Column: More Than Words

As UX professionals, we’re all familiar with the need to test user experience designs. Testing content, however, might be a different story. Most companies haven’t given testing content the attention it deserves—partly because it’s challenging. One challenge is that time and budget usually do not allow us to test every single piece of content. Another challenge is that gathering too much unfocused feedback can freeze our projects in analysis paralysis. To meet these challenges, try testing your content concepts—and start testing them early in your projects.

I have found surprisingly little advice about testing content that is integral to rather than supportive of the user experience. Also scarce is advice about testing content for more than usability. A good starting point for understanding the need to test content is a blog post by Ginny Redish, “Usability Testing: Be Sure to Test Content as Well as Navigation.” According to Redish:

“Too many usability tests focus only on finding information—not on how the information itself works for people.”—Ginny Redish

This column explains the value of testing content with real people and offers tips on evaluating content concepts. Read More

Want to keep your customers despite tough economic times? Don’t add yet another feature to your Web site. Stop worrying about redesigning it. Instead, take a hard look at improving your site’s content.

Why content? In this age of automation and technology, Web content is often how a company communicates with its customers. B.J. Fogg, author of Persuasive Technology, tells us that technology can be a “social actor” that “creates relationship.” [1] However, I believe the true social actor is the content that technology delivers. In fact, content can play the roles of many social actors. The content on a business Web site, for instance, may take the role of a sales executive, a customer service agent, a technical support assistant, and more. Because your site’s content mediates customer relationships, it offers an opportunity to deepen those relationships.

In this column, I will explore the idea of Web content as a nurturer of customer relationships and share a few examples of what this can mean. My focus is on company content that communicates to customers, because, in my opinion, that’s the content most in need of improvement. I recognize the importance of considering user-generated content and social media in customer relationships, but many companies first need to improve their core communications with customers. Read More

Blogs, wikis, emails, Web sites, virtual worlds, text messages—oh, my. Today we have more ways of communicating than ever. The challenge? If businesses aren’t careful, what they’re trying to say—and what their customers are trying to say—can get lost in the complexity. Think about your experiences as a customer. How many times have you received an email message that was meaningless to you, because its images didn’t download—or perhaps because it offered a message that wasn’t relevant to your life? How often have you come across a customer service page on a beautiful Web site, only to find its information unhelpful—or even contradictory to what the company’s brochure says? Have you ever called an interactive voice response system, or IVR system—aka those darn phone menus—that wasn’t at least a little irritating? All the technology in the world can’t replace the nitty-gritty job of communication.

UX professionals can help people rediscover real communication. It’s not just writing for the Web—though that’s critical. The intention of my new column is to aid this rediscovery, starting with a look at what communication is. I’ll be focusing on business and relationship marketing contexts, but many of these ideas apply in other contexts, too. Read More