by Lidia Balio | Feb 24, 2021 | Customer Experience, Usability Testing, UX
Should I usability test my website? This is a question many business owners ask themselves at various points. If you offer products or services to customers through your website, the answer is a definite: “yes.” Below we’ll explain how usability testing all the technologies your company uses, including your website, can hugely benefit your customers, and ultimately your bottom line.
What Is Usability Testing?
In short, usability.gov defines usability testing as:
evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users.
So, usability testing is a way of exploring how useful a product or service is to your customers, in other words. Why do this?
When conducting usability testing, your goal is to assess usability, which Jakob Nielsen defines as:
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.
Your business has a lot of touchpoints that customers use to purchase your product or service. These may include:
Usability testing can help you assess how easy all these touchpoints are to use. Can customers quickly and easily access and use each one in order to learn about your company, learn about your products and services, and make a purchase?
If you haven’t tested your company’s technologies, you can’t be sure what the answer to this question is. And if you aren’t sure how easy your technologies are to use, can you be sure they’re as easy to use as those of your competition?
And above all: your website is often the first thing that a potential client, customer, or user sees that represents your organization, who you are, and what you have to offer. Your website is also a gateway to help those people access the other technologies that your company offers, such as mobile apps, software, and other solutions.
Reason #1 Why You Should Usability Test Your Website: Your Company’s Credibility
One of the primary reasons that you should consider usability testing your company’s technologies is the impact that poor usability can have on your company’s credibility.
In a recent survey that asked, “Would you buy from a company that has a poorly designed, hard to navigate, or outdated website?” a staggering 85.8% of respondents said no.
If an overwhelming number of prospective customers find your website off-putting and immediately leave your website for a competitor’s, the hope that those customers will ever purchase from you greatly diminishes. Doing a usability test of your company’s website can help you figure out what problems your current design layout or content poses, and where improvements can be made. Fixing these issues means more people will want to stay on your site and browse through the other products and services that you offer.
You not only improve the design and experience of people on your website, but improve your company’s credibility as well.
Reason #2 Why You Should Usability Test Your Website: You Don’t Need That Many Test Users
One of the common misconceptions that stops a lot of companies from doing usability testing is the belief that you need to test with hundreds or thousands of people.
That is simply not the case!
In fact, in order to find a vast majority of the errors that your website may have, you only need to test with about 5 users, especially if you plan on conducting multiple tests. 5 users can help you find approximately 85% of usability problems facing your website, and if there are major problems that exist, fixing that 85% can drastically improve the usability of your website and the perception of potential clients and customers. If your company offers a wide range of products and services and thus has a very wide-ranging customer base, however, you may want to test about with 3-4 users per customer group.
Our only caution with testing is that in order for it to truly be successful you need to test with people outside of your company. As Craig Tomlin cautions, you want to avoid any bias you have in testing your own website. People that work for your company may already know where things are, how things work, and may give you “false positives” that things are working well on your website. If you test with people external to your site, with those people who are truly coming to your company in search of a product or service, you’ll get a much better understanding of what is working or not working.
Reason #3 Why You Should Usability Test Your Website: Usability Testing Can Be Cost-Effective
Another misconception about usability testing is that it can be expensive to complete, even if you’re only testing 5 people. However, this is another misconception.
One of our favorite techniques in usability testing is what is referred to as Lean UX, a process meant for quick and efficient usability testing. Lean UX focuses on 3 main goals or stages:
If we focus on testing with small groups of users, and doing multiple tests, we can more quickly and efficiently gain insight into what is working or not working on our website. We take our design, get our test users, and test it, and then take what we learn and refine our design. Then we keep going through that process until we’re satisfied we’ve solved the problems with our design.
Going through this Lean UX cycle throughout the process of building or redesigning your website rather than at the end when it’s finished can help you spot a lot of problems or issues early on and can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in billable hours or potential lost revenue.
by Lidia Balio | Feb 17, 2021 | E-Commerce, Strategy
Looking for ways to get started with multichannel e-commerce? Maybe you’ve heard this term online and are wondering what it refers to. Maybe you’ve done some e-commerce over a few channels and want to leverage additional ones.
And, of course, it is without a doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way we do business. The real secret, though, is that most businesses should be using e-commerce to improve their customer retention.
If you haven’t explored it, multichannel e-commerce may be anxiety-provoking. However, business owners can follow some simple practices that will lead them down the right path toward making e-commerce a core part of how they do business. If you’re looking to integrate multichannel e-commerce into your core business plan, or just trying to learn more about it before taking the leap, take note of our 3 ways to get started with multichannel e-commerce, below.
Way #1 to Get Started With Multichannel E-commerce: Establish a Third-Party Storefront
Large online retailers like Amazon.com, Ebay, Walmart, and Etsy welcome business owners (from solo entrepreneurs to leaders of international corporations) to sell products and services on their websites. For business owners who are new to e-commerce, there are numerous advantages to setting up shops on these platforms. The most obvious advantage is that these third-party websites are established in e-commerce and draw a lot of traffic. Also, these companies rely on business owners setting up storefronts on their websites as part of their core business models; they each have relatively easy ways to onboard businesses into their e-commerce structure.
Of course, setting up a storefront on any of these third-party websites is not free. Business owners who use third-party websites must pay these websites as part of doing business, whether it be subscription fees, referral fees, listing fees, closing fees, or the like.
Additionally, there is no guarantee that a business will make a profit from being on a third-party website. With an increasing number of businesses selling on third-party websites, some businesses prosper while others fail to gain traction. For business owners, it is worth evaluating the benefits and costs of having a storefront on a third-party website, as well as having a sound strategy for optimizing their ecommerce storefront.
