PRWD

With so many persuasive design techniques available, which are the really influential ones that you should focus attention on? That may be one of your thoughts if you started considering the full spectrum of persuasive design techniques available that you can use to persuade visitors to buy online.

This topic is what I’ll be presenting on at Conversion Conference London 2012 if you’d like to know more. Oh and use PRWD12 to get 15% off the ticket price.

To satisfy my personal desire to continually understand consumers and the decisions they make, I spend a lot (read 100’s of hours) of time either moderating or observing user testing sessions. Based on the fact that around 90% of our clients are retailers, most of these sessions are focussed on understanding buying triggers, motivators and behaviour.

In this article I’ve highlighted 5 of the most influential techniques that persuade visitors to buy online. I have to give credit to www.getmentalnotes.com for providing the clarity of explanations which I have used for each of the techniques. If you’ve hadn’t already I suggest you go and get some –

Quick tip – retailers who are having the most success with these techniques are those that combine multiple of these techniques during their online user journey. See Booking.com & ASOS as 2 exceptional examples of this in practice.

Scarcity

We infer value in something that has limited availability or is promoted as being scarce

Limited Duration

Given a choice between action and inaction, a limited time to respond increases the likelihood that people will buy

Social Proof

We tend to follow the patterns of similar people in new or familiar situations

Commitment & Consistency

Given a choice between action and inaction, a limited time to respond increases the likelihood that people will buy

Limited Choice

We’re more likely to make a choice when there are fewer options

BONUS – Delighters & Personality

We remember and respond favourably to small, un-expected pleasures

This 6th technique is currently extremely under-used amongst retailers. Not many online shopping experiences provide what I would say are un-expected pleasures through the browsing & buying journey. An example of how a retailer can do this is to provide a money off your next order or similar promotion on the order confirmation page. Based on the fact that hardly any retailers bother to do this, instead just providing the standard order details and typically not giving any reason to remember their experience, retailers that do give customers this un-expected but welcome offer make their experience more memorable.

This approach also utilises another technique, the peak-end rule.

Peak-end rule

We judge our past experiences almost entirely by their peaks, pleasant or unpleasant, and how they ended. If you would like to read about 1 site that encapsulate delighters, personality and the peak-end rule, read my article on the art of persuading visitors to buy by Lings Cars.

Useful links

Below are a number of links which you may be interested in having a look at:

• usability & persuasion resources – a full list of best practice articles, case studies & presentation on usability, persuasion & conversion best practice
• Lings Cars and the art of persuading visitors to buy – view article
• Improving conversion with best practice persuasive design from Booking.com – view article
• ASOS and their persuasive checkout experience – view article
• 8 online shopping behavioural traits of men – view article
• 9 valuable techniques to persuade visitors to buy in 2012 – view article

Moderated testing is a vital part of the PRWD toolbox. Time and time again it allows us to get great quality research, probing deeper in to users’ experiences, in order to understand the reasons behind their objections. This post outlines some of the things we’ve learned that will give you a great start or help you hone your moderating skills.

1. Create the right environment

Creating the right environment where participants can relax and feel comfortable is really important. Participants will never feel as comfortable in a lab settings as they do on the sofa in the comfort of their own home, or from their desk in work over a sandwich at lunchtime, but setting up the testing space correctly can at least put them at ease. A clinical white room with a harsh spotlight will make them think they’re in for some type of interrogation!

2. Ease them into the test with some broad questions

It’s widely know in research that after as little as 5-10 minutes of conversation test participants relax and become significantly less aware that they are being observed. Asking some more general questions about buying habits or previous experiences before visiting the website allows visitors to settle into the session and forget about being observed/recorded. As a by-product, the information from these questions can be used to build buying personas.

3. Speaking out loud instructions

Encouraging participants to share to share their thoughts by ‘thinking aloud’ and providing them with clear instructions at the start is crucial. In order to get the most out of the sessions it’s important that the participant shares their impressions and explains the decisions that they are making as they use the website.

4. Hold back when participants encounter problems

If participants start to struggle it’s important to fight the urge to jump in and help them or ask them questions before they have decided how they will proceed. It may be the case that with a little bit more time and searching they will find the solution themselves. This can lead to really valuable information about website user’s problem solving techniques. Do they use the help? FAQs? Keep searching? Or simply give up?!

