Quick Summary: In part 1 and part 2 of this article we looked at the ways in which store locators leave users frustrated, and we explored ways to address the problems.  In the third part of this article we look at some additional best practices and touch upon a few special considerations.

Continuing on with our look at store locator best practices, it’s also sensible to:

Prioritize the information customers are most likely to need. In most situations, customers looking for a store will need one or more of the following:

• Street address (including city and state)
• Telephone numbers
• Hours of operation
• Any important differentiators (e.g. – retail store versus a warehouse, a location with special services, etc.)

Sometimes it’s also helpful to include:

• A mention of nearby landmarks (“just 1 block East of the freeway”)
• Brief special instructions if applicable (“parking available in back”)

… and naturally some customers may also (or instead) wish to see a map. So the structure of store locator results should make it easy to see any of this information without unnecessary extra steps. The store locators from OfficeMax and Staples that I showed in Part 2 of this article do just that; they give users the basic information about each nearby store, then make it easy to see a map and/or get driving directions. This is a good balance.  Store locators that display giant maps and don’t include the other information listed above – or include it but make it hard to find – aren’t helping themselves or their customers.

Some companies also need to differentiate the services offered at each location. Websites like Home Depot list specialists who work at each store (e.g. – “John Smith, master plumber”); this is a great idea since it anticipates and addresses a possible customer question “Does anyone at that location know about plumbing?”.

Offer to email or text directions. Some users may wish to keep the directions and other information on their mobile device or in an email account. It may be beneficial for them to have an option to email or text the store information. This is still a relatively uncommon practice, but it’s growing in popularity. It’s a great idea. One place I’ve seen it is on bank store locator functions that use a third-party application called LocatorSearch. Here’s a screen shot from the LocatorSearch demo:

The option to send store information to a phone is an excellent convention.

As you see, each bank location includes an overview with the address and services available and a option to “Send to Phone”. What I don’t see here is a telephone number, but this is presumably something that can be added by the individual financial institutions that use the software.

Provide good error handling. It bears mention that applications and websites should always provide clear and specific feedback when users encounter an error. Yet, some store locators fail to deliver on this basic requirement. The PetSmart store locator, while generally very good, doesn’t have much to say when no stores are available in a particular ZIP code:

PetSmart's generally good store locator doesn't say enough when it can't find a nearby store.

Just as websites can be more helpful when an item is out of stock,  store locators can also provide helpful and usable feedback when a customer attempts to locate a store in an area that doesn’t have one. In the cases depicted above, a better solution would be to show an obvious and more conversational statement such as “Sorry, there are no stores within 20 miles of zip code xxx. Our nearest store is 35 miles from this zip code and is displayed below.”

Be sure the information is current. This is another suggestion that falls under the “obviously!” category, but it’s important to ensure that as company locations change the store locator database is kept current. More than once I’ve heard stories of people getting out of date addresses from a store locator and going on a wild goose chase. It’s easy to see why this would be an especially frustrating experience for customers.

A related problem: distributor/retailer locator

A different but related problem can be seen with companies that sell only through distributors and other channel partners, and don’t have their own retail locations.

Customers may come to these websites wondering “Where can I buy your products?”; naturally it makes sense to address this question. It’s a mistake for companies to assume that only trade professionals or large-scale retail buyers will encounter their website.

Here’s an example from a company that makes industrial lubricants. Some of their products are of interest to consumers (for example automotive and woodworking hobbyists), but their product lines are typically sold only through third party industrial supply companies such as WW Grainger.

The LPS “Distributor Locator” looks like this:

LPS' distributor map doesn't provide useful feedback when it can't find a distributor.

The large map isn’t clickable.  If the user enters a zip code where there’s no distributor, the page simply refreshes without displaying an error message. Oops. I think what they’re trying to say is “Sorry, we don’t know of a distributor near you where you can find our products.”

But as I mentioned above LPS sells many of its products through WW Grainger, which has a large e-commerce storefront. And even Amazon.com has merchants who sell LPS products. Even if there’s no “Distributor” nearby there are alternative ways to purchase LPS products. Since the website doesn’t mention this, they’re needlessly turning customers away.

