People tend to say and do entirely different things, and your customers are people. To understand what your customers really do, or what they would really like to do, you need to start using usability testing. Usability testing is used to determine how easy a group of representative users find it to use a design. What your users actually do versus what you meant for them to do is the difference between the actual business and your outlook.
If you are part of an organization’s business side, you should be well aware of how big an impact a 1% drop in conversions will have on the company’s revenue. Competitors will gain the business that you lose, and you have lost both repeat sales and market share. UX (User experience) studies can help companies increase their conversion rate dramatically, especially during efforts to acquire new customers.
Across industries, UX research has been an ever increasing topic and according to 54% of consumers, most companies need to improve their customer experience. A product lifecycle starting off well can result in higher loyalty, bigger order values, and improved customer retention.
As the world progresses to a digital native ecosphere from a digital immigrant economy, this is characterized by lower patience thresholds, simultaneous multiple screen browsing, and shorter attention spans. For businesses, this translates to having to solve customer needs really fast or run the risk of losing them. UX research can help a company gain a huge advantage and it should by design become an integral part of any business.
Why Should UX Research Be Deployed?
Employees are too close to and familiar with your products.
Employees don’t have a user’s perspective, an outside view, or fresh customers’ eyes, and are therefore not qualified to test what they’ve designed. That happens due to the objectives of an employee that works on a product and a customer that uses the product being different. Employees are looking for better features and compete with industry players by imitating the best experiences. Customers are aiding their goals of researching and buying. In most cases, these two objectives don’t align.
Markets reward the best designs disproportionately
A study by McKinsey’s showed that the top quartile firms having the best user experiences and designs achieved 10% annual growth, versus 3% to 6% in the industry. This was true for all industries included in the study. The top companies also had an unfair advantage, as the difference between the fourth, third, and second quartiles was slight.
Good usability research can’t be substituted.
It is logical that there may be trust issues about how a test is conducted. A test can never be perfect due to the many possible nuances while running the test. While for example doing a benchmarking exercise, one question is to run tests between or within subjects, as both have their own limitations and advantages. Using a triangulation method is recommended to overcome this lack of trust in a single methodology. The use of multiple data sources to compile and validate findings helps in achieving a trustworthy and holistic picture. If low subscription rates are highlighted by quantitative analyses, the friction points may be found by conducting a qualitative study, and this may be topped up with expert analyses for benchmarking for recommendations with competitors. Not understanding your UI should however never be an option.
Customers’ expectations may conflict with your UI based on intuition.
The reality is that the top players in the industry, e.g. Amazon, have provided web experiences that have conditioned users to use UI elements in specific ways. Even if an experience may have been designed better, users will look for particular information only in that certain way. The way in which android users navigate a page back is different from iPhone users, and ‘Save’ buttons still use floppy disk icons, although that design is two decades old. Although designing the best possible experiences should logically mean giving your consumers the latest features, consumers often intuitively expect something that they already use and see, and this could very well lead to friction.
Starting with UX research
It is possible to start a UX team with a single researcher and evaluate this method’s effectiveness. This individual would not only be responsible for doing the tests, but also for the development of relevant test methodologies, designing test format, and running initial tests for areas with a small impact, for example to understand why a part of the webpage results in high exit rates. The UX research journey can be started with a relatively small budget. There are many online tools available, like those used for remote testing, which will help you drive the agenda without it costing too much. Once you have made progress and have obtained proof of concept, the objectives and team can be expanded, and then merged with the business’ KPIs.
A UX designer can also be aligned with the UX team to expand it. It would also be good to collaborate closely with data and analytics teams to get a heads-up on problems that need to be solved and prioritized. As analytics identify a problem, the UX team’s job will be to identify why it happens and to recommend solutions. As the UX team grows, identify UX allies throughout the company. These are typically individuals who understand your customers and their problems, and they will be a crucial element to driving a UX culture in the company.
If you already know that you can’t do without UX, and are part of a digital business, the scope of what is done can also be expanded by adding more members to the team and/or using an outside agency to do research. This will ensure a dedicated and holistic approach and embed UX as a part of the business objectives by design.
It is a good idea to start as soon as possible, irrespective of how small.
Measuring UX Research Value
Every activity should also have a realistic KPI. The KPI can be anything from ‘decreases in call center load’ to ‘increases in users moving through certain steps in a funnel’.
Example That Does Impact Revenue
Let’s assume you work for a health insurance company. Its website has friction points that were highlighted by website analytics, i.e. low completion rates for registration, and the reason for the drop-offs was identified via usability testing, along with a low rating for ease of use. If this part of the journey is fixed, it will increase the completion rate of registrations, impacting the overall conversion rate which then has an impact on the revenue stream.
Example That Does Not Impact Revenue
A study by McKinsey’s showed that the top quartile firms having the best user experiences and designs achieved 10% annual growth, versus 3% to 6% in the industry. This was true for all industries included in the study. The top companies also had an unfair advantage, as the difference between the fourth, third, and second quartiles was slight.
In closing
Every activity should also have a realistic KPI. The KPI can be anything from ‘decreases in call center load’ to ‘increases in users moving through certain steps in a funnel’.