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StandardsThese days, programmers, business owners, and managers (left brainers) sadly only look the following aspects:
1) How fast can you code it (code & run will always fail)
2) How cheap can you do it (what you pay for is what you get…be careful how cheap you wish for)
3) Numbers
But most businesses and developers fail to acknowledge that this alone will not support and grow your business when it comes to your website…the very thing that sells your customer and entices them to convert.
After having worked for several .coms, you come to realize that experience is what leads to conversion. It’s not making a button or image bigger to draw attention. In fact it usually has a reverse affect or is ignored by customers. It’s not changing a color to green when your site is blue and brown. Experience is what gets customers to buy. It lies outside naive perceptions that making buttons or ads bigger, adding non-complimentary colors to a site equates to improving aesthetics or improving the customer’s experience or catching the customer’ss eye. Today, customers are ad blind, and those old-school ways of developing and marketing websites are going to turn off your customer faster than you can imagine. Customers don’t want to see a bigger ads, they want a warmer inviting site. Your site is your store and you better think that if you do not change, customers are going to get tired of the same old looking site, it’s products, it’s navigation, etc. Even if you add new features, it’s still the same site. If you have had a site for 2+ years that has not changed aesthetically you better start thinking about that now!
Your site doesn’t have to be a Digg, Facebook, or some other cloud type of business to apply what I’m about to talk about. What your customer sees when they come to your site, will decide if they will buy. That purchase may not be now, but if you give them a good experience they will come back and buy later.
The product picture, description, and price only go so far. It’s not always just about the products. It’s not always just about focusing all attention on just the “click to buy”. If you walked into a store, and the salesman constantly just cared only about you buying and kept bugging you what would you do? You’d walk right out of there. So the focus should not be on the “click and conversion” but the overall site experience that makes a customer convert.
Today, the web is also all about the social aspect. And if you think it’s not, or that it doesn’t pertain to your particular line of business it is time to wake up. It’s not just about the functionality or speed. Sure, they are huge as hell on the list but if a customer comes to your site and is not excited, you might as well cut your profits in half. Your potential will not be tapped. This is why we hire graphic designers and marketing. Because they help improve the experience.
Working for several .coms meant working with and learning from very smart right brain people. We took look & feel seriously. We implemented social aspects such as forums, blog, ratings, and more. We kept the site clean which allowed the site to be much more usable to the customer. This directly contributed to a better site experience and therefore sales. Customers today expect a great experience. Customers have become not only buyers, but they expect to contribute, and they expect that the experience be good. The bar has been raised two fold in the past 4 years in regards to site experience, social aspects, and ability to be able to contribute to your brand.
What does experience consist of?
Here are a few areas to concentrate on:
The social experience
> do you have a wish list that they can share with friends or family which further promotes your product?
> are they coming back to your site for the social experience which helps lead to conversion & repeat purchases over time?
> can your customers interact with tools they expect to see and take advantage of on your site such as Facebook, Flickr, etc.?
Look & Feel
> this is the first thing you should address. Is the site pleasing and complimentary to the eye?
> Is the site clean? Do you give customers space to breath? Or do you throw everything at them and overwhelm them? Customers who can’t find what they need due to a site that is over busy or deploys bad color decisions will force customers to leave
> Do you have a standard for your site’s look & feel (standard on CSS, colors, and let your designer be the gatekeeper, etc.)
> is there a pattern in your UI design that is recognizable by your customer?
> is the site consistent in its design? Or do you have your CEO changing colors, pages, etc. when that should be your graphic designer’s responsibly?
> Does the site keep your customer’s interest (putting products aside)? Does it initially excite them in the first 30 seconds?
Navigation
> Is it simple or does it overwhelm them with choices?
> do the choices become less and less as they drill down into the navigation? As the navigation becomes less, they will naturally convert more to purchases
> where are you placing items on the page?
Does the product pages really sell the product and put it on center stage?
Does your site appeal to the customer or just look like it was built to gain more SEO. How is it coming across to your customers?
> example: putting a ton of paragraphs or keywords on your pages does not help your customer at all. It doesn’t create a cleaner site, and just clutters the page & ruins site experience.
Can customers contribute or be heard?
> can your customer review and rate your products?
> Do you base your redesign, enhancements, or fixes based on your perception or your customer's wishes?
> Online survey is the best thing you could ever do to tap into your customer’s view of your website
Does your site provide a great in-page experience?
> This means less clicks and less out-ward districting type of navigation by using AJAX to keep them on the page (de-emphasizing the use of old school pop-ups, and emphasizing more accordion controls, mouseovers, etc.)
> sure, you’ve heard about this for years. But do you actually use it heavily to help your customer’s experience? Almost every site you go to now is very heavy in AJAX. It’s a requirement as far as I’m concerned.
If your site does not excite. If your site does not allow customers to open up themselves and have a connection through reviews & ratings, sharing of your products with other people through tools such as Facebook, Flicker, etc., you might as well prepare for layoffs. Because the plateau will happen…and it will hit you unexpectedly if you do not change. And hey, come up with your own ideas as well. Test the waters but also be guided by usability testing and customer surveys.
Site aesthetics is the first thing the customer notices, followed by the social experience, followed by ways they look to contribute to your brand (reviews, etc.). If your site is not exciting, does not entice, or doesn’t appeal to the different personas coming to your site, then what’s the point of having a site if you do not take notice of what essentially will double or triple your conversion rates? Your site is your brand. It’s not the logo, and it’s not your products, especially when you have competitors that have similar products or even the same.
Business continually fail to realize how invaluable graphic designers are. They are not someone just to pound out email campaigns or create a little button to pop on the website. In my opinion, developers should NEVER manage touch the graphics side of things which includes site layout. What I mean is, adhere to strict CSS good practices within your team (use of classes, Ids..not inline styles), and let your graphic designer be the “creative” in terms of look & feel & flow along with being the gatekeeper of CSS standards. You the designer should be focused on code to compliment the design goals. We as programmers are left brainers and designers are right brainers so let them do their job! I have not met one developer who hasn’t said “I wish we had a graphic designer to do this feely stuff”.
Businesses also fail to realize how invaluable good marketers are. I’m talking smart savvy marketers. I’ve worked with both good and bad. Believe it or not, some marketers do have some good ideas.
I leave you with some of the best resources on this subject:
1) Every programmer, manager, and designer should this book.
It’s an excellent read, and really gives you a good ground to start on. It’s all in here. This is not “fluff” and your money will be well spent. I’ve read this book after suggested by my graphic designer and this is not just a book for the right brainer…it’s for us left brainers also especially. You see right brainers get it, left does not so it’s important for managers and developers to read this:
The authors founded Resource Interactive, on of the top firms in the world for site design and much more. They have worked with Apple since the first PC, and worked with many more cutting edge sites and have truly molded a great book here. Don’t ignore it, pick it up and read it if you do order it. Pass it around at work. Get marketing, your developer lead, merchandising, CEO, etc. to read this book! A business either gets it or it does not. If they aren’t getting it, this book will help them “get it”.
2) Internet Retailer Web Design Conference
This conference rocks. One of the best things you could do for your teams are get a representative from Marketing, Merchandising, and the development lead to attend this all at the same time as well as your CEO or VP.
It really brings home how to grow your site (and no, we are not talking numbers and left brain ideas here folks..enough of that). It really nets together all teams and concepts that are constantly being ignored. It talks about so many excellent aspects and tactics about web development that my designer and I really got a lot out of this one:
> SEO techniques
> Importance of and best practices of incorporating usability testing
> Experience of your web site. Customers expect experience
> Site performance
> How customers become free marketers and advocates for your site
> How social networking aspects can bring you thousands if not millions of return or new customers
> Getting Merchandising and others in the act to sell the experience, not the brand
> When to know it’s time to redesign the entire site
> much, much more…the list is way too long
We were pleasantly surprised after attending this. This conference was excellent, and we would most likely wish to attend this again in 2010. If you did not catch the 2009 event, you can always purchase some of the talks on their site. Well worth it. It’s not some boring conference with CEOs talking. I think I jotted down about 30 sheets of useful notes at this event as well as my colleague. It helped to reconfirm what we had been talking about.
3) Online Moms are a huge force right now on the web that can influence your brand and catapult your product
> my wife is on all sorts of sites (Constant Chatter, Facebook, and other baby related sites as some example which just scratch the surface) all influence her in buying decisions.
> your product can travel light years by word of mouth from mothers who shop online
Personally I feel that I’ve been sort of one of those developers who “gets it” in relation to the right brained side of things. While I have passion and drive to code in the latest and greatest (.NET 3.5+, design patterns, whatever it may be) even though I'm a left brainer, but I also realize and believe that features as tag clouds, tags, reviews, etc. are what really gets the site off rocking. Those developers who laugh at those kind of features really do not get it…and they really should and I’m laughing back at ya!
For example, if tag clouds are so “stupid” as I’ve heard developers at past jobs state, then why are they all over the net? Why are they even on developer blogs? Because customers are visual and tagging helps to bring out the highest rated or highest searched products which helps to market your site. This is just one example. You’re either an extreme left brainer, or left with a little of the right. If you’re pure left, it’s time to wake up and read the book above, or attend the conference above. It will do you and the business some good and maybe even double your future sales.
Lack of aesthetics, the social aspect, and acknowledging customer expectations & feedback are making your site obsolete quicker than you realize. Old school thinking has no place in today’s web world. Do not be afraid to change…in fact get excited about it!
If you are a programmer, manager, or business owner who just crunches numbers…it’s time to wake up. Because one day, you’ll wake up to less orders, and you will be pounding your head asking why? My site is fast, has a lot of functionality…but oh, it does not excite or engage the customer.
In other words “Get with the Program or Loose Money”.
