How to Prevent User Experience From Killing Your Brand

Editor's Notes

• #3: Today’s presenter is User Experience veteran and AnswerLab CEO Amy Buckner Chowdhry. Amy co-founded AnswerLab a decade ago to help the world’s leading brands build better digital products. Under her watch, AnswerLab has grown to become a trusted partner to companies like Google, FedEx, Wal-Mart and more. Amy was the First CEO from the user experience research industry to be named by Ernst & Young as one of 10 “Entrepreneurial Winning Women” and was also recently named to Fortune’s “Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs” Before co-founding AnswerLab, Amy served as Director of Professional Services at Vividence (now Keynote).
• #4: First, I wanted to briefly share a little about AnswerLab before we get started. AnswerLab delivers trusted customer insights that help the world’s leading brands build outstanding digital products and services. We focus exclusively on user experience research to understand what people see, do, think and feel when using web sites, mobile applications, and other digital products.   AnswerLab has a decade of experience evaluating the user experience of the world's most visited desktop and mobile properties. Through hundreds of research engagements involving thousands of users across the product development cycle, AnswerLab has developed a suite of research solutions for every phase of the product development cycle. We …   Come recommended by Forrester Are regularly published in UX Magazine and Quirk’s Market Research Magazine recently partnered with Google to understand mobile user needs which resulted in 25 Principles of Mobile Design published by Google and shared at their recent I/O conference. Our research team interviewed 119 participants, split between Android and iOS operating system users, across 100 different mobile websites to support Google’s recommendations
• #5: Here’s what I’d like to cover in today’s presentation.
• #6: Before we dig into these details, I want to share a brand experience that illustrates why UX is so important. At AnswerLab, we ‘re always trying new digitally enabled services… one of our SF researchers tried this one recently You be familiar with the commuter busses we have in the bay area – private busses some companies like Google and Facebook use to shuttle their employees to Silicon Valley, an hour away, in Wi-Fi enabled comfort. Making an otherwise long, unproductive commute, convenient and comfortable. RidePal offers a similar service open to ALL commuters.   RidePal’s stated mission is to improve the lives of commuters by making their commute more time-efficient, convenient, and relaxing. They have incredible brand potential in a region where commutes are increasingly longer and more frustrating.
• #7: However, while the ride itself may be relaxing, an incredibly poor user experience on their website and mobile app makes getting to that bus time consuming and frustrating, completely eroding all promise of the brand. Let me show you a few examples. [FIRST SCREENSHOT, WEBSITE] First, the suggest routes don’t appear to go to the “work” or “home” locations. There’s no information explain the results. Routes can’t be selected, no indication of what to do next booking and mapping functionality sends users through various steps repeated times [SECOND SCREENSHOT, APP] And take a look at the bus tracker. The bus appears on it’s way due to it’s proximity to the stop. However, the text indicates an arrival of 5:05 pm. When will the bus arrive actually arrive? Additionally, there’s no detail about the precise stop location. That combined with, and unmarked busses, meant riders have to approach unmarked busses to question drivers about time, whereabouts and even if they were the bus ride company. As you can see from the mobile app examples here, nothing about the user experience support’s RidePal’s brand promise of being time-efficient, convenient, or relaxing.
• #8: And that leads us to the financial impact of user experience. A poor user experience can result in millions in lost revenue. Inability to find information, errors, and general confusion on websites contribute to leakage from the funnel. If you can eliminate as many user experience detractors as possible, you can convert more customers.
• #9: And at an aggregate level, more and more data show that companies who focus on user experience move to the top of the market. You can see from this data from Watermark Consulting that Customer Experience leaders out perform the market by more than 20%.
• #10: Brands at the forefront of innovation are so focused on user experience that they’ve recently acquired niche user experience consultancies. A couple of years ago Facebook acquired digital UX firm Hot Studio in SF. PWC acquired UX firm Optimal Experience in Australia. And, just this month Capital One announced it’s acquisition of Adaptive Path.
• #11: And, Word on the street is that Google is even considering adding mobile UX to mobile search rankings. Google considers mobile UX important because, as a Google spokersperson put “Mobile-friendly websites provide a much better user experience for the mobile users. According to Google’s studies, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that they had trouble accessing from their phone…; the mobile device penetration is over 50% in the USA and most users use their device for browsing websites.” In fact, Google takes mobile UX so seriously that they commissioned AnswerLab for mobile user experience research spanning 100 different mobile websites, which was specifically designed to fill a vast void in what we know about mobile website design and how people respond to it. Google made the resulting mobile design principles publicly available in report of 25 best practices in Principles of Mobile Site Design.
• #12: A recent McKinsey survey of 850 C-level executives shows how challenging "going digital" can be. the survey identified the gap between investing in digital and understanding value of that investment. Today, C-level involvement in digital efforts is growing substantially, organizations recognize that much of their future revenue growth is tied to digital, and companies are making digital engagement of customers a top priority from a budgetary perspective. BUT only 7% of the executives say their organization understands the value at stake from digital. The existence of this gap has the potential to create significant execution risk for many organizations McKinsey recommends that digital teams "understand better what they can gain from digital initiatives and to match priorities and investments with the areas of highest value.“ So, how do you tie user experience investment to business impact?
• #13: First, we need to recognize that User Experience is more than “Usability”. In the early days, when digital interfaces were primarily limited to software applications and systems, ease of use dominated the field. Could users easily and efficiently complete primary tasks? Could they achieve the purpose for which the application was designed? Over time, the complexity, depth, and frequency of our digital interactions has increased. The landscape evolved as well, as companies have recognized the opportunity for a competitive advantage and invested more into interaction design and research. With all of these changes, UX itself began to change, and so did the questions we were asking. It was no longer enough to just be easy to use. Now, user experience is a far more complex concept to define and measure, to the point that even if you know that your user experience has a problem, you might not know why and how to fix it.
• #14: In the early days, when digital interfaces were primarily limited to software applications and systems, ease of use dominated the field. Could users easily and efficiently complete primary tasks? Could they achieve the purpose for which the application was designed? Over time, the complexity, depth, and frequency of our digital interactions increased. The landscape evolved as well, as companies have recognized the opportunity for a competitive advantage and invested more into interaction design and research. With all of these changes, UX itself began to change, and so did the questions we were asking. It was no longer enough to just be easy to use. Now, user experience is a far more complex concept to define and measure, to the point that even if you know that your user experience has a problem, you might not know why and how to fix it.
• #15: With the expansion in the nuances and facets of measuring and evaluating user experience, we’ve seen an overlap develop between UX and brand. Some of these UX attributes you see may double as brand attributes that you’re currently tracking. As a result, we now often see correlating peaks and dips between UX and brand health. The net of this is that brand health and user experience have started to impact each other and we see this all the time now in our own research. Switching the company logo on a mobile device or website often boosts or deflates user impressions and ratings of the experience, due to brand associations. Conversely, our own studies have shown that even a single particularly bad or good user experience can shift overall perceptions of the brand.
• #16: Take a look at this example from one of our automotive clients. This company engaged in a site redesign with the explicit goal to build and reinforce a stronger luxury brand identity. You can see ratings of key brand attributes for the old version of the site in orange and ratings of the new version of the site in blue. Unfortunately, the client’s over-focus on site imagery and branding elements resulted in a worse overall experience for consumers because key UX elements were de-emphasized. As a result both the site UX ratings and brand ratings suffered. You cannot have a strong brand impact without equally focusing on a strong user experience.
• #17: And this over-emphasis on branding elements of the site impacted key conversion metrics as well. Consumers were less likely to return to the site, configure a vehicle, and visit a dealer with the new site design.
• #18: But, measuring the User Experience is complicated. It’s not just about NPS or Satisfaction. All of these various questions each have their own unique impact on the overall user experience. It’s not as simple as adding them all together. Performance, for example, is more of a potential detractor to the overall UX. Once you meet users’ expectations on speed, stability, and responsiveness, the benefit to your overall UX is marginal. On the other hand, if your product crashes or starts to exhibit glitches and bugs, your UX will quickly suffer, no matter how well you do everything else.
