Our thinking

Claire Savage says:

A nation’s favourite tops the 5 year charts

28Oct

Tags:

Our latest ecommerce report, the 5th in the series shows John Lewis topping the chart and winning our Webcredible Ecommerce Excellence Award due to it’s consistent performance.

The report, clearly shows a mature and well developed sector which is experiencing another surge in growth from mobile and social media channels.

What was surprising was the fact some basic areas for website usability for many retailers still needed to improve. For example, websites fail to track viewed items to help make it easier for visitors to shop online, thereby meaning a loss in potential revenue. In addition to this, most websites lost marks by failing to display a highly visible ‘Proceed to checkout’ button. A new guideline for 2010, this is considered to be an important feature and fairly easy to implement, yet continues to be ignored by seven websites.

The criteria used to evaluate the websites takes into account the complete ecommerce experience, including browsing and navigation, the checkout process, searching and product display pages.

The 20 ecommerce websites received total scores out of 100.

To find out more, listen to our expert panel discussion on the report or view the report.

Comments:

1 comment on A nation’s favourite tops the 5 year charts

Alistair Gray says:

Metrics help to focus user testing

27Oct

Tags:

Site metrics is a massive tool for a user experience consultant. It can give us an early view of user behaviour before any testing is carried out, potentially signaling key problem pages and areas of interest.

I’ve used site metrics countless times to direct my research, and I’ve seen that games companies have started doing the same. I read an article in which Bioware show some of the metrics they’ve gathered from Mass Effect 2 (For a much more interesting example of how to use metrics to guide game design, read ‘Master metrics: The science behind the art of game design’ in Game usability).

I have to admit - I was stunned when I found out game developers weren’t able to/haven’t been collecting game play metrics until recently. I suppose consoles haven’t been online until this generation and there may be privacy issues but it’s been such a large part of the user experience toolkit for so long (and they’re so helpful) that I just naturally assumed they were available as a matter of course.

Either way, if you are a developer and you’re not building a method to record user metrics into your game - do it, do it now. Metrics can start opening the window to understanding user behaviour. And once you understand your users you can make more informed, better design decisions.

One thing to remember, metrics can potentially show you where issues are occurring, but they can’t explain why these issues are occurring, e.g. Why was ‘Soldier’ the most popular class by such a long way?

No matter how enlightening metric data can be, there’s nothing that can replace user testing.

Comments:

Leave a comment on Metrics help to focus user testing

Yeevon Ooi says:

Playing with the Kindle 3

25Oct

Tags:

amazon-kindle3

I’m halfway through my first book on the new Amazon Kindle and I must say it’s quite an interesting experience.

Being a bit of a purist when it comes to books, I’ve always thought that nothing can beat a good old paperback where you can flip through pages of text and/or images and do whatever it is people do to books such as folding the edge as a bookmark, annotating, using it as a propping tool etc.

Likes

What I like about the Kindle 3 is its nice sleek design with its interesting screen savers. It’s very light and thin, very portable and easy to carry around as it doesn’t take up much space in a bag.

My favourite features on the Kindle include the annotation function where you can highlight passages of text which is then automatically stored, and also the built-in dictionary function which allows you to view definition of words by just positioning the cursor before the beginning of the word.

Likes less

However, I do have some issues with the ergonomics of the Kindle. As you need to hold it like a book, the fact that it’s very thin and bigger than the size of one’s palm (at least my palm) makes it quite tricky to have a firm grip on it with one hand without my fingers either pressing on the screen or on the keypad. Some sort of rubber band on the back of the Kindle so that I can slide my hand under the band snugly and not worry about the Kindle slipping off my hand would be nice.

Also, the back and next button on the Kindle needs a bit of getting used to. The usual mental model of right arrow = next and left arrow= back doesn’t work on the Kindle as both of the next and back buttons are located on top of each other on both sides of the Kindle.

Lastly, thanks to the touchscreen invention on mobile devices, it is natural to want to use touchscreen to navigate on the Kindle but as it’s not a touchscreen device, I have to resist the urge to poke around on the reading screen and get used to the keypad buttons which needs a bit of learning.

It’s good for text-heavy books but image-heavy books tend to struggle a bit with the Kindle layout. You can browse the internet and check your emails on it if you don’t mind the entirely black and white display.

