This month I’m going to be talking about User Journeys: what they are used for and how to do create them.

User journeys – what are they?
It’s not hard to imagine what a user journey might look like if you hadn’t seen one before. We’re talking about how people using your site travel through it: the pages they land on, the decisions they take once there and the impact of those decisions on what happens next.

We’ve all experienced good journeys and bad ones online: some make a complicated process easy and painless, allowing you to sail through to the end with barely a thought, whilst others are infuriating and force you to re-enter details, send you off down blind alleys or simply fail to get you to where you wanted to be no matter how hard you try.

The difference between the two can often be something very simple. It might be something to do with semantics: calling something that we’re used to seeing every day something else, just to be ‘cute’. Or it might be that the logic of every possible outcome hasn’t been thought through properly. Maybe we’re forcing people to give us more information than is necessary. Often, the order with which we ask people information can be enough to send them running to the hills. 

A user journey is a step-by-step diagram that shows each part of the process through the site, using visual sign-posts to group things together and identify the danger areas where particular attention needs to be paid.

If you’re creating a new service or a new product, it really is only by plotting user journeys, that you can be confident that you’ve thought of everything and that your solution is the simplest one you can come up with.

Seven considerations for plotting a user journey
1. Use your Personas

Last month I wrote about creating Personas. This is definitely a good place to start: even if it’s only to work out how existing and potential customers will have different goals. The likelihood is that your Personas will be more complicated than this, you may have a variety of stakeholders who need to achieve different things.

2. One diagram per outcome
We think it’s easier to create a different diagram for each key goal or expected outcome. Within that diagram there might be multiple routes that people take, but essentially you’re looking for a single final outcome. An example might be getting someone to sign up for a free trial of a product (as in the image above from our recently launched Schedule App).

3. Show each step of the journey
Don’t leave anything to chance – we want to try and think through everything that a user might do and what decisions he or she will take.

4. Logical grouping of steps
Deciding whether to go for a free trial or subscribe to a service straight away: they are two different steps, but they should be grouped together to give the people working on the site a shorthand reference that these things are linked. In a user journey with 20 steps, the more you can arrange things logically, the easier it will be to use.

5. Pain points
Pain points are something we talk about a lot when it comes to the user experience. There are some things that will be a joy: choosing which colour of shirt they want. But there are other things that will potentially turn them off: logging in when they’ve forgotten their username, or entering their credit card details. Where there is a pain point – make the box red or stick a big warning sign next to it. This will remind everyone that this needs special consideration and thought. 

If things aren’t working well with an existing site, the pain points are probably the areas that need to be looked at first as they are most likely causing  the problems. It’s much better to spend your time making your pain points as simple as possible than introducing whizzy new functionality, however tedious that might seem.

6. Notes
Finally, make notes across the journey: assumptions, other considerations or 3^rd party functionality that may have an impact on what the user experiences.

7. Workshop
If you’re plotting user journeys as part of a workshop with all the stakeholders inputting their ideas, they can be sketched out in a down and dirty way, the use of Post-It notes on a wall work well for allowing people to consider all the steps and iterate.

Ultimately, it is always good to reproduce that working into an electronic format so it can be referenced by the designers and developers throughout the project.

Once we get into user testing, it’s always good to reference it against the user journey to check that the assumptions we made were correct and things like pain points have been effectively overcome.

For the next few months I’m going to write a bit about User Experience. I firmly believe that User Experience shouldn’t be the dark art that some portray it as. There is no reason why good UX can’t be put into practice within a client company or by an agency (or both). Like most things, it comes down to common sense and an ability to think laterally – very laterally at times. Working with a professional UX expert can pay dividends, especially with a challenging content structure, and they will help you get to where you want to be quicker, but it's not impossible to get there yourself with a bit of time and thought.

The thing I love about UX projects is that it combines analytics with creativity. In many ways it is the bridge between the nerdy researcher and the wacky creative. Although in my experience, most successful agency people have a bit of both in them anyway.

One great way of focusing everyone’s attention on what they really need to  concern themselves about is the development of Personas. A persona is a (largely) fictional snapshot of a typical user. It can be based on research or, in the absence of research, instinct. It can be an ever-evolving tool that is updated as the project goes along and more insights and ideas are generated.

Of all the tools in the UX professional’s armoury, Personas are the least statistically valid, accurate or meaningful. So you might be forgiven for asking ‘why the hell should we waste time creating them?’. And in some cases there isn’t the need, the time or indeed the budget, to develop personas. However, in many cases it can be a great help.