• #19: On the flip side, users don’t usually expect or need a digital interaction to be ‘delightful,’ so your overall UX won’t suffer if you don’t deliver. But if you are able to delight your users, it will provide a boost to your overall User experience that can raise customer expectations, put you ahead of your competitors, and ultimately elevate your brand
• #20: And that leads to the next point. Unfortunately, user experience is a moving, relative target. The quality of your user experience is directly related to users’ expectations, which is based on their prior interactions. When users encounter a new, superior user experience, it becomes the standard to which other digital interactions will be compared going forward. Blackberry and Google illustrate the risks and opportunities of adapting to a new standard of mobile user experience established by Apple with the introduction of the iPhone and the App Store.
• #21: In the era of big data, we know you are aren’t lacking for more data. Our clients tell us that they are inundated with data. We know that it’s critical to measure the pulse of your digital properties. Like our clients, I’m sure you have access to web analytics and VOC data to monitor how your sites are doing. And we know that you want the user experience to support your business goals.
• #22: But when these data sources identify an area of concern, for example, a falling conversion rate, the hard part is determining what to fix, how to fix it, and how pressing it is to fix it. As critical as the data may be in revealing problems, it can’t prescribe and prioritize solutions to user experience challenges. We have heard repeatedly that the data doesn't give enough direction on what to do to improve the user experience of digital properties.
• #23: So, we interviewed UX leaders at F500 companies because we wanted to understand more about their challenges. And they told us some key things: First they told us there are many solutions to identify experience issues but no solutions that tell them how to fix those issues. They also told us they want a holy grail – they want to know specifically what to do and they want to be able to demonstrate the value of user experience with bottom line business metrics And finally, they told us they want to know what is the problem? how big is this problem? And why is it a problem?
• #24: So based on our decade of advising digital brands on how to improve their user experiences, and based on these challenges that we heard from user experience leaders, we identified four best practices for improving the user experience of your digital properties and for how to measure them. Get Customer Input at the Right Time: Ask customers for feedback while they experience your digital property. Find out why they visited, whether they achieved their goals, how they rate the experience, and provide open-ended opportunities to explain responses to key questions. Determine Priorities: Not all customer feedback has the same impact on your business goals. Have a way to rate, score, and/or calculate the relative importance of each finding to your key goals. Read and Evaluate Comments in the Context of Your Business. Open-ended comments provide rich, actionable information, but only if they are analyzed by people who understand your industry, your business goals, and UX. Word counts and clouds miss meaning and nuance. Measure the Change: It is easy to get caught up in the cycle of iterating and constant updates, but it is also important to let the dust settle and measure the impact of your UX improvements to your bottom line. These are the right ways to ensure your UX is elevating your brand.
• #25: With these best practices in mind, AnswerLab decided to fill the gap that exists for clients today in understanding their data. Our solution is called UXimpact. It measures your users’ digital experience and delivers evidence based-recommendations to improve it. It starts by revealing and diagnosing problems It then moves on to recommend solutions to the issues that have the most significant impact your business goals And then it measures the resulting impact these changes have on your user experience and your business goals – so you know you’ve made a difference.
• #26: We believe, to improve conversion rates and performance on other business objectives such as brand impression, you need to understand your users’ intended goals and assess the user experience that leads to their success or failure on those goals. You need to get to the root of the problems and understand exactly what to fix and how to fix it. By understanding users’ intentions and examining their feedback, UXimpact gives us a thorough and objective assessment of the digital user experience.
• #27: Let’s talk a little bit about this product and how we approach getting this data and analyzing it to offer recommendations.
• #28: We collect data through an intercept survey on your digital properties. • The survey collects specific UX measures, such as task success, user intent measures, and business outcome measures, such as likelihood to purchase and impression of the brand. • The survey also gives users an opportunity to provide open-ended feedback on key measures to explain the rationale behind them.
• #29: The Uximpact approach includes: Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data collected through an intercept survey on your site, a driver analysis to help uncover the user experience challenges that may be compromising your business outcomes, and consulting insight from the industry’s most experienced team of UX research experts. Specifically, we… We develop a baseline of task-based UX measures, a composite UX index, and summary of business outcome measures to evaluate progress over time. • AnswerLab’s UX research experts use a driver analysis to uncover which user experience variables have the biggest impact on your desired business outcomes, such as likelihood to purchase, brand impression, or whatever is the overriding call-to-action you seek. • We consider the results of the driver analysis in the context of your industry, your business constraints, and in-depth examination of direct user commentary collected in the survey.