Way #2 to Get Started With Multichannel E-commerce: Build Your Own Storefront
It is increasingly common for businesses to have their own website. However, business websites often serve as online billboards that advertise physical locations. Relatively few business websites have built-in ecommerce. For some, the prospect of managing online transactions on their own can seem daunting. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions for websites that business owners can take advantage of when creating ecommerce on their websites.
For example, business owners who have a WordPress website can easily integrate WooCommerce, an open-source e-commerce platform, into their website. Although WooCommerce (when using premium features) can cost more than other e-commerce platforms that integrate into templated websites (like Shopify and Wix), it is much more customizable.
Business owners can also take a more traditional approach to e-commerce by listing products and services on their own website (allowing for a shop cart feature) and redirecting final checkout to a third-party payment website (such as Paypal). Although Paypal is a trusted vendor, there are fees (transaction and flat) per cost of the transaction. Additionally, customers must also be comfortable with two different business vendors having access to their personal information when they use Paypal to pay a third-party business. Though there are costs to integrating e-commerce into custom websites, business owners build their online appeal by taking more control over their e-commerce.
Way #3 to Get Started With Multichannel E-commerce: Drive Leads With Social Media
Business owners should not overlook using social media for e-commerce. However, businesses should be strategic in choosing social media platforms: different social media platforms attract different consumer groups. For example, Snapchat is currently a great platform for engaging teens and young adults. If targeting middle-aged adults and seniors, business owners are better off creating an online presence on Facebook. When considering selling to other businesses, LinkedIn should be a top choice. These varied platforms also often require platform-specific means of advertising. Especially if business owners are invested in DIY advertising on these platforms to decrease costs, they need to be well-versed in how to create effective advertising on these platforms to generate interest, cultivate leads, and drive traffic to their e-commerce websites.
Or Give Our All-in-One Solution a Try
Do you need help in crafting a multichannel e-commerce strategy for your business? Do you lack the time or human resources to make multichannel e-commerce a reality for your business? Are you simply bewildered by all the requirements?
Contact us through the link below to talk about our all-in-one multichannel e-commerce solution.
by Lidia Balio | Feb 3, 2021 | Business Process, Documentation, Operations
If you haven’t done it before, you might find documenting business processes to be very tedious. This task, however, is also very necessary, especially as your business grows.
Just think about all the business processes that have to occur every day to keep your company running. They might include, according to Simplicable:
The specific ways you carry out the day-to-day operations of your business will depend on your goals, of course, but the point is: there are a lot of things you need to do to keep your business running, not to mention flourishing!
At this point you might be thinking: okay, sure, but I know how to do all those things. I know how to run my company. I’ve been doing it for X number of years!
The question, though, is: do other people you work with know your company as well as you do? Remember, running a company is a team effort. The real reason to document your business process is so that others can help you achieve your goals: partners, stakeholders, employees, etc. Below are three reasons why you should be documenting your business processes and some potential consequences of not doing so.
Reason #1 For Documenting Business Processes: Avoiding Confusion
The first reason to document your business processes is to avoid confusion. No matter how your company is structured, whether it’s a small group of five people or a large corporation with multiple departments: your team will spend at least some of their time confused if you don’t have key processes written down.
This is never more true than when onboarding a new team member, which is an essential activity if you want to grow. Whether they’re your new IT manager or a customer service rep, if they start out without documentation of their responsibilities, key workflows, and other important information, they’ll have to learn all of this on their own!
From the employee side, this typically feels like a lack of training, which is one of the #1 reasons for employee turnover. And you can only cram so much information into that 2-day or 5-day orientation. They’re going to need a reference guide to fulfill their duties! And if they don’t have it, they will be confused until they figure out how to operate, which will cost you time, productivity, and money.
The opposite of confusion, of course, is clarity. When team members are crystal clear on the goals they need to achieve and the best way to achieve them, then they perform better! They also need to learn to operate on their own, however, which means they need documentation they can reference in their day-to-day.
Reason #2 For Documenting Business Processes: Avoiding Waste
Another important reason to document all your business processes is to avoid waste. Waste happens in a business when people put forth efforts that don’t result in positive outcomes. Imagine if individual salespeople in your company use a sub-optimal method of getting sales from customers. Now magnify that by your entire sales team. Will your sales increase or decrease?
You don’t want individual team members wasting their time, which is one of your most valuable resources. Highly-trained professionals don’t come cheap. If you’re paying them to waste time, then you’re also wasting money.
The opposite of waste, is, of course, efficiency. If your IT manager understands how to maintain all your business technologies in the most efficient way possible, that frees him or her up to focus on the important thing: business growth. The human brain can only retain so much information, however, which is why documentation was invented: to hold the information we need to reference to perform a task better.
Reason #3 For Documenting Business Processes: Avoiding Redundancy
One final reason for documenting business processes is avoiding redundancy. Redundancy happens a lot in many different types of businesses when individual team members replicate the efforts of other team members. This can happen especially in the realm of customer service. Whatever kind of product or service your business delivers, this product or service has to go through many hands before it reaches the customer. And even after the customer purchases it, you probably have a separate support team in case the customer experiences problems.
But how do you know that all these people are working harmoniously to produce the best experience for the customer? Documentation can help with this process by informing individual team members as to their part in the greater whole. If individual team members understand not only their specific duties, but how these duties contribute to the overall customer experience, they are much more likely to meet and exceed your expectations.
We’ve been continually surprised over the years by how many of our clients “wing it,” using meetings, emails, and other temporary forms of communication to keep their team members in the loop. If you talk to anyone who has grown a business to a large scale, however, they understand the power of documentation.
Unless you want to spend significant time orienting confused employees, ensuring individual team members are on-task, and trying to figure out if different parts of your company are working at cross-purposes, you need quality documentation that can provide a crystal clear understanding of all your core business processes to every member of your team.
Recent Comments