Wrapping up: store locator usability

As we’ve seen from the examples in each part of this article there are many ways to make store locators more usable and generally more functional. The key requirements are:

• An easy to find locator function (preferably on the Home and other key pages)
• A simple and robust entry form that can accept a wide range of inputs
• An easy way to search a second time if needed
• Finding a good and usable balance between text information and maps
• A focus on prioritizing the information users are most likely to need and want
• The use of good, flexible third-party mapping applications
• Accurate and current information

Ensuring your store locator meets these criteria will make it easier and faster for customers to find your stores, and should enable them to arrive there in a mood to buy rather than curse your website.

Related posts:

1. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 2
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices
3. Reduce costs and improve usability with visual standards, part 2

Quick Summary: In part 1 of this article we defined the problem: store locators often suffer from poor usability. Here in part 2 we continue our look at ways to improve them.

Let’s continue where we left off with our examination of improving store locators.

Store locator best practices, continued

Avoid too many search criteria; offer flexible entry. Keeping the initial search simple and usable requires focusing on the essentials. A sensible minimum amount of information for most store locators is:

• ZIP code or City and state
• An optional search radius with a clearly defined default setting

Presenting separate fields for City, State and ZIP code is common, but it’s better to display a single field that can accept a variety of inputs.

The PetSmart store locator below meets these critera, though as I mentioned in part 1 of this article the minimum search radius is too large for areas with many stores. PetSmart would do well to add a 5 or 10 mile radius option then examine their log data to determine if customers use it.

In some cases it makes sense to also offer additional options. For example, a bank website may wish to enable users to search for ATMs or branch locations. PetSmart has veterinary services at some stores, and they wisely enable users to search only for these locations

Reiterate the search; enable follow-ups. Once the user has initiated a search, it’s always wise to reiterate the search criteria as part of the search results display. This reinforces successful completion of the action and reduces the chances for problems if the user has made an entry mistake (for example, entering the wrong zip code).

As I mentioned in part 1, it’s also sensible to make it easy for users to quickly change the parameters and conduct another search if needed.

Display a list view as a default. Some store locators display nothing but a large map for their store locator search results. Others use a list of stores, map with a list of stores beneath or beside it. It’s important to remember that some users may not want or need to see the map – some may want only to see a street address they can plug into their GPS. Or, they only wish to find the nearest store’s hours. So it’s sensible to include a list of stores – and to make sure it’s easily visible.

Use a good map. It seems silly to even point it out, but store locators should incorporate good maps. With a number of mapping APIs to choose from it’s a wonder some websites still rely upon relatively primitive and inflexible mapping services. Consider the difference between this map from the Circle K convenience store website and a map from their competitor 7-11:

This Circle K map of Mesa, Arizona locations is generated by MapQuest  and has no options for user control at all. Users who wish to zoom or otherwise change the view are out of luck. They must conduct a new search with a smaller radius.

By comparison the 7-11 map, generated by Microsoft, is sophisticated and offers a great deal of user control:

Which would you rather use?

Consider making maps optional. Large map displays work well for users connecting from their home or office. But what about those with mobile devices? What about users who are looking primarily for the hours or a phone number?

For these and other use cases a very large map can be problematic.

One good approach is to default to a list, but also enable users to quickly see a map. Websites for Staples and its competitor OfficeMax both do this:

Note the prominent link to “View map of all stores…” located above the Staples search results, and OfficeMax’s prominent large green “MAP” buttons next to each listing. This is a better balance of information than the default large maps displayed by many store locators.

Both of these store locators work well on mobile devices. In fact Staples.com wisely displays a separate mobile-friendly version of their website when it detects a mobile device.

Avoid rich media for store locators. A number of store locators rely upon rich media like Flash to display search results. This is usually a bad idea*. In most cases Flash doesn’t add any real value to a store locator, and more importantly, some computers and mobile devices don’t support it at all.

The Bass Pro website employs Flash within its store locator search results. Here’s how it looks on a computer equipped with Flash:

But here’s how the same results appear on an iPhone, which doesn’t currently support Flash:

On first glance the user might well be drawn to the large blank area of the screen and assume that the store information can’t be displayed. As it turns out the store address and hours are displayed – to the left of the image. Still, this isn’t exactly an optimal experience.

Flash is a sensible technology for some applications, but store locator search results is not one of them. It’s preferable to use a simpler display that’s more widely supported.

