of those consumers buying products online using their mobile device?
Yes, people tend to browse on their mobile device, then move to their personal computer to shop online. But people tend to do this primarily because of poor usability and the lack of affordance on smaller devices. Shopping-cart abandonment can be reduced on smartphones and tablets. However, many companies struggle with delivering a seamless browse-to-buy experience on mobile devices.
Shopping-cart abandonment—the loss of a customer who was going through an ecommerce site’s check-out flow—is widespread. A Forrester study found that 89% of consumers had abandoned a shopping cart at least once. Researchers attributed that high rate of abandonment to user sophistication: as shoppers become more experienced with online shopping, they are more likely to compare brand experiences online.
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Topic: Mobile UX Design | Web Site Design
Book Review: UX for Beginners: A Crash Course in 100 Short Lessons
Published: February 22, 2016
Every so often, I’m asked if I can recommend a book on learning User Experience, and I generally struggle to find an appropriate answer. It’s not that there aren’t any good books out there. It’s more that learning User Experience—as with most things—is something better done through practice, working on something that is as close to a real problem as possible. (Sure, no one wants to mess up on a big corporate project in the name of personal development. But frankly, if you’re the person trying to make things better, and you can persuade people to let you do it, all power to you.)
If I were able to go back to being my younger self, one of the pieces of advice I’d give myself—in addition to buy Apple stock and round glasses really don’t suit you—would be to read less and do more. While reading to learn a new skill is good, reading in the absence of simultaneous, practical learning activities to put what you’ve read into practice is pretty much wasted effort. At its worst, reading gives the illusion of progress because the reader vicariously shares the author’s successes.
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Topic: Book Reviews
Getting Specific on Soft Skills for UX Professionals
Published: February 8, 2016
My last column received tremendous feedback with regard to the importance of soft skills in the profession of User Experience. One consistent theme was the desire for me to get more specific about the types of soft skills that are often lacking in UX professional’s interactions. To answer this request, I will touch upon the following five soft skills in this column:
- adaptability
- communication
- conflict resolution
- argumentation and negotiation
- gravitas mixed with social grace
Topic: Columns | Professional Development
How to Create a Globally Appealing User Experience
Published: February 8, 2016
If you’re designing a product you want to sell globally, assuming every consumer across the world has the same needs and expectations won’t get you far. Knowing and understanding what makes people different is what will determine your success.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow studied human needs throughout his career and social psychologists such as Geert Hofstede continue to research this topic today. (Dirk Knemeyer wrote a three-part series for UXmatters titled, “Applied Empathy: A Design Framework for Meeting Human Needs and Desires.”)
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Topic: UX Design | User Experience (UX)
Information Architecture in Review, Part 1
Published: February 8, 2016
Information architecture is not the easiest topic to write about. So, when a book comes out on the subject, we know that’s a rare event. Nevertheless, we’ve seen some new books on information architecture hit the market in the last few years. Arguably, this trend began in 2011 with the publication of Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences, by Andrea Resmini and Luca Rosati. More on that book in a future review.
In this review, I’ll highlight Abby Covert’s and Andrew Hinton’s latest works. Both are veteran practitioners of information architecture and well-known contributors to the field’s body of knowledge.
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Topic: Book Reviews | Columns | Information Architecture
Robots Do It Better: Why Users Love Self-Service Technologies
Published: February 8, 2016
Let’s face it. While the Internet was designed to make us more connected, it’s also making it easier for us to avoid one another. Just think about that for a moment. Yes, you can reach out and communicate with people in the most distant corners of the Earth, but at the same time, there is nothing more irksome than receiving an actual phone call when an email message would have sufficed.
For example, there’s been a shift in hiring practices. Remember when you were supposed to pound the pavement, handing out a stack of resumes and letting people see your face? Today, no HR manager in the world wants you showing up at his or her door. Even if you did, they would just tell you to go online and fill out a form or submit your resume via email.
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Topic: User Experience (UX)
Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research
Published: February 8, 2016
This is a sample chapter from Tomer Sharon’s new book Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research. 2016 Rosenfeld Media.
Chapter 5: Do People Want the Product?
“Mmm…” I thought to myself as I was reading Nate Bolt’s Facebook post about the Automatic app (see Figure 5.1). “A smart driving assistant? One that hooks up to my car’s computer and sends data to an iPhone app that will help me save energy and money? I want that!” (See Figure 5.2.)
I ordered an Automatic two minutes after I saw that post. It cost me $70. At the time, the product wasn’t shipping yet, and I was paying to participate in a beta that was going to start in a few months. Usually, I’m extremely skeptical about such things. But this was different. I really wanted that thing. I thought the idea was brilliant, and I was 100% positive that I would use and love it. The beautiful, smooth Automatic Web site and purchasing workflow reassured me that I could trust my instincts. When the Automatic package arrived at my doorstep a few months later, I was happy. Unboxing it was very “Apple-like,” and onboarding was great. I hooked the Automatic car adapter to my car (somewhere under the steering wheel where I was able to find the data port quickly), installed the app, and made sure it worked when I drove the car.
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Topic: User Research