Still, it’s a good device to have given it’s very easy to purchase books online and being able to read them almost right after the purchase. All in all, it does support the act of reading but it requires some learning and compromising.

Photo credit: Aurum3 NewTech

Comments:

2 comments on Playing with the Kindle 3

Yeevon Ooi says:

Revive the C.R.A.P. principles

22Oct

Tags:

It’s the most basic design principle. There’s no excuse for not remembering it. Yet I see it being violated over and over again. So, as a reminder, here we go again:

Contrast

If you want anyone to be able to read your advert, website, presentations etc.,  it’s important to ensure there’s good contrast between the message that you want people to pay attention to and other noise around it so that your message stands out. This can usually be achieved by using appropriate colour contrast, image contrast, text size, image size, plus taking into account the medium where the message will be presented: banner advert, website, mobile phone, magazine etc.

Repetition

If you are using a certain style in your design, try to keep the consistency by repeating the same style across the design. Especially on websites, repetition aids scanning (which is how most people browse websites by the way), so don’t present your text in various styles all around your website. For example if you use a dark blue font size 48 for all level one headings, repeat that across the site. It also makes a website look less cluttered and clean

Alignment

Make sure everything is aligned and organised. Text, images, form fields, bullet points … Nothing is more annoying than having to dart your eyes around the page while reading something. It also reduces the effectiveness of the message if information is not aligned properly. So what’s good alignment ? It depends really. For a long passage of text, left alignment makes it easier for reading from left to right. Central alignment works well for title headings when used properly, but centrally aligned text is just too hard to read.

Proximity

What belongs together stays together and vice versa. Elements on a page which are related to each other should be grouped together and likewise, elements that don’t relate to each other shouldn’t be placed in close proximity as this might confuse its readers. That sounds straightforward but is not always easy to apply to website designs. Hence taking user tasks into consideration is also important in making decisions on organising page elements according to relevant proximity.

If anything, the above principles should be used as a magic mantra the next time you hesitate where to put that little box (or anything else) on a web page. Just chant C.R.A.P. and make sure that all 4 principles are fulfilled before the little box finds its home.

Comments:

1 comment on Revive the C.R.A.P. principles

Trenton Moss says:

Head of business development job vacancy

Tags:

Webcredible is recruiting! We’re looking for that special someone to join our growing team in London as our head of business development.

Historically we’ve been rather reactive with regards to business development, relying on inbound enquiries coming from our (to-date very successful) marketing strategies. We want to significantly grow the business and so are looking for the right person to proactively generate and close new business leads.

In the short-term you’ll be working mostly independently within the company; long-term, we’d like you to build up a small business development team as you contribute significantly to the company growing.

Read the full job description for more, send over your CV and you could be working here sooner than you think!

Comments:

Leave a comment on Head of business development job vacancy

Case studies

Our success stories

  • Hotels.com

    Hotels.com gained a much stronger competitive advantage due to a great mobile strategy

  • Macmillan

    Macmillan got fantastic results from our work, including a 50% reduction in mobile homepage drop-offs

  • Hitachi Capital

    Hitachi Capital now delivers a market-leading online proposition and the best user experience possible

More case studies

What are you working on?

  • End-to-end customer experience

    Join up your customer touchpoints to deliver the best possible digital experience that is proven to deliver outstanding business results

  • Customer loyalty & retention

    Ensure your brand promises are delivered through your digital channels so that your customers return and bring others with them

  • User experience of digital touchpoints

    Make sure all your customer touchpoints consistently deliver the very best in user experience, design and usability.

  • Online sales & conversion optimisation

    Increase conversion across all your digital channels. Our clients sell more because they reap the benefits of our sales optimisation expertise.

  • Digital strategy

    Get ahead of the competition with a customer-centred digital strategy designed to deliver long-term business success.

  • Application & product design

    Deliver the best experience for your customers with intelligent digital applications tailored to your business goals and customer needs.

  • Mobile & tablet strategy

    Improve your mobile & tablet propositions with innovative, cutting-edge interface designs that work for you and your customers.

About us

A pioneering customer experience agency, we create and perfect digital interfaces that deliver business success.

Get in touch on 020 7423 6320