Good user experience can improve your bottom line

I came across the following presentation when I was browsing on Slideshare and it really resonated with me. I often talk to designers or information architects about improving the usability of a web app by simplying things. For instance use more descriptive form buttons - "submit" is vague, include functionality such as breadcrumbs and site search as people expect them to be there etc. Essentially don't make me think!

One thing I often notice with new site designs is they are tested by power users, we know that the logo links back to the homepage, we know how to use utility nav and how to filter results in a datagrid. However the best test i've ever had is my wife or my mom. To be honest if they can't perform a task or find something on a new site chances are other users will have the same problem. Ultimately a bad experience frustrates users and ensures they will give up on your site and go to the next listing on Google.

I encourage you to view the following presentation by Brian Winter from CareerBuilder on providing a better user experience.

Content is part of design to!

It seems so many websites really don't get it when it comes to content. I can't even count how many websites I’ve viewed where they have a killer header graphic, nice navigation and overall good looking page template and then when you look at the content it’s sad. There is no consideration given to how it flows, or make it enticing enough for the user to actually read it. There are just paragraphs stacked on top of paragraphs, generally at 8 point making it impossible to read!

In this era of everything being on demand and with the popularity of services like Youtube with its rich media, chances are if you haven’t made you content engaging users won't read it.
It’s easy to dress up page content to make it more appealing.

Here are some ideas:

• For one break up your content, no one will read a big blog of text! See BBC website for a good example
• Use call outs – Use CSS or graphical items to show excerpts of quotes from text
• Use underline, and background color to jazz up content, 37signals have perfected this technique
• Have a linking strategy, it helps people to deep dive and view other content on your site
• Provide content intelligence – Show a list of related content (see my taxonomy blog)
• Embed stuff… take a look at any blog: video, flash, images, audio are all ways to keep people interested and enhance the content
• De-centralized your content by providing a feed in RSS, getting people to read it in any form is still good!
• Add tools like text size, search, email, embed (digg etc) and print so people can interactive with it

So there you have it, hopefully some of these idea’s are helpful. I’ll leave you with some recent sites I visited that have done this well:

• http://www.articulate.com/
• http://meetmenow.webex.com/
• http://adage.com/