User Experience Design for Brands on the Web - So What?

Written by Russ on May 22, 2008 – 11:41 am

While the world is off bandwagoning on blog posts about Twitter and how much of an influence/frustration it is, I wanted to get back to the root of some things. I’ve been troubled a lot lately by just how bad it seems that web (online) experiences for brands are failing the consumers. The amount of money wasted on ignorance, well, I just don’t know.

As every good marketer should know–from Marketing 101–it is very important that you maintain a brand, or an extension of it. This means that you want people to not only use your product or service, but that you want them to see a benefit from it, and ultimately continue to use it in the future.

I think we should all agree that websites are an extension of any brand. Right?

Right.

Good. Now with that in mind, how do you maintain a website? (Let me make this clear right now: you don’t hire a webmaster and have him or her make updates for you or fix/update code or whatever. That’s not the right answer in this context.)

Since we know how to maintain a brand, then maintaining a website-the extension of our brand–the we know that we want to keep people coming back to it, keep them using it, attached to it, etc. Don’t forget me when I’m gone… (Thank you, Glass Tiger)

This seems pretty basic to me, and I’m a pretty basic guy. I’d expect that a range of people, from a VP of Marketing all the way down to First Year Marketing/Business Student, should be able to grasp it as well, right?

Right.

So, again, a website should be an extension of a brand, and we should constantly maintain the extension–just like we maintain the brand itself.

Now we’re all on the same page.

This means that your website–heck, even your entire online experience, should be one that keeps people coming back. Maybe that means you have a game. Maybe it means you offer some form community. Maybe it means that you constantly add new, relevant content. Maybe it means that you sponsor promotions. Maybe it means that you offer coupons. Maybe it means something wildly different than that. You get to decide, unless you’re so motivated to get ahold of me and invest in my time to help you with brainstorming and ideation, but I’m not trying to sell you on anything other than the wake-up call here.

Don’t limit yourself to your website; maybe it means you have a Facebook AND MySpace presence, and maybe, like Kids in the Hall and Psych, you offer interesting updates to your captive audience–and as an added bonus, the audience has the ability to interact with each other. These are both decent examples of brands that keep people in the loop and make them feel like they get a benefit for claiming that they are “fans”. The USA Network website does a great job of keeping the content fun and light to support Psych and other shows, which in essence are brands, as well.

By All Means, Don’t Take My Word for It. Do Some Research of Your Own.

But, I Did Some Research.

Once upon a time, within the past few months of my life, I gave a survey to about 60 or so people in regards to beverage websites that I asked them to view. It was a very simple survey (in exchange for answers, I offered consumers their pick from a grab bag of about $30 in CVS-purchased chocolates and candies–and yes, I had more than enough volunteers), with each person focusing on one of the 5 websites and then answering 10 questions. The first nine focused on rating things from 1-5 (for easy math), the last question asking whether or not the consumer would ever return to the website. Number ten was open-ended, and I asked for open comments, preferably focused upon what would prompt the consumer to return to the site.

The results were not astonishing. They were a little lower than I expected, and given some of the feedback, probably could have been lower still. I found that, out of the 5 different beverage websites listed, less than 10% of the consumers would have a reason to return and visit. In the open comments, the general responses were things like:

“You did not list a 0 as an option.” (This is true, I only listed 1-5)
“Maybe if there was a coupon.”
“This site sucked.”
“I don’t get [the site].”

You can take away what you want from this, but you should know that the websites tested were for some major, leading brands who spend some major bucks promoting their products.

Think about that.

Let’s recap for a moment: Less than 10% of the consumers surveyed would return to these brand websites.

Ummmmm…. Ouch.

A bunch of someones, somewheres, should be pretty embarassed.

If You Build It… They Will Come That’s Just the First Step

Some (a lot of) companies are spending A LOT of money on website design and development. Some companies are charging A LOT of money on website design and development. Almost ALL of them either are not talking or are not listening–or they think they don’t have the time and/or budget to create “something” the right way.

Fine. Here’s a solution: Tell these companies to save the money–better yet, tell them to pool the money and prioritize their brands so that one of the brands can have the right experience now. Next time there is a budget surplus, wash, rinse, repeat.

Until something is done that is different than the throwaway junk “experiences” that people barely visit and rarely visit more than once, things will continue to fail. Do NOT continue to invