Everything that you do online should be done with your users in mind. Their experience is parallel to your success.

1. USER
EXPERIENCE

2. When we're conducting user testing the components that are core to achieve
number one comment that we hear from success with a successful usability
the website visitors is that they want the strategy:
website to “be easy to use”. No real
surprise with this revelation. However,
where the challenge comes is in trying to
figure out what “easy to use” means to
every visitor that is coming to your
website. Users have different
personalities, they are at different stages
in the buying cycle and that means they
will have different answers to the
question ‘what does “easy-to-use”
mean to you?’ Learnability
By learnability he is making reference to
User experience, by definition, is the
how easily users can accomplish their
science of designing “easy-to-use”
basic tasks on your site, the first time they
software interfaces. However, it is very
encounter your site.
important to note that we are dealing
Efficiency
with people that arrive at your site with
This core component speaks to the users
some very strong preconceived notions,
ability to quickly perform their tasks once
biases, and expectations. If we fail to
they have become familiar with your
recognize the “context” in which the
website’s page layout and navigation
user is viewing our website, blog, e-mail,
structure.
or any online communication through,
Memorability
the opportunity to convert the user into
Upon the visitors returning to your website
a customer will be all but eliminated.
after a period of time, are they able to
Jakob Nielsen, usability guru
interact as efficiently as they did on their
extraordinaire, tells us that there are 5

3. last visit to your website? If so, then your usability of your online properties than the
site is memorable. people that use them.
Errors
During a visitor session, this core
component, looks at how many errors
the user made, how severe these errors
were, and how quickly and easily can
they were able to recover from these
errors.
Satisfaction
This component, as its name implies, is
strictly focused on the level of overall
satisfaction that the user has There are a great number of ways that you
experienced with your website. can capture this insightful information. You
can hold user group sessions to see how
users interact with your website, you can
Who owns it
conduct user surveys at the end of a user
In corporations there are always a lot of session, or you can perform testing with
opinions floating around about who the various user touch points within a
should be responsible for the company's website, email message, or even within
user experience. The 1st choice typically your online advertising. This testing will tell
goes to the IT department, the 2nd most you a user’s preferences by analyzing
popular group seems to be the folks in which variation of the touch point users
marketing, and finally someone will interact with most within the same
nominate the C-level people to own the website.
user experience. Though none of these
groups are completely the wrong choice
the user is actually the best choice. Who
better to tell you how to improve the

4. Why you must goals. Depending on your business goals
these conversions will represent objectives
A recent survey by Harris capital such as increasing direct sales, increasing
interactive found that 9/10 online users sales leads, getting more members for
have experienced problems while trying your organization or even increasing
to accomplish their tasks, in 42% of financial support.
these instances these users have gone
directly to the competitors online Where to start
property! If that statistic doesn't make
you think seriously about evaluating the As with any goal oriented activity, before
usability of your website, nothing will. you can begin to make changes you have
This isn't just saying that they are just to know if the changes that you are going
going away, this is telling you that they're to make are having a positive effect. With
going directly to your competition! a user experience initiative there are two
places to go to get a good benchmark of
where you currently are. Your website
analytics and your users. Take a look at
your analytics and review the ‘goals’
metrics to see what your conversion rate
is.
As we stated earlier, your users are the
best source of information and feedback
on the performance of your website. Set
up a survey on your site that users can fill
Improving the user experience will
out as they’re leaving. Also consider
dramatically improve the conversion rate
sending out an email campaign to your
of your online marketing efforts.
current customers with a link to a survey.
Increasing your online conversion will
Or if you want to go the old fashioned way,
increase the realization of your business

5. just get on the phone, call some of your
current customers and ask them about
their experience on your website.
This will certainly provide you with a list
of issues to begin looking at, prioritize
that list so that you will receive the
maximum return on effort, test all of the
changes via A/B testing methodology,
measure the results and keep going.
About 3Sixty Interactive
3Sixty Interactive is a professional agency
with over ten years of experience in the
digital world. They offer a variety of digital
marketing solutions that include search
engine optimization, digital advertising,
email marketing, social media,
customized strategy reports, analytics
and maintenance of your marketing plan.
Learn more about 3Sixty Interactive at
www.3sixtyinteractive.com or by calling
us at 1-877-43Sixty.