Here are all of the questions from Friday's webinar. Not too many which is great that means that I answered all of your questions during the session. If you missed Friday's webinar or would like to rewatch it please visit our website at:
http://www.situatedresearch.com
Questions & Answers
1. Different people have different expectations of their websites. What are the different expectations? Is just a show and tell of the company? Is it a POP tool? Does it provide a repository of common information? Can you address where the attendees stand?
- You are correct in saying that everyone has different expectations for their website. Part of doing Usability testing is doing a stakeholder analysis. That involves finding out who has a vested interest in the website and determining their needs and wants.
- Good usability can help to overcome different likes and dislikes by easy to use, functional, etc.
- However, tradeoffs sometimes have to be made: for instance, if one stakeholder (a particular user, business owner, etc.) prefers a feature be done in a certain way, while others prefer it done another way. In these cases, final design decisions are discussed with all in mind so that everyone's needs can be met as best as possible.
- When discussing tradeoffs with clients, many factors have weight: the size of the stakeholder group (percentage of the total site visitors), the severity of potential problems of *not* doing something in a particular way, and industry standards
- When debating among several ways of doing things, we bring in our expertise of current and future trends, so that functionality is common and easy to use for the end-user.
- An example of various stakeholders affecting a website is on situatedresearch.com. We have a wide audience, and potential clients (stakeholders) come from many different industries: software design; small businesses looking for a website; the video game industry, and educators.
- One way that we address this is to provide separate sections of the website which are tailored to each specific audience. For example, under our 'Services' page, we have separate sections for each potential client, so they can click through to a page which was designed for them (that type of client).
- Other pages which are not specific to a particular stakeholder (like our 'Contact' page) are not divided for separate stakeholders, since it is not necessary.
- Again, completing a stakeholder analysis should be part of the site's design, which is a standard practice when bringing usability and information architecture into designing websites. When meeting clients, we thoroughly discuss with clients their target audience / stakeholders for their new website so that the final site is a hit for each potential group.
2. Define "effective"
- Webster's dictionary: "producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect
- This is a general description, but useful for determining / measuring the effectiveness of technology among end-users.
- Focusing on web design, an effective site could be rated by many different measures:
- Gets a point across
- Boosts sales
- Markets / brands a business
- Spreads a specific message to particular groups (religious / political / regional activities / sports / etc.)
- Provides a particular service well, such as communication, collaboration, etc (social networking / connecting with friends / etc.)
- A comprehensive list of potential 'effective' measures could be quite exhaustive. What is important is to focus on the specific goals of the website. These will determine how 'effective' the site is to the people that use it.
- For example, Facebook: Their goal of connecting existing friends with each other was met very well (effective). Connecting non-existing friends (new connections) - Facebook is not very effective at this.
- Another example: LinkedIn: They were very effective at connecting professional contacts, and support special interest groups and discussions. These make the site more effective for making new connections (non-existing friendships / contacts)
- As mentioned previously, setting goals for your website will be the determining factors on measuring its "effectiveness". At Situated Research, we take pride in listening to our clients and really understanding their needs and how they do business. This helps us design a site that suits their characteristics, making it highly effective in communicating their message and achieving their objectives.
3. How specifically do you drive business that results in profit, to the website?
- We expect that good website designs will pay for themselves through an increase in business.
- Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D., President of Situated Research, has studied and applied proven techniques (from usability / user experience and information architecture) that are trust-building with your potential clients. By putting this expertise to use in designing your website, we can help you avoid end-user frustration that will cause potential customers to leave your website and avoid doing business with your company.
- In addition to design, back-end programming of meta-tags (meta data which tells search engines / web crawlers what your website is about) can improve searchability. Your website content also is very important: specific keywords that you would like your site to be ranked highly for (when others search for that term) need to be in page titles, headings, and within the content frequently in order for search engines to rank that page high.
- Many other things contribute, such as well-written code. By combining a spectacular site with SEO, a site can rank high in searches and end up bringing in a considerable amount of business for your company. With an exponentially growing base of Internet users, the amount of business coming from your website should grow as well, if your site was designed properly.
- For more information, you can read a white paper written by Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D. on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Branding, and Social Networking.
- A considerable amount of credible research has proven the relationship between the design of a site is tied to consumer trust. In other words, a well-designed website will build trust with potential customers, while a poorly-designed site will instantly reduce your credibility and trust with potential customers. This directly ties the design of your website to the amount of incoming business!
Written By: Michel Sharritt