* Side note: I’m not one of those “All Flash is bad” people. But I am a Flash skeptic and believe strongly it should only be employed where it adds necessary flexibility, and where it is widely installed among the intended audience. I don’t mean to pick on Flash, either. I apply the same logic to any use of rich media (videos, animations, etc.)

In part 3 of this article we’ll cover some additional best practices and wrap things up.

Related posts:

1. Store locator usability: problems and best practices
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 3
3. Reduce costs and improve usability with visual standards, part 1

Quick Summary: Many would-be bricks-and-mortar shoppers go online to find the location of a nearby retail store. Often their efforts are frustrated by the poor usability of store locators. In this multi-part article we’ll examine the problem and explore some best practices.

It’s hard to imagine any company making it more difficult than necessary for customers to shop in their retail stores. Yet this situation occurs on a regular basis; websites often fail to provide highly usable store locators.

A warning up front: this topic requires that I include quite a few large visual examples. Bear with me; I think you’ll find the images useful.

The situation

Customers want to find your store. And these days fewer of them use phone books. Instead they rely on the internet to locate a store, determine its hours, and calculate a route to get there. Not only that, many of your customers have GPS devices in their cars and pockets, and may need nothing more than an accurate street address to find your store.

Store locator usability problems

Customers often come to a company’s website in search of a nearby retail location. But their efforts are impeded or derailed by poor usability. Common barriers include:

• A store locator link that’s difficult to find
• Inadequate search flexibility
• Too little information displayed in search results
• Too much information displayed in search results
• Use of rich media like Flash to display results
• Poor error handling

Many of these problems stem from mistaken assumptions about how customers use the Internet and what they need when they’re looking for a store.

The stakes here are pretty obvious. If customers can’t find your store they may:

• Encounter frustration, resulting in a negative customer experience
• Give up
• Go to a competitor

These aren’t positive outcomes are they?

Store locator best practices

There are a number of considerations that should inform the way in which a store locator works. Best practices include:

Make the function/link easy to find. It’s an obvious suggestion but one that’s sometimes overlooked. The link to a store locator needs to be where users expect to find it. This goes for the critical home page as well as pages throughout the website. Many websites already do a good job of this, as in this example:

But others are less effective in making this important link easy to find.

Consider this image from the home page of PetSmart competitor PetCo:

Here the store locator function is in a good location but displayed using light gray type. Note how the light gray links are displayed near the much darker type of other navigation options. This makes it more difficult than necessary for users to notice the locator link.

There’s no universally accepted “best” location for a store finder link, however many websites place it near the top right of the home page. This location works fine provided the text is large enough and has enough contrast (more about type size and contrast in this article).

One way to simplify and improve the usability of a store locator to integrate it directly into the home page. This saves users the extra step of clicking a link to access it. An example of this can be seen on the Lowe’s website:

Requiring one less step improves the user experience and also makes the locator more “mobile friendly” (more on this later).

Smart, flexible radius is your friend. It’s wise to enable easy selection of a wide range of search radii. Why? For some companies the number of stores can vary drastically in different cities. This can create some serious problems with displaying store search results.

If you’re looking for a PetCo location in Lincoln, Nebraska there are only two choices:

This search allows no choice of search radius; it defaults to a distance of 20 miles. This is fine; with so few stores in Lincoln a 20 mile radius works well because it enables users to see stores in nearby Omaha.

On the other hand, a search for PetCo locations by zip code in West Los Angeles returns this map:

The much greater number of stores should logically trigger a smaller default radius. But it does the opposite; it defaults to a larger 40-mile radius. This creates an extremely dense display that’s not very user-friendly. Worse, there’s no option to refine the search results by selecting a smaller search radius.

The good news in PetCo’s case is that beneath the map there’s a list of stores sorted by proximity. But users are out of luck if they wish to find a convenient location using the provided map.

Simply offering an easy way to adjust the radius (for example with a drop-down menu above the map) would transform this store locator map from essentially unusable to very helpful.

Speaking of map display problems, my favorite example of a badly implemented store display can be found on this page from the Joann Fabrics website:

This map does one thing very effectively: it communicates that Joann Fabrics has many locations. But the density of store markers renders the display nearly useless. Fortunately the Joann website does a better job of displaying results once the user enters their search criteria. Still, they’d do well to skip displaying the map until a user searches for a specific location.

