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The
Insighter View all articles on our new site |
Neo Insight's e-newsletter
on Customer Experience topics and techniques. We invite you to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter: In this issue
Upcoming events
How to build momentum to manage your Top TasksMany of you have enjoyed Gerry McGovern’s Masterclasses about identifying top tasks and Customer Carewords. So much so that you talk about them with your co-workers to get them interested. Lots of you ask us for additional ways. It is natural to want to spread the word. So here are some ways to do that without losing your personal copy of “Killer Web Content”:
Revolve around your users – not vice versaYou have been hearing us talk about user-centred websites on and on. But face the truth – making a website serve user tasks is hard work. In the 1600's people faced similar problems convincing really smart people that the earth was not the centre of the universe. We hope these tips inspire you. Get focus off the immediate problems Demonstrate that your site revolves around your users Focus on paths not just pages
Essential to being user-centred is to
think of your website in terms of tasks and paths, rather than pages or visits. When people pressure you as we describe above, remind them to stop thinking your website is at the centre. Tell them the web pages are no more important to your user than a planet is to the sun. Tell them to stop thinking that anything is standing still. Tell them your users are in motion, all the time, in countless ways. Show them the paths for the top user tasks. Tell them to fast-forward to the 1600’s and leave their geo-centric thinking behind. It worked for Copernicus and Kepler. Email us or give us a call (613 271-3001) if you need help determining your top tasks. People who visit your web site only give you so much time. They have very short attention spans. They are under pressure. They need to get things done. Keep in mind how little time users really give you – it is not very much. In usability testing, we see users take just a few minutes to complete a task. If a task takes too long, they lose concentration, or get overwhelmed, or simply give up. In our testing, we track how long people take to accomplish a task. Sometimes a user gets totally lost trying to compare the links or menu items on a page. Many forget what they are doing – often by about two minutes into their task. Two minutes makes a good rough benchmark. So use a two-minute warning for your own web project, or give it to the authors who create web pages on your site. If a top task on your website takes more than two minutes, find out why. Find ways to shorten the task. Eliminate steps, link more directly to the content, clarify navigational options, make links more visible, etc. Your users will complete their task more often, and leave your site more satisfied. In fact two minutes only persistent users will keep going for two minutes. About half of all page-visits are shorter than ten seconds. One out of four last less than four seconds. People on the web are in a hurry. Half of page-visits are shorter than ten seconds Source: Weinreich & Herder (2006) study of users interacting with over 65,000 URIs Define your users by their actions – not as an “audience”Once you catch the vision that Task Management is the future of Web management, you may have to change the way you think about your “audience”. On the web, users do things. Yes, sometimes users seem to consume information passively like an audience. But your users are actively doing a task. They are in a hurry. To think of users passively consuming information is part of a wrong mind-set. You can help your colleagues change their mind-set by defining your users in active terms. One effective way to segment your users is in terms of their overall goals; e.g. "Applicants", or “Pregnant women". Their tasks on your website are easier to communicate to colleagues. Identifying your users is a crucial step in managing your user experience – but so is identifying their goals and tasks. Notice the action verbs used by Forrester in their categorization of people who adopt new Web technologies: Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics, and Creators. The more users get involved, the better to define them by their actions than by passive-sounding labels like “audience”. Action-oriented labels will also remind your colleagues what actions to support on the website. Furthermore, the less like an audience your users are, the more active they are in referring others to your Web content. The more active your users, the more impact they have. In Task Management, your words drive action. Let your user segmentation reflect that action. Why usability is one of the best careers in 2009The “Usability Experience Specialist” is rated as one of the best careers for 2009. A US News & World Report article describes why, and offers typical titles. We want to hear what you think. Enter your opinion and stay tuned for the results. If usability is part of your job, tell us why you like that part of your job. If you benefit from usability people, tell us why. Quote of the month“Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet.” Douglas Adams, JavaOne keynote, 1999 If you have any comments on The Insighter, or ideas on usability topics you'd like to hear about, fill out our 2-question feedback, or send us an email with your comments. We invite you to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter. |
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