• #30: The result is a customized, prioritized user experience action plan that helps you ensure your digital properties are achieving your business goals. I’ll take you through some of the report deliverables shortly. Before that, I’d like to touch on the use cases for this kind of research solution…
• #31: UXimpact is a consultative product that can be used as an ongoing program or as a point-in-time solution. The ongoing program employs a persistent intercept survey to continuously monitor iterative changes to digital properties. It is useful for companies who want early identification of UX issues, developing trends or marketing opportunities. The point-in-time solution employs on-demand before/after intercept surveys to plan for and measure major overhauls or significant changes to infrastructure, navigation, hierarchy, or branding within digital properties. In terms of benefits, the on-going program: Identifies and diagnoses developing user experience issues before they have negative effects on business Prioritizes and recommends iterative site changes to have the biggest impact Continually measures and compares user experience to baseline to reveal impact of iterative changes Whereas the point-in-time solution: Identifies and diagnoses user experience issues prior to a redesign Prioritizes and recommends site changes to have the biggest impact Measures and compares user experience before and after redesigns to reveal impact of changes
• #32: Our automotive clients use continuous measurement to understand the effectiveness of their various digital initiatives. They set targets and goals for interactive managers and their agencies. Our global CPG clients use UX measurement to benchmark their international website experience, understand visitor expectations, and learn critical regional differences. One client’s results revealed that visitor expectations varied greatly across regions, highlighted consumer concerns around authenticity, and identified gaps with how the brand is communicated across countries.
• #33: So what kind of insights can you get from this in more practical terms? I thought it would be helpful to share some examples of our deliverables that we share in a workshop format when we’re done analyzing the results of your study.
• #34: UXimpact’s reports are customized for each client to reveal and diagnose the UX problems that may be preventing them from achieving their business objectives. This is what a report deliverable looks like to help reveal UX issues. It shows how you are performing on key UX metrics, highlights areas of concern, and explains the reason behind what’s happening on the site.
• #35: In this report slide from a point-in-time UXimpact program, we see that the client’s initial baseline test showed 5 main user problems and frustrations.
• #36: The reports also prioritize the improvements that will have the biggest impact. Consider this your “UX Action Plan”, tying each recommended change to a business outcome. This sample slide shows ten recommended UX changes for a client. UXimpact’s driver analysis prioritized the changes to identify which have the largest impact on the client’s two main business goals – brand impact and conversion impact. So, the client knows exactly where to focus their UX investment.
• #37: For each of the identified priorities, the reports identify specific, implementable changes. By following these recommendations, clients can improve the business outcomes on their digital properties. If you’re responsible for brand tracking at your organization, you may have noticed how difficult it can be to pinpoint what changes can really help you move the dial for your brand reputation. As you can see from the specificity on this slide, UX measurement is a practical way for you to get tactical, actionable insights to really improve the experience of your digital products and ultimately elevate brand impression and conversion.
• #38: While you make needed UX changes, we then track the outcome on your business objectives, that we define with you and are customized to your goals – be they conversion, engagement, brand impression. This report deliverable shows the trends on user experience performance along with business performance. In this case, the clients site goals were conversion and brand impression. We show the trends on these measures and provide the rationale for what we are seeing in the data.
• #39: And finally, all indices roll into a single UXimpact score that you can track over time across digital properties. Your UXimpact score provides the most comprehensive understanding of what customers think of your brand, their intent to do business with you, and their impressions of the experience they had with your digital channels. Your UXimpact Score is the now single measure needed to ensure that your User Experience Doesn’t Kill Your Brand.
• #40: A best practice digital measurement program is not enough to ensure your digital properties help elevate your brand. Great digital experiences arise from a true User-Centered Design Process, that involves customers at every step of development, from planning, to optimizing, to launch. They should inform what to build, the value proposition, the narrowing of concepts, the optimal navigation, and the overall design. Your best partner in digital measurement will have a host of solutions to help you through each stage of the process, so that learnings about your customers’ needs and your business constraints result in better recommendations and stronger ROI from your user experience. If we could leave you with one single take-away from this entire presentation, it would be this: Your brand in the digital world IS your user experience. You need to plan it, build it, and measure it with customer insight at each step of the way.
• #41: Learn More. http://answerlab.com/services/ux-measurement/ Contact info@answerlab.com