In part 2 of this article we’ll continue examining store locator best pracices – including methods for keeping search criteria simple but flexible.

Related posts:

1. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 2
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 3
3. Regrettable User Experience: too much information

Quick summary: User experience problems tend to be cumulative. Enough small problems can have the same effect as a few large ones – namely, causing users frustration and sometimes causing them to give up on your application or website. Crafting a good user experience requires finding and eliminating major usability issues, but less severe problems deserve attention too.

It’s usually the case that for each “big” usability problem with an application or website there are many smaller and less severe issues. Naturally the big problems get the most attention (“What do you mean customers can’t figure out how to enter their credit card number?”). What’s sometimes overlooked is that smaller problems, taken as a whole, can be similarly harmful to user experience.

It’s easy to dismiss the importance of small usability problems. After all, the fact that it takes a customer a few extra tries to complete a form, or a few moments longer than needed to locate a button doesn’t seem like much of an issue.

Yet these and similar small usability problems matter more than many companies realize.

The lay of the land

To understand why, let’s consider a couple of points about the environment in which your website or software is used.

1. The bar to switching is lower online.

Online it’s much easier for customers to give up and go elsewhere than it is “in the real world”.

• If you should find yourself in Shamrock, Texas (population 2,000) in need of some devonshire cream, there’s probably just the one grocery store to visit. If it’s not there you’re out of luck. (It’s not there, I looked).
• On the other hand if you’re shopping online and having trouble buying a pair of headphones from the Circuit City website, there are plenty of other companies (Amazon, Best Buy, NewEgg and countless others) who will be glad to help you. And they’re just a mouse click away.

2. Some dimensions of customer service can’t be provided online.

• A customer at a bricks-and-mortar store with a complaint or problem can usually find a human being with whom they can communicate. The retail experience is designed to provide personal, face to face attention for customers who desire or need it.
• Online, however, your customers have no face-to-face interaction with you. In essence your application or website – and by extension its user experience – is the company representative.

User experience problems online and customer experience problems offline are both cumulative, but online you’re at a disadvantage when you need to address them.

The offline user experience: your hotel stay

Allow me to illustrate the point about how offline customer experience is cumulative. Let’s go on a quick virtual vacation (sorry, real vacations are expensive).

Now that you’re on vacation imagine you’ve just checked into your hotel. You’ve never been to this hotel before so everything here is a new experience.

You notice a few things while you’re settling into your room:

• There’s dust on the fixtures.
• There are a few stains on the carpet.
• The bathroom faucett is dripping.
• There aren’t enough towels in the bathroom.
• Your room is located next to a noisy ice machine.

None of these problems are enough to send you screaming from the hotel, but on the whole you find them annoying. They detract from your vacation experience. So you call the front desk to discuss the problems.

You call. And wait. And wait some more.

When you finally reach someone at the front desk they’re not apologetic about the wait or the condition of your room. They tell you that the maid has left for the day. They don’t offer to put you in another room.

You return home from vacation a few days later, feeling dissatisfied with the hotel and vowing to find a better place to stay next time.

The online user experience: your website or software

The way customers react to software and websites is similar.

A single small problem (navigation that’s hard to find, a display that’s difficult to read, instructions that aren’t clear) might not send a customer running from the room but it certainly detracts from the  experience. A confluence of small usability problems can result in abandonment (“death from 1,000 cuts”). And this is to say nothing of the larger usability issues that can stop your customer in their tracks (see my related article, “5 Shopping Cart Showstoppers“).

As with our fictional hotel stay, if you come away from a task having had a bad experience you’ll tend to avoid repeating it. A bad experience anywhere – in a hotel or on a website – is likely to leave a long lasting negative impression. In fact studies have shown that users who’ve had a bad experience with a product or service are very likely to tell friends and colleagues of their dissatisfaction.

The cost of small usability problems

So what do these small problems cost you and your company?

Customers who struggle with your software or website might be able to complete their transaction or task.  However, they’re much more likely to:

• Call for (expensive) customer service that could have been avoided.
• Give up before they complete a purchase or conversion and go straight to a competitor.
• Make a purchase or conversion but never come back because they were unhappy with the experience.

You can’t be there in person when a customer visits your website*. So ensuring that customers can find and do what they want – without great difficulty – means addressing both large and small usability problems.

The bottom line: prioritizing bigger usability problems is sensible, but don’t forget to “sweat the details” too.

Photo by zzzack. Creative Commons licensed.

Related posts:

1. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 3
2. Why require registration? Part 1
3. Store locator usability: problems and best practices

With gratitude for (and apologies to) James Lileks and his outstanding book “Gallery of Regrettable Food”, this is the second in an occasional series called “Regrettable User Experience”. In each “Regrettable” article I briefly highlight a website or application practice that should be avoided entirely or executed in a very different way.

Next on our list is the common but regrettable practice of overwhelming users with information.

“Too much information” can take many forms.  One of my favorite examples can be seen on the Joann Fabrics website. Consider the map that’s displayed as soon as a user clicks the Store Locations link from the site’s home page:

Joann Fabrics default store locator map

That’s a lot of fabric! But unfortunately this display does almost nothing to help answer the high-probability question “Where’s the nearest Joann store?”.  This is way too much information to be useful. To be fair, once users enter a zip code or other search criterion the store locator is adequate, but this map is really out of hand.

I’ll be covering store locator best practices in another article soon. In the meantime, let’s look at another example.

This one’s taken from a discussion forum. This navigation display enables users to easily switch between pages of threads within a section:

You can't see it in this image, but this multi-page navigation goes all the way to 148.

It looks familiar and similar to multi-page choices you see on many websites. But here the page numbers actually go all the way up to 148, causing a massive amount of horizontal scrolling. It looks like this:

Displayling links to all 148 pages is definitely too much of a good thing.

Yikes. I’ll be covering multi-page navigation in a future article, but for now let’s just say this isn’t the most sensible or efficient way to present these options.

Look at it this way: a glass of water and a fire hose are both capable of quenching your thirst. Which would you rather drink from?

Good, usable information displays deliver enough of the right information without overwhelming users and risking information overload.

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Related posts:

1. Regrettable User Experience: website background music
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices

Quick summary:  In part one of this two-part article we examined ways in which weak or missing visual standards detract from website and application usability. Here we look at ways to address the problem.

We’ve looked at the problems created by a lack of visual standards. And we’ve considered some reasons these problems arise. Now let’s examine activities and methods that can improve visual standards and help ensure they have a positive effect on user experience.

There are a number of activities that should be integrated into your development and production processes to improve visual standards. Consider the following:

Seek consensus; encourage participation. It’s critical that the importance of standards be understood and agreed throughout your team – and throughout your organization. It can be helpful to communicate to team members and other stakeholders that standards enforcement is a shared responsibility and affects bottom-line success. For managers it may be helpful to reward individual contributions to creating, enforcing, reviewing and improving standards.

Create and document. Naturally it’s necessary to create standards documentation. This starts with discussion and decisions about appearance and placement of elements such as links, blocks of copy, site-wide navigation, breadcrumbs, graphics, logos, and form elements. Everyone agrees to the initial standards, then they’re documented.  Documentation should include as many visual examples as needed. (Side note: I’ll devote a future article to picking apart a standards document and providing guidance for creating one).

Visual standards don’t need to be high-fidelity representations. It’s often fine to use wireframes or rough graphics to represent initial standards ideas (general appearance of forms and dialogs or the sequence of information within a display). As the final graphics are created you can always go back and update the standards document with the most recent examples.

Share. The best visual standards document does little good if it’s not shared and readily accessible. While it may seem obvious, this step is sometimes overlooked. Ensure all members of the team have the document(s) and place them in a widely accessible central repository. Updates should be circulated to the team in a “push” manner rather than a passive “come get it whenever”.

Deputize. It’s often helpful to assign one team member the job of “standards cop”. For many teams it makes sense for this role to fall to a project or product manager. But it could just as easily be a graphic designer, developer or any team member granted the authority to monitor adherence to the documented standards.

Review. Adherence to standards  should be assessed periodically, as should the standards themselves. This probably isn’t necessary at every product meeting (especially for scrum or agile teams who have very frequent, brief meetings) but it should be done multiple times throughout the development process. It often makes sense for the “standards cop” or product/project manager to lead the standards review, though this is a matter of individual team culture and process. Reviews may at times reveal that the standards should be revised (see below).