5. You’re not the teacher

In a similar vein to the last point, but important enough to highlight it separately, some participants like to ask questions about how the website works. In these situations playing dumb is the best response. The example below shows how you can keep the user on task without giving them the answers.

Participant:            Has that added to my basket?

Moderator:             I don’t know, why don’t you see if you can find out?

This will test how easily users can find the information that they need and when they need it.

6. Ask open questions

I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before, but as a qualitative research method, we’re looking for deep, rounded responses. Questions that lead to ‘Yes or No’ answers don’t give any information about motives or what influenced the decision. Often, simply adding ‘why, why not’ to questions will encourage users to start analysing the triggers used in decision-making. For example:

“Would you have purchased any of the products that you selected today? Why/Why not?”

7. Uncover users expectations

This technique should be used sparingly, but can be really powerful. Sometimes when moderating, if we are aware of a specific issue or area ripe for improvement we will ask users to pause briefly before they reach that stage and tell us what they expect to see next. For example,

Moderator: “Before you move on to the next page, can you tell me what you expect to see on a basket page/address details page etc.”

Hopefully, you will have picked up a few useful new tips. Please share any additional tips in the comments.

One of my trusted and well respected industry peers, Craig Sullivan, has done a very good (and concise) job of summarising the benefits of usability testing and split testing for organisations in this short 3 minute video for Econsultancy.

A few key comments he makes are:

The higher up you go in an organisation, the less chance they have of guessing right… even the best user experience experts may be 60/70% at best

Testing removes ego and opinion from our work

The website isn’t for me, it isn’t being designed for me, and the choices that I would make as a consumer are not what our customers are making.

and my favourite quote…

The website and decision making should be put in the hands of your visitors, and this is a real sea change for organisations that get behind this kind of testing plan. It means they stop making silly decisions and start making decisions based on cold hard facts from consumer behaviour.

A few useful links on Craig…

• Craig’s brief bio and upcoming talk at Jump 2012
• Craig’s slideshare profile, which contains some fantastic presentation decks
• Craig’s twitter stream, well, well worth following – @optimiseordie
  

Our Ferbruary Newsletter below provides an update of our recent work with clients Hitachi and AllSaints, along with some useful links to a recent presentation I have delivered on conversion optimisation.

In-house Training with Hitachi

I’ve recently had the pleasure of delivering our usability and user experience training course to the Hitachi team in Manchester. The full press release can be seen here, which includes comments that I’m really proud of such as this one below.

“I searched high and low for a reputable company to provide guidance and training to my team in order to further bolster our capabilities around ‘User Centric Design’. I became aware Paul’s company PRWD and was immediately impressed with the level of expertise and reference able collateral on show on their website. It was a no brainer for me; being local was also a major plus point as there is clearly a lack of expertise in this field north of London. Paul proved invaluable on the day as he led us through ‘idea after idea’ in which we could improve our services to our clients. His knowledge of the subject was clear for all to see and his approach to training very professional.”

Taz Ali, Creative Services Manager

Remote User Testing for AllSaints

Also in the last month we have been working with the AllSaints team to deliver a range of invaluable user insights, using our partner company Whatusersdo to provide the remote testing videos. The AllSaints e-commerce platform is developed and maintained in-house, and no sooner had we presented back the findings and recommended user experience improvements, they set about starting to plan in development time to. At the time of writing the first site improvements are due live in the next few days, with more to follow in early March. Below are some comments from AllSaints on the project.

“I have been very impressed with the user testing service PRWD have provided, from initiation through to delivery.

The insights that we gained from the users have been valuable, but what made the project a particular success was what Paul brought to the table. Without his considerable experience we would never have created the right scenarios for the users, or indeed have been able to glean the right information from the videos.”

Stuart McMillan, E-commerce Operations Manger at AllSaints

Lings Cars and the art of persuading visitors to buy

This truly is a fascinating site, one that generates sales of £35m per year, yet on first viewing is one of the most insane, wacky and unbelievable site designs that you will find.

I’ve recently published an article on Econsultancy examining how they employ a wide range of persuasive techniques to deliver their proposition and engage visitors for conversion. The comments are well worth viewing too, which include some extremely valuable insights from Ling Valentine who owns and runs the website.

Presentation – Applied Techniques for Conversion Rate Optimisation

I’ve recently spoke at the monthly Northern User Experience session, with a talk dedicated to sharing customer insights and some performance improvements for some of the main conversion rate optimisation techniques we use when working with our clients, particularly retailers.

View full details and the slides for Applied Techniques for Conversion Rate Optimisation

I’ve recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Internet Retailing Conference 2011 in London in one of the 8 workshops that took place.

I was invited to speak by one of our partners, remote usability testing service WhatUsersDo. I chose to speak about remote and moderated usability testing. Below the slides is a list of useful links providing tips and best practice about usability testing, whether moderated or remote.

My slides below look in particular at:

• how important is usability testing?
• a comparison of moderated & remote usability testing
• what business questions can usability testing answer?
• plus in the workshop I carried out a moderated test session with one of the attendees

Useful links on usability testing

• 67 questions usability testing can answer
• User Testing 101 – Good, Better, Best Approaches
• 5 Tips When Conducting User Research
• Lab Based User Testing – Objectives, Methodology, Deliverables
• The business benefits of user testing
• 9 women x 9 hours = 9 usability insights
• Conversion rate optimisation tips and best practice articles
• How Appliances Online increased sales by 9.5% through usability testing
• How Speedy gained strategic business insights through usability testing
• MMU’s fully featured usability testing lab in Manchester

Over the last few months we have spent a considerable amount of time working with Speedy. We have carried out 3 projects, 2 usability evaluations (including some remote user testing with our partner WhatUsersDo) and a comprehensive moderated user testing project.

Following the projects we have published a very comprehensive press release, titled ‘Speedy Services choose PRWD to provide strategic customer insights‘.

What I wanted to do here is pull out the range of extremely satisfying testimonials that senior members of the Speedy team have provided following the delivery of the projects.

Speedy Assist Usability Evaluation and Remote User Testing

“The usability evaluation project Paul has conducted for Speedy Assist has given invaluable recommendations to help improve site conversion and user experience. The resulting report was very detailed, professionally presented and well received across the business.”
Dave Clarke, Digital Marketing Manager at Speedy Services

“Paul has clear and specific expertise which he is able to bring to bear in very efficient and effective way. The turnaround and quality of this work was exceptional.”
John Byrne, Product Development Director at Speedy Services

“The recommendations made by Paul were clear and concise, highlighting quick wins that would make an immediate impact on performance.”
Jenny Cain, Project and Operational Manager for Speedy Assist

Speedy Services Usability Evaluation

“The usability evaluation project Paul has conducted for Speedy Services has provided great insights into the site usage issues and recommendations for improvement.”

The report findings show that the project was conducted with a high degree of detail and Paul’s experience in usability is clear in the design and page structure recommendations that were made. The actions taken on the back of this project are likely to make a significant impact on the site performance and the brand perception of Speedy.”
Dave Clarke, Digital Marketing Manager at Speedy Services

“After developing our new e-commerce site over an 18 month period, PRWD helped us view it with a fresh pair of eyes and route out issues we were not aware of, and also demonstrated the impact of the issues that we did know about.”

“We have received a very comprehensive write up of the site, including suggestions with a RAG indicator on each item. We are now in the process of drawing up our first development plans based on this feedback and have a clear mandate on how to improve the site over the coming months.”
Sue Raby, Technical Project Manager at Speedy Services

Speedy Services Moderated Usability Testing

“The user testing sessions have been essential in assessing whether Speedy Services’ investment in our online services meet with customer expectations. The testing sessions were professionally planned and moderated, and it was reassuring to hear first hand that many of our developments had created real customer engagement.”

“However it was some key comments raised by users that gave the greatest insight. We have already started implementing PRWD’s recommendations based on these points that will allow us to improve elements of content and online processes. This is something we would not have been able to do without conducting this activity with PRWD.”
Dave Clarke, Digital Marketing Manager at Speedy Services

“There was clearly a lot of work put into the usability testing. The scenario planning meeting was well structured, and the testing sessions were well run.”

“The recommendations were detailed and well presented, and the video footage of customer comments provides a rich source of direct feedback. I would definitely recommend using PRWD for this kind of study.”
Jenny Fellows, UK Operations Marketing Manager

We’ve just sent out our Christmas newsletter to our subscribers, and rather than send through the usual Christmas image we thought we would send through a few images which represent alot of what we have been doing in 2010 and most certainly what we’ll be doing in 2011. Enjoy!