What is a persona?
If you think about your business, you will be able to picture a typical user. That person might be your customer. But then, after a few moments you’ll think that actually you will have more than one typical user – what about returning customers? What about small customers vs large ones? What about suppliers, or potential employees, investors, or the press? What about customers who have radically different needs: maybe one needs some detailed product information but another just needs a phone number?

Personas help you get all these ideas into one, “at-a-glance” place. They are a visual shortcut that allows everyone to think about their range of different users without having to keep describing them.

A good place to start is to imagine each of your core audience types, give them a name, an age, a gender and a profession. It is counter-intuitive in our age of politically correct avoidance of stereotypes at all costs, but just run with it for a bit. In some cases, there may be some research data about users that can be employed, but if there isn’t you can still have an educated guess – remembering that this isn’t meant to be an accurate piece of data. 

Then consider how they consume digital media. Are they likely to be confident, need hand-holding, happy to explore or time poor? Are they going to be mobile? Do they like to interact using social media?  You should also consider what types of things they are going to be looking for from your site: do they just want to find something and move on, or do they want to be inspired or convinced?

Image courtesy of cxpartners.com

Bringing this altogether will give you a series of references that can be used at each stage of the UX process:

Developing user journeys: the personas act as a way of ensuring that the key user journeys have been considered

Task modeling: a way of understanding how users behave and reasons why they may drop out before they achieve their goal.

Content auditing: looking at the current/proposed content and checking it against each persona allows you to work out whether there are any gaps.

Design concepts: for the designer, having a sense (however artificial) of the different users provides a backdrop against which to pitch the creative.  

Functional idea generation: often having a persona will spark an idea along the lines of “you know what would be really cool?” It’s often only when you try and put yourself in someone else’s shoes that insights arise that you mightn’t have considered otherwise.

Since the global economy tanked in 2008 things have been pretty gloomy for most of us. Inflation is soaring, unemployment is high, credit has all but vanished and the debt-laden government is cutting at a faster rate than happy hour in Sweeney Todd’s. Not great. However in an effort to try and look on the brighter side of life I thought I would examine how these economic conditions have actually helped progress the digital industry.

1. User Centric Design

I have worked in digital since 2001 and in that time one of the most frequently frustrating experiences has been persuading people to design for their users, not themselves.

Design solutions should be based on a thorough understanding of the core target audience and clear business objectives that you wish to convert on. However I have spent many hours in meeting rooms trying to persuade decision makers not to commit design hari-kari by letting personal preference dictate the path we took. I have tried everything from blunt refusal to regaling the fable of Homer’s Car but could never seem to surmount the issue.

However, when market conditions are tough and budgets need to work hard you cannot afford to risk losing valuable eyeballs and custom because you prefer pink to blue. Briefs have always pertained to place the user first but we have noticed clients like Channel 4, BBC, The British Library, Pearson Education and others I cannot directly mention put increasing emphasis and budget on analytical research, user focus groups and thorough usability testing during the design phase.

It is very illuminating that when budgets need to work harder you see increased investment in a particular area. You might think the trend would be to “best guess” and cut corners but when you have to get results, you can’t afford to muck around on design.

2. Wider adoption of new ideas and trends

Similarly I have also noticed corporate brands embracing and adopting fresh ideas and trends that I previously would have associated to forward thinking geeks and start-ups. Open source software is now pro-actively requested rather than suggested and a lot of the old wives tales about lack of accountability and support have been put to bed. Did anyone ever try calling Microsoft when their .Net site crashed anyway?

I no longer spend a significant portion of my week scanning signed NDAs as people have begun to appreciate that the best way to succeed online is to share and iterate your great idea rather than hide behind password protection for months whilst crafting the all-singing all-dancing solution. Instead I am pleased to see clients shipping the minimal viable product and holding budget for future iterations once real users have got their hands on it.

If the economy doesn’t sort itself out soon we might even see the Agile project process becoming a regular fixture but I think it will be a while before people can fully trust the cost effectiveness of that path.

3. Customer Service is fashionable again

About 10 years ago it was decided upon high that customer service units should be offshored to reduce costs and this would be a great deal for the consumer because of more competitive prices. I am not so sure the consumer agreed, or got a better deal, but it didn’t really matter, as they had no way of really being heard beyond mouthing off in the local pub to a few disinterested souls.

I guess the powers that be didn’t anticipate social media. When your margins are tight and undercutting on price is not viable customer service can be the differentiator. As consumers feeling the pinch we want to spend our pennies effectively and that means taking informed recommendations from others. It is near impossible for a brand to buy a good online reputation. Brands have to prove themselves if they want to build trust and loyalty. Simply put, they have to engage.

And many have! I have anecdotal evidence of BT sorting out a huge billing mess triggered by a frustrated tweet I sent out and I know of many others. It has spawned the Thank You Economy and has proved to be a champion bottom line strategy by guys like Tony Hsieh. It is a return to the principles of the local store where properly serving the community made all the difference between success and failure. Mass consumerism killed that off for a while but it is back now with a vengeance.

4. Death toll for IE6

Internet Explorer version 6 is over 10 years old and the time has come for it to take its place in the historical archives. In a tough environment you need to differentiate from the competition and maximise your budget reach. Neither of these is likely when you are catering to the low-tech needs of 2.9% of your user base (and it’s shrinking rapidly).

I was heartened to see that Google is dropping browser support on its products for anything beyond the previous two versions and the new Alpha Government Project spearheaded by Martha Lane Fox deviated from traditional Government website guidelines by ignoring IE6 and focussing on modern web standards to create delightful experiences for the vast majority. I highly recommend reading their design principles blog post.

5. Innovation in technology embraced

In much the same way we have noticed an embrace of new trends by previously conservative decision makers we have also seen dramatic shifts in how clients look at tech. Cloud platforms and virtualisation servers have been around for a while but have only been seen as acceptable solutions when the cost effectiveness of them became a determining factor on whether a project could happen or not.

Previously we were dreaming up physical dedicated server solutions housed in Central London using traditional (expensive) CDNs to distribute media. This often meant large up front costs to buy expensive licenses and kit. There used to be a sense that it was important to completely own and house your own web architecture, and there was a real distrust of using someone else’s platform, it felt that it even cheapened the offering.

Now we are not only seeing powerful and scalable cloud services becoming common for site hosting but within offices virtualised documents, file sharing, and other software as a service is being widely adopted. We are using a more diverse and tailored toolset to increase efficiency as team sizes shrink, budgets reduce and competition intensifies.

In conclusion...

I do think all of these trends were coming regardless of the economic situation we faced but the recession has certainly brought focus to what is important, killed off a few ridiculous old wives tales that were holding us back and opened our minds to new and improved ways of working.

Would you add any other items to the list? Let me know in the comments below.

In praise of Hardboiled Web Design

For years, there has been a consensus that great web developers are those who can make pixel-perfect replicas of Photoshop-made designs inside Web browsers, from Internet Explorer 6 to more modern browsers. The markup didn't need to be good (hell, clients don't even see it!), and it didn't matter what dirty tricks you used to make the design come to life, or even if it actually was usable, as long as it was working in IE6.

Today, techniques like "progressive enhancement" or "progressive enrichment" prevail. We have got used to building for the least capable browsers first, and improving the experience where possible for more modern browsers. Dumbing-down the experience, we felt lucky when we could squeeze in a few CSS3 rounded corners.

But that needs to change. There is more to CSS3 than rounded corners and drop shadows. Rewarding viewers using modern browsers isn't enough anymore. This is why I got so excited when a few weeks ago, Hardboiled Web Design, a new book from Andy Clarke, was released.

Hardboiled web design is about never compromising on creating the best work we can for the web. The postulate is simple: it is possible to give clients what they want and at the same time use new technologies such as CSS3 and HTML5 to expand creative options. This is the new Bible of Web development. Quoting from the book:

"The reality is that the web has changed, and our work and our clients' expectations must move beyond the one-size-fits-all approach we have laboured over for so long if we're to make the most of what it has to offer. No two browsers are the same, so to make the most from emerging technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3, we need to banish the notion that websites should look and be experienced exactly the same in every browser."

It is no longer about progressive enhancement or even graceful degradation, it's about acknowledging the browsers' differences, and offering the right experience, appropriately crafted and responsive to the capabilities of the browser. Do websites need to look exactly the same on every browser? No. Do websites need to be experienced exactly the same in every browser? Nope.

Potentially this is a radically different work process, where the Photoshop design phase is skipped, and the site is directly designed inside the browser, using the latest technologies available, and with a strong focus on quality, meaningful markup. Development time is reduced, quality improves, clients get to see the design in action very early on (instead of flat images, which fail to represent the browsers' rendering differences), and users benefit from tailored experiences.

This is obviously not a "one size fits all" approach, but it is definitely worth experimenting with.

Paraphrasing Hardboiled Web Design one last time, the question to be asked for your next Web project is and should be: would you rather have developers spending your budget hacking around issues for older browsers like Internet Explorer 6, or spend this time future proofing the website to look the best it can on better, modern desktop browsers, as well as on a whole host of mobile devices?

So what does this mean in practice?

For Desktops:

• The modern browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and IE9) get the best experience - the one we design for, right from the start. Webkit browsers (Chrome and Safari) get the best experience of all, as they provide the most advanced CSS3 features.
• IE7 and 8 get a simpler version (this generally means no rounded corners, no drop shadows, and little to no eye-candy effects)
• IE6 gets a custom version of the site, different from the other (possibly very different), to accommodate with its rendering capabilities. Simply put: same content, but different form

For Mobiles:

• Depending on the type of site, modern mobile browsers (iOS and Android browsers) can be served the same version as modern desktop browsers, but with a tailored experience adapted for mobile use (using CSS media queries for instance)
• Older and less capable mobile browsers should be served a different website (to save bandwidth and cut down the load time for the user), requiring separate development

Click here or here if you would like up-to-date statistics on browsers market share.

Every so often a job comes in that stands out from the crowd as being particularly captivating or interesting. Naturally, different jobs appeal to different people but our latest British Library project is right up my straße as a one-time English Graduate.

Our brief is to conceptualise and design a site to support the Library's upcoming exhibition, Evolving English: a showcase of how and why our language has developed and changed over the ages. The magic of the exhibition is that it will be supported by dozens of astoundingly important documents and iconic texts such as Beowulf, Shakespeare folios and the King James Bible and we want to convey this magic in the online experience we are creating.

On the 8th September we are running focus groups at the Library to try and better understand how we can engage with website users through online tools that support the exhibition.

In total we are looking for 20 people who are;

• ‘Creatively cultured’ and open to ideas-based exhibitions
• Ideally, but not necessarily students of English, languages, history
• Between 16 – 40
• Internet Users
• Use a form of social network or other online tool
• Articulate
• Comfortable communicating in English
• Haven’t been to focus group in past 3 months
• Happy working in groups

We will be running 2 sessions with 10 people in each and you will be handsomely rewarded for your time.

Session 1: 9am - 12pm
Session 2: 2pm - 5pm

If you fancy getting involved and can make either of the 2 sessions on the 8th please contact either Michael or myself as soon as possible.

Not only will you be involved in the creation of something compelling, you will also be given more tea and biscuits that you can shake a sizeable stick at.

We all get to that point, two or three years after launching our ecommerce website, sales growth isn't want it used to be, new customer acquisition is faltering, the site has lost its "magic". Yet we're all terribly busy maintaining it. How did this happen? How did our wonderful source of revenue become well, stagnant?

Don't fear Stagnation

Stagnation is a natural part of any system lifecycle. After the initial jump in growth you experience after implementing a new ecommerce offering, your ability to sustain it is limited. The features and quick wins that you achieved are already out there, you focus on ensuring the visitors are catered for and most of your effort goes into the day-to-day operations of running your site. Coming up with the Next Big Thing is increasingly hard. Frequently more money is pumped into Marketing, vastly increasing your cost per acquisition because your site simply isn't converting like it once was.

However, when you realise your site has stagnated, this becomes a wonderful opportunity for change.

Featuritis

Featuritis is a symptom, rather than a cause of Stagnation. Featuritis is a term coined by Kathy Sierra, a prominent blogger on User Experience, to describe what happens to software when new features are continually added.

Thanks Kathy for allowing re-use of your work

She describes the point of the Happy User Peak, the point when there is just enough functionality to please the user, without leaving them wanting more, or conversely, reaching for the instruction manual.

However, after the initial stage of growth, it's very easy to get into the mindset of adding new features, sections and functionality to your site to help maintain the growth you've achieved.

Without pragmatism, not just from you but your Board, and quite importantly, your Helpdesk, you can easily find yourself responding to users' demands through continuous developments. Multiple exotic payment options, unnecessary wishlist & comparison pages, complicated delivery options and "me too" social media integration are just a few of the ways to add complexity that can frustrate a large percentage of your audience.

Operational vs Strategic

After successfully running an ecommerce operation for a year or so, it's easy to get stuck in the day-to-day operational tasks. Content creation (certainly for smaller shops), catalogue management, helpdesk management, can all make you lose site of the vision of your ecommerce store.