Revisit. A standards document should be considered a “living document” and not a one-time affair. Technologies and business goals change over time, as do user needs. It’s sensible to periodically revisit the standards and ensure they reflect the most current vision and realities of the product and its audience.

Indoctrinate. If team members are added be sure to include standards discussion and documentation as part of the ramp-up process. If it helps, think of it as a very mild and beneficial form of brainwashing.

Creating and applying visual standards needn’t be especially complex or time-consuming. Best of all it can result in big payoffs:

• Greater consistency (different screens look like they belong to the same site/application)
• Easier and faster to produce the product (everyone’s on the same page; less confusion)
• Fewer fixes  (reduced need to hunt down inconsistencies post-launch)
• Improved usability (users will find it easier to understand and use the interface if it’s consistent)

All that in return for a little attention to visual standards?

Seems like a good deal to me.

Photo by charlottel. Creative Commons licensed.

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Related posts:

1. Reduce costs and improve usability with visual standards, part 1
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices
3. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 3

Quick summary:  Lack of attention to visual standards usually leads to poor usability. In the first part of this two-part article we’ll look at the reasons visual standards are important, the hidden costs of ignoring them, and the reasons standards are often weak. In part two we’ll delve into ways to address these problems.

There’s often a strong correlation between the overall usability of an application or website and the degree to which it adheres to a set of visual standards.

Let’s start by defining the term. By “visual standards” I’m referring to placement and appearance of navigation, links, graphics and text. Visual standards can also relate to the sequence and flow of information within a display.

There are many other standards that affect usability such as copy writing and error messaging, but I’ll get to those in other articles.

In the design world visual standards are most often associated with appearance and placement of branding elements such as logos, type, and the use of color and layout. These elements certainly relate to usability but they’re a different aspect of what I’m addressing here.

Why visual standards affect usability… and your bottom line

Let’s look at the impact of visual standards on usability and user experience. Creating consistency in the appearance and placement of images, type, graphics, links and other important elements enables users to:

• Learn and understand displays and processes faster and more efficiently.
• Find information and navigation without the need to re-learn or “hunt” for similar links and information across multiple screens.
• Quickly determine what’s important (and what’s not) within a display – making it easier to focus on the links and information most critical to the task at hand.

These attributes have a strong impact on  ease of use, and often affect conversion and abandonment rates.

They also impact brand consistency and the reinforcement of  brand attributes.

Unfortunately companies sometimes overlook the degree to which visual standards affect the efficiency and cost of development, training and support. A lack of strong visual standards usually goes hand-in-hand with steeper learning curves and greater reliance upon training and support.  That can be very expensive!

Ultimately poor standards lead to a lower degree of user acceptance, lower levels of user satisfaction and higher implementation and support costs. They also increase the likelihood that the website or application will require costly re-work after initial release.

Why visual standards fail

If visual standards are this important then why doesn’t everyone get them right the first time?

There are many reasons, but just a handful of common themes. Do any of these sound familiar?

Standards are never created. When a product or website is in the planning or architecture stage, strong visual standards sometimes end up on the “nice to have” list rather than the “essential for launch” list. Or they’re included as a requirement but abandoned as production deadlines loom.

Standards are created but weak. In some cases visual standards are defined in a manner inadequate to the project – for example, too general or lacking concrete examples. Or standards may be specific but have significant gaps. This can force team members to guess about look and placement of information and navigation.

Standards are created but not enforced or updated. Sometimes visual standards are defined for the first release of a product or website, but the team strays from them over time. This can happen for any of several reasons:

• No one is given the responsibility to review and enforce adherence to the standards.
• When new members join the team they may not be aware of the standards or may not take them seriously.
• A shifting business landscape necessitates changes and the standards are again given “nice to have” status.
• The product changes but the standards aren’t revisited. Thus the visual standards no longer reflect the needs and realities of the product.

There are conflicting standards. Visual standards often suffer when there are multiple teams operating independently of one another. Sometimes language barriers complicate project communication. A lack of communication between teams on the same product can cause multiple standards to emerge – especially if the project and product management isn’t centralized.

Sounds like a recipe for trouble doesn’t it?

