ALKHOBAR, 12 August 2003 — We live in a world hungry for information. Our desire to know everything, instantly, is insatiable. So we log on and we click around, but too often all we acquire is frustration.
According to David Ong, sales and marketing manager, IPG, Vietnam and Emerging Markets, Hewlett Packard, Singapore, surveys show that there are currently about 629 million Internet users globally, an increase of 80 percent on the year 1999. Those users are searching through 11 billion web pages, an increase of 633 percent on 1999.
Seventy percent of the world’s information is now digital, with 5-10 million people having contributed to the 550 billion pages of content on the world wide web. Ong said that a study done by the University of California showed that in the last two years more information has been created than in the entire previous span of human history.
The Internet is providing more information and better access to that information, but the user experience on the world wide web still leaves much to be desired. Just because there are billions of web pages out there doesn’t mean that the information being presented has value and that the manner in which it is being presented is ideal. Web pages are too often designed with a lack of focus on the potential user’s experience.
Frequently, users access a website and find that:
*it takes too long to load.
*it doesn’t display well.
*it’s too information dense.
*its animations, graphics, colors or audio are annoying.
*its navigation is clumsy.
*its internal or external links are broken. *its content leaves them wanting.
When trying to access a website simply for amusement, such problems are annoying, but not critical. The situation changes dramatically though when users click to a Web site for business needs. Then poor site design and bad content are not only inconvenient — they can also interfere with corporate profitability.
“My observation of and interactions with the Middle Eastern (ME) Internet community revealed that the region has replicated Western business models, designed to fit those economies and address the various needs, wants, desires and approaches to achieving objectives of Western audiences,” said Karim M. Bentebbal. “The problem at hand is that there is a lack of data about and understanding of the ME region’s user behavior, needs and objectives. This knowledge is essential to tailor business services and products to the specific needs of each target audience.”
Bentebbal ([email protected]) has about 14 years of digital design and development expertise at various level of the production and management spectrum. Part of that experience includes upgrading companies’ marketing programs by developing new digital sales and marketing tools including websites geared toward providing a better user experience. He has consulted with business-to-business, retail, financial and software organizations on improving the user experience at their websites to minimize development costs and ensure return on investment (ROI). Bentebbal has also designed usability testing tasks and conducted usability testing to improve the ease of use on software, retail and financial websites.
Over the years, Bentebbal has discovered that the Internet user experience consists of a series of steps involving customer interaction, offline and online.
“For example, the Dell User Experience starts when a customer browses the Dell website, finds a product, places an order online, signs the delivery receipt, utilizes the product and calls technical support or browses the online help,” Bentebbal explained. “The Online User Experience consists of a set of activities involving a user and a system. Each activity is based upon a set of decisions supporting the user’s path to achieve an objective — such as ordering a new PC.”
Bentebbal pointed out that for websites and other information management products, the user experience must be crafted and then tested. Usability Testing ensures that a good user experience has been developed and that flaws in the website have been identified and rectified. Unfortunately Bentebbal has noticed that the majority of ME websites and information management products have not been tested to ensure maximum usability and satisfaction from the targeted audience.
“The lack of usability testing translates into high development costs, poor web user experience and customer attrition,” said Bentebbal.
To reduce the damage from poor user experiences, ME businesses, governments, online service providers, retailers and financial institutions must start testing their online products at every stage of development. Bentebbal stated that research done by Forrester has found it is of critical importance to consider that:
*For every dollar spent acquiring a customer, businesses will spend $100 re-acquiring a customer after that customer leaves because of poor usability or bad customer service. Usability testing can identify, at an early stage, critical customer/user experience design flaws that lead to loss of customer confidence.
This is particularly true for the financial and retail markets.
*More than 95 percent of customers will use less than five percent of the features and functions at a website. Customers will NEVER use about 75 percent of the functions on a website. During early stages of development, usability testing can clearly indicate which features and functions are relevant to the overall business objectives. This alone can reduce the product’s user-interface complexity and decrease both development costs and time.
*Call center volume is directly influenced by Web site usability. Call center volume can be fully predicted by executing professional usability testing research during development. Users that adopt expensive call center support will be far more difficult to convert to a web based support center. This means that investing in usability testing at an early stage of development can result in increasing ROI and lead to cost advantage and differentiation.
*Every dollar spent improving the visual design or style of a site will not improve sales in return. The same dollar spent on improving core behavioral interactions with the site’s critical way-finding and form-filling or registration and check-out process functions will, however, ensure ROI, if usability testing is executed in a rigorous manner. Site redesign efforts produce almost no benefits if the site’s core functions are still not defined or usable.
“There is an urgent necessity to consider a Web site as a company asset,” commented Bentebbal. “With a user-centric approach to website design and development, businesses will acquire new insight into ME users and will be better equipped to understand their motivations and desires, and then interact accordingly. A user-centric approach will also help businesses maximize the value of their investment in web product development by crafting effective user experiences with an emphasis on measurable results.”
Usability testing would have numerous benefits for organizations in the Middle East. Drawing on data acquired through usability testing, companies could develop and implement e-business models based on keen insight into buyers and users needs, values, behaviors and differences. Usability testing would enable organizations to continually fine-tune web business models through data analyses, rather than hit or miss choices. This would help customer power grow, and would result in greater online sales of products and services allowing the Middle East’s digital economy to prosper.
Many companies believe that they have done a good job of website development, but usability testing frequently shows otherwise. Bentebbal provides some quick tips to test a Web site in-house. Findings from informal testing may push higher management to invest resources in professional usability testing.
*Observe the behavior of 10 potential users of your website. Usually the same pattern of use and behavior will be recognized after six to eight users try the website. These users could be anyone that might use your products or services. Make sure the users have never been involved with your site before.
*Look at your website’s main objective and identify paths users will take to achieve specific tasks. Build mock-up screens of at least three other ways that users could take to achieve the desired tasks. Select the most obvious path the user chooses, not the one that seems natural to the development and design team, or management. You might be amazed to discover how things can vary between what you think and what your user thinks!
*Tell users to select a link and then ask what the link indicates and what is expected to be found by following that link. This will help to define the wording that speaks best to your target audience.
*Don’t ask questions such as: “What do you think about this color?” Instead, design sets of similar pages in various color schemes, and ask the user to select a page to start his experience. Your organization may have to reconsider the choice of that flashy orange background you liked so much!
*Never let the people involved in the design and development conduct the testing. They may unconsciously try to influence users, and sometimes get obviously impatient when it takes three minutes for a user to find out where and how to register on the site!
(Comments to: [email protected])