In case you are wondering we have used these images in both event presentations and for blog posts for Econsultancy…

Leading Horses To Water and Getting Them To Drink

As you know we’re all about getting more visitors who come to a website to do what you want them to…

Evaluating, Testing and Optimising

As well as providing expert evaluations we’ll be delivering split testing and multi-variate testing – cranking up those all important conversion rates and helping our clients get a better return on their marketing spend

Guerilla User Testing

When we’re not carrying out lab user testing projects we’ll be doing guerilla style user testing to keep costs down

Listening To Users

Whether through user testing or user research we’ll be making sure our clients customers don’t feel like they’re shouting at a brick wall

Segmenting Traffic

Critical to understanding the true performance and conversion rate of websites, we will be helping more clients truly understand their site performance through traffic segmentation

Saving Money By Saving Time

We’ll be working with more clients who want to improve the efficiency of their applications and business systems to save time and money. We’ll be working with one of our partners, specialist user experience and technology agency Sigma, to deliver these types of projects.

I hope you have a fantastic Christmas and prosperous New Year!

Paul Rouke
Head of Usability at PRWD

Web usability agency PRWD have helped launch the new usability testing laboratory at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).

PRWD were the first company to use the facility for a commercial usability testing project, and were subsequently asked to help officially launch the facilities and speak at the launch event on Wednesday 24th November 2010.

Head of Usability Paul Rouke commented:

“The launch of MMU’s user testing facility in the heart of Manchester is excellent news for PRWD and for North West based businesses. We have tended to carry out usability testing projects in London due to the range of test facilities available, but now with the first commercially available laboratory in Manchester we expect to be carrying out more projects right on our doorstep.”

“The facilities available at MMU are of the highest quality, and its fantastic news for us and our clients that we have access to a range of cutting edge observation and analysis tools. I firmly believe that as companies, particularly retailers, focus more efforts and budget on usability and customer experience, facilities such as these at MMU will be more sought after.”

The laboratory is perfectly placed to support the design, development and assessment of a wide range software and hardware. It can support focus group based design, full user experience and usability analysis, eye tracking and user-centred design processes.

Louise Richards, Head of Division of Digital Media & Entertainment Technology at MMU, commented:

“PRWD are highly respected usability and user experience experts with a portfolio of household names as clients. They are natural partners for MMU and we have been only too pleased to develop our collaborations in evaluation, testing and research.”

“MMU has a fantastic user experience facility with the very best equipment which benefits our students and staff directly through industry relevant teaching and research. We provide academic expertise, insight and objectivity for a variety of evaluations, both simple and complex, and through commercial partners such as PRWD we are highly attuned to industry priorities.”

The launch event for the usability laboratory was a huge success, with over 60 people attending from a wide range of industries and disciplines who were all keen to find out more about the facilities and how they could benefit from usability focused services.

For more information, or to speak to the team, contact:

Paul Rouke at PRWD
Tel: 0161 228 0585
Email: paulrouke @ prwd.co.uk

For more information about MMU’s usability laboratory please contact:
Louise Richards
Tel: 0161 247 1668
Email: usabilitylab@mmu.ac.uk

Notes to editors

PRWD was established in 2006 and they specialise in usability. They provide usability testing, expert usability evaluations and conversion optimisation services to clients throughout the UK. Clients include Speedo, Lakeland, The Scout Association, Isabella Oliver and Speedy Hire.

Web usability consultancy PRWD

Manchester Metropolitan University is a leading university for the professions and a powerful driver of the North West economy.

MMU educates and trains large numbers of the region’s legal and business professionals, teachers, health workers and creative professionals. The University enjoys an excellent reputation for teaching, applied research and project work with its communities and the North West, nationally and internationally. It is currently investing almost £300 million in its estate and facilities.

MMU Website

At PRWD we are delighted to confirm that Manchester finally had its own fully featured user testing laboratory available for commercial projects.

User testing (or usability testing) is one of our primary services that we provide our clients, and we tend to carry out the testing in London where there are superb user testing facilities. Although there are user research facilities in Manchester, its fantastic news for PRWD and North West based businesses that Manchester now has its very own user testing laboratory. In addition this is great news for retailers who will benefit from having user testing carried out in Manchester rather than the capital or other test facilities in the UK, of which there are very few, ensuring test participants can be sourced from the capital of the North.

Location of Manchester’s Usability Testing Lab

The new user testing laboratory is located at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) on Oxford Road. The lab location means that it is within 5 minutes walking distance from Oxford Road train station as well as the network of tram lines running through Manchester city centre.
The full address is: MMU Usability Laboratory, John Dalton Building E148, Chester Street, M1 5GD Manchester

Facilities at MMU’s Usability Laboratory

The MMU user testing lab provides all the facilities needed to carry out a range of user testing projects, and there has been significant investment in equipment which provides a wide range of insights into user behaviour and feelings as they are interacting with websites, games and other media.

The lab is set up with full video camera capture of all user behaviour, using Noldus Observer XT data capture and analysis. MMU have also invested further in an eye tracker plus physiological data capture such as heart rate to measure engagement/excitement etc.

Eye Tracking Facilities

Eye tracking adds important information to observational studies. Eye movements reflect emotions and cognitive processes, which add extra value to your research. The Noldus Observer® XT allows you to analyze the eye tracker’s video output and enables you to record the context in which the eye movements occurred.

• Analyze eye tracking videos
• Relate mental processes to behavior
• Synchronous display of behavior, gaze data, and video
• Analyze the combination of behavior and gaze data
• Discover that additional modalities are possible

View full details of eye tracker and the benefits

More Information Usability Testing

• PRWD’s usability testing services
• MMU’s Usability Testing Laboratory Facility
• Business Benefits of Usability/User Testing
• PRWD’s expert usability evaluation services
• PRWD Case Study – Usability Testing for Fashion Retailer Isabella Oliver
• PRWD Case Study – User Testing for The Hyde Group Intranet Diagnostic Project

Are You Looking for Usability Testing Services?

If so contact Paul Rouke at PRWD on 0161 228 0585. You can also find more details about PRWD’s usability testing services as well as our expert usability evaluation service.

Having being the first company to use Manchester Metropolitan Universities User Testing Lab facility for commercial purposes (we carried out a user testing project for a well known highstreet retailer of homewares) we were absolutely delighted to be asked to help launch the lab. Full details of the laboratory and the launch party are below:

The Usability Laboratory at MMU

The Usability Laboratory at Manchester Metropolitan University is a unique facility, designed to capture and analyse human behaviour as we interact with a host of technological devices including computers, mobile devices and video game consoles.

The benefits of this type of analysis include:

• an enhanced user experience
• streamlined design and development process
• improvements in efficiency and profitability

View more business benefits of user testing.

The Laboratory is perfectly placed to support the design, development and assessment of wide range software and hardware and can support:

• Focus group based design
• Full User Experience and Usability analysis
• Eye tracking (for Web site assessment etc)
• User Centred Design (including formative and summative assessment).

Those who might benefit from using the Laboratory include:

• digital media marketing companies
• web site developers
• video game developers
• those building business applications
• developing and designing technology based systems
• retailers (view a list of our blue chip clients)

Features of the Usability Laboratory

The Laboratory comprises an Observation Lounge and an Observation Suite. In order to make test users feel relaxed and comfortable, the Observation Lounge is designed to mimic the look and feel of a living room. There are the usual furnishings but with remote control cameras and microphones to capture user behaviour and facial expressions during evaluation sessions.

The video data is digitized in real-time, and observed behaviours, including user engagement measured using heart rate monitors, can be fed into the world leading Noldus Observer XT 10 behaviour analysis software.

There is a PC in the Laboratory which can be used to capture keyboard input and the space can also be used to capture interactions with games consoles such as Wii, Playstation and Xbox 360.

Eye Tracking

The remote eye tracking hardware (SMI RED 250) records a wide range of data from fixation point of the user’s gaze and pupil dilation to scan paths. BeGaze is used to analyse the output, for example definition of custom areas of interest and a wide range of statistics and the production of heat maps and other visual representations of the data.

Who Can Use The Usability Laboratory?

The Usability Laboratory is available for commercial hire with technical support and assistance from academics with usability analysis if required, for example to enhance objectivity.

Launch Party

At the Launch Party you will be able to see the Lab in action, hear about usability projects we are working on, meet and network with others interested in user experience and usability engineering and discuss future collaborations.
Paul Rouke, Head of Usability at manchester based usability agency PRWD, will be providing a 5 minute talk on the importance of usability testing and usability evaluations.

• When: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (GMT)
• Where: MMU Usability Laboratory, John Dalton Building E148, Chester Street, M1 5GD Manchester United Kingdom
• More Details: Call Paul at PRWD on 0161 228 0585

Are You Looking for Usability Testing Services?

If so contact Paul Rouke at PRWD on 0161 228 0585. You can also find more details about PRWD’s usability testing services as well as our expert usability evaluation service.