It is, but there are a number of steps you can take to avoid these problems or resolve them if you’ve already got them.

In part two of this article we’ll examine methods and considerations for creating visual standards. We’ll also look at ways to ensure they’re applied in a way that will support user goals and improve usability.

Photo by charlottel. Creative Commons licensed.

Related posts:

1. Reduce costs and improve usability with visual standards, part 2
2. Store locator usability: problems and best practices
3. Store locator usability: problems and best practices, part 2

Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics

John S. Rhodes
2009

This is a very different type of user experience book. In “Selling Usability” John Rhodes explores ways in which a UX professional – or anyone wishing to push a UX agenda – can instill user experience concepts and activities into a company using a “bottom up” approach. It’s an interesting topic and one very much worthy of attention.

User experience activities are misunderstood and/or under prioritized in many companies. Rhodes seeks to provide the reader a set of tactics – subtle and otherwise – to help establish UX as a priority within organizations.

The book covers many approaches for this, and quite a lot of ground; however there are two themes I felt were particularly notable:

1. The need to communicate UX in terms of its impact on the bottom line. Rhodes explains that most UX people focus on techniques and activities, rather than the positive impact they can have on business performance. This of course is a mistake. In one section Rhodes gives an example of a UX employee explaining the results of a recent user study and gives an example of more productive language and framing:

“What you should say: ‘We know that customers can’t figure out how to enter discount codes on our web site. I reviewed this with our sales team; we’re losing about $24k per month. They also indicated that we’re at risk of losing 10% of our customers permanently. I spoke with the design team and we can fix this problem for $80k.’”

2. Avoiding jargon and communicating about UX in familiar lanugage. Rhodes points out that it’s easy to fall into the trap of communicating in UX industry language, instead of the language of the peers and stakeholders you’re trying to reach. As he puts it,

“It is imperative to simplify your language in discussions about user experience with people who aren’t familiar with it. Like it or not, UX isn’t the easiest concept to grasp and the research techniques take a little time to explain.”

These two themes – which appear throughout the book – make it worth the read alone, as they’re critical to dialog that establishes UX as a catalyst for business success.

Rhodes writes in chapter two,

“Before you say or do anything regarding UX, think about what it means to the bottom line. Modify your language to be more in line with the true intentions of the business.”

“Selling Usability” also food for thought on ways that building relationships within an organization helps drive a UX agenda.

Rhodes also includes a number of clever ideas such as volunteering to take meeting notes or edit presentations and project documents so as to ensure that UX discussion gets included.

Chapters in the book are fairly short, making it easy to pick up and put down as time allows. Each chapter closes with a quick summary of the main points; it’s a nice touch.

“Selling Usability” also includes some ideas that I found interesting but worthy of debate. For example in chapter 15 “Getting Into the Quality Clubhouse” Rhodes discusses the similarities between quality assurance and UX initiatives. He goes on to suggest that UX can be piggybacked onto QA in some companies. I don’t doubt this is possible sometimes, though my own view is that placing UX too close to QA risks the company misunderstanding the role of UX and deeming it a final check before a product is completed, as opposed to an integral part of concept, design, and production. I’ve worked with a few companies in which “user acceptance testing” (essentially last-minute QA) and usability were placed into the same category; this is not a good scenario for a UX professional or advocate.

There are a few things about the book I felt could have been improved:

• I wonder if the title could more effectively communicate the thrust of the book. “Selling usability from within” for example would differentiate the more general topic of selling usability and usability ROI from Rhodes’ book which is more about injecting UX into an organization. That said, the themes I mentioned above (focusing on bottom-line results; communicating in business terms) are just as important to selling UX from the outside of a company as it is from within.

• I was a little uncomfortable with several generalizations about professionals. For example on page 94 Rhodes likens designers to peacocks and writes,

“They live and die based on the praise that others lavish on them… they need to know that they are needed and loved.”

That statement may well resonate with anyone who’s ever worked with an artist but it seems a bit uncharitable. I’ve worked with many designers and other artists in my time; certainly some are fueled by ego and praise. But I’m not quite ready to put them all into the same basket (case). Admittedly I may have misunderstood the author’s intent with those passages.

Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics is a good read, and will be especially useful for those wishing to plant the seeds of usability and user experience within their organization.

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