Econsultancy, back in the day, created an incredibly useful map of the tasks that need to be undertaken to run an ecommerce store. Taking the ACRA model - Acquisition, Conversion, Retention & Analytics - these can easily be carved into a series of remits for you and your team.

If you find yourself consistently working on the Operational side of the business, with no time to work on the Strategy & Planning, then we have a problem. Not only are you not keeping an analytical eye on your competitors, you are also unable to focus on your vision and drive innovation - a quick route to stagnation.

Don't be reactionary

So, you've sat down with your Board, and said "I think our site has stagnated". My aren't you brave! There's often a compelling urge to scrap everything and start again, to rebuild from scratch and let's do it better this time.

However this is not only costly, but unnecessary and dangerous. Within larger organisations a considerable amount has been invested in integration, certainly with fulfillment and CRM.

Remember when you conducted Stakeholder Interviews at the start of your project? Do it again with your Board. Find out what the current perceived failings are - these won't just be quantifiable like sales and average transaction value, but emotional failings as well. Once you know this, then you can work on how to improve it.

A platform's just a platform

I'm not sure if everyone will agree with me on this!

Ultimately, a platform is just a way of skipping over building a database, business logic and an API yourself. If you've chosen a platform, then you were probably sold on features, but the real issues such as cost, integration, administrative overhead and scalability were why you bought it.

But do your customers care one jot what platform you use? Does your platform choice directly affect the experience that they have? Of course not. Which is why in most cases, a few pragmatic steps is all that it takes to get you back on track.

1) Understand what matters

Why do people actually visit your website? Do you know? We'd love to think that they're there to Buy Buy Buy! but often that simply isn't the case. What's going through their minds? What's their motivation? Are you catering for this, not only in your site content but in your marketing?

If you'd like to read more about this, here's a post on user-psychology I wrote for Econsultancy.

Just as we measure Conversion Rate, we can also measure how often users are able to do what they came to your site to do - a "Task Completion Rate". Remember that not every visitor comes to your site to shop. Just as we do when we enclose a Checkout, when your visitor knows what they want to achieve, your site should get out of the way and let them do it.

There are a number of tools to let you measure Task Completion Rate - predominantly based around user surveys. The most popular is called 4Q from iPerceptions and takes the form of a pop-under survey.

You can then measure your Task Completion Rate amongst a sample of your visitors and see in which areas you can improve. You may of course, have a site that doesn't cater to your users' needs. They may be looking for a store finder, or an offers section, or something that isn't currently in your strategy. In which case...

2) Go back to your IA

During the information architecture process, you should have come up with 3-4 user personas, with needs and wants and clear goals and motivations. However, if your site is failing, then either a) the personas are incorrect (which can certainly happen when these aren't based on user research) or b) the personas aren't being catered for. Either way, when visitors use your site "in anger", they will become frustrated and leave.

Once you have catalogued the objectives and motivations of your user personas, you need to see how well your site fits these. If you don't feel that the site fits, or your personas are wrong, then you should conduct a new round of user research. I always recommend doing this in the user's homes, so you can see the environment in which they interact with you, and the discussion becomes more of a "chat" than a survey, but this isn't always possible.

3) Simplification

Once you have a newly defined set of goals and objectives, you can simplify your site design to cater to these. John Maeda has a wonderful book called the Laws of Simplicity in which he states 10 (well, 9) laws that you can apply to any design or process to make it simpler. For example, whilst you can't remove elements that some users may find useful, you can Hide or Shrink them in the design. You can use this process to not only rationalise your product taxonomy, but also rationalise your language.

A case in point here, on a site I once worked on we had 12 different methods of getting help, none of which were labelled "Help".

4) Take time out

Pause, breathe and have a sit down.

As I said before, when you hit this point, it's very easy to run around, firing & hiring agencies and switching platforms in an urge to have something new. You can do this, sure, but it's not very Strategic is it? You need to take a little time out.

5) Visit some aliens

Go and visit another ecommerce operation, that has nothing to do with your business. You'll see that they have the same processes as any other business, a helpdesk, customer returns, a CRM strategy - but by doing this you can not only gather ideas, but share skills and see how their success can be adapted for you use.

6) Think strategically

Work out what makes you money. Start from "we receive money from our customers by" and work backwards from there. Look at your net margin, and what's actually driving value. See how you can align this with your customer's objectives, simplifying the process and creating an engaging experience, and you're onto a winner.

Your registration process is a make or break interaction with your audience.