Fresh Ideas

goodUXdesign

Good User Experience is a Must

By on March 9, 2012 in Design, Fresh Idea, Usability with No Comments

It is no longer a nice to have when it comes to having a website as a business owner. It is necessary for every large and small business to have a professionally designed and developed website. However, it is not only a necessity to have a website but it must have a good user experience.

A good user experience is the difference between a potential customer finding your site and within 2 seconds clicking the back button or that same customer finding your site and browsing your products and services and filling out your contact form to learn more. The goal of every website should be to help the site visitor learn more about your brand. If that is your services or products, they need to be easy to find and easy to navigate. The longer you have that site visitor on your site the better chances they will use you for what they are looking for.

What a Bad User Experience Looks Like

There are millions of websites on the intranet and many of those sites have a bad user experience that turn potential customers away on a daily basis. The things that turn users away are:

  • Confusing navigation
  • Long forms with poorly labeled field
  • No images and lack of content
  • Poor design and layout

Here is a great example of what a poor user experience looks like. Please click the image and enjoy. I would recommend not buying a car from this site as it might not turn up as you expect.

What a Good User Experience Looks Like

Many of the most popular websites like; Facebook.com, Apple.com, Amazon.com, Zappos.com,  have large design teams that are testing the site on a daily basis. They test every button and every flow of the forms that help sell the products and services they offer on a daily basis.The focus of those design teams is to create a good user experience so that the potential customers will engage, learn and get things done. The things they design for are:

  • Clear and easy navigation
  • Short forms that are quick to fill out
  • Many images and great content
  • Professional design and clean layout

Here is a great example of good user experience. Apple uses a clean design with simple navigation and great content. When I design my clients websites these are the items I strive for in every project.

Find Out if your Site Has Good User Experience

There are a couple different ways to find out how well your site does in regards to user experience; survey site visitors, run usability tests and analyze site traffic. With my focus as a User Experience (UX) Designer I recommend all those tools in helping create a user friendly websites but the most important is hiring a design team that focuses on good user experience.

Please contact me if you are interested in creating a better user experience on your website or if you need me to run your current site through my User Experience Checklist.

continue-button

The $300 Million Dollar Continue Button

By on December 13, 2011 in Fresh Idea with No Comments

Jared Spool is one of the most revered usability professionals in the business today. He is a top-rated speaker, faculty at the Tufts University Gordon Institute and founded the very popular usability firm, User Interface Engineering. Of of his many articles the one that stands out the most is his story of “The $300 Million Button.”

In this article he tells of a major retailer that used his company to conduct usability testing. With testing they found that in the checkout process after the user click “checkout” they were met with a simple form that asked them to login if they were a returning customer or register if they were a new customer. The forms design was very simple yet when they tested it the users found it to be obtrusive. It caused them to bailout of their purchase because of the added steps.

So the designers made a simple change taking away the “register” button and adding a “continue” button with the instructional test: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.

With the change of this page and adding the “continue” button the number of customers went up by 45%. It also, resulted in an extra $15 million the first month and by the end of the major retailer saw an additional $300 million.

If only every button we designers design could give us the return like this button.

facebook-timeline

Digging the new Facebook Timeline

By on November 12, 2011 in Fresh Idea, Social with No Comments

I have been trying out the new Facebook Timeline profile and it is awesome! It is a digital scrapbook that you can easily jump back into time to view your life on Facebook. I have been a Facebook fan since 2001 so I have a bunch of content out there. I jumped back 2 years ago to find that i posted many photos of my oldest son being born. Then I scrolled up and saw the transition of him from a baby to what he is now – a crazy 3yr old toddler. I can now discover the events that I might have been attending and the history of my life in a very unique way.

The large cover has to be the coolest thing ever. I was a MySpace user before and peoples pages just started to look horrible with all the customizations they would make. This new cover now gives you the ability to change your profile in a big way without hindering the usability of the site. One large image to really tell everyone all about yourself.

Sharing your life now has a meaning because you want to save it to your history and look back at it to see where you were a year ago or even 10 years ago.Now when I upload photos I can star them and it will make them standout more on my page. Photos will be so great on the new profile.

The other night I watched an interview with Founder Mark Zuckerberg and it was cool to hear how Facebook is not trying to take everything over, they are trying to partner with other companies to offer more on the site in ways to share. He talked about sharing with your friends is a better experience. You start to enjoy thing more when you can share it.

The new Timeline will bring more apps that connect to Spotify, Netflix, Nike, Kobo and many others.Share movies, songs and recent purchases. There will be so many more activities shared through Facebook and it will be in a scrapbook to go back in time to view.

dc-newsite

New Design! DaltonCreative.com

By on November 7, 2011 in Design, Fresh Idea with No Comments

I am proud to announce the launch of a completely rebuilt and redesigned website. DaltonCreative.com is a collection of my latest work. My focus is creating user-friendly websites, applications and designing marketing solutions that create results.

My new site has brand new work and more information on the process and will provide fresh ideas on all the upcoming design trends.

Please contact me by filling out my contact form. Let me know if I can help you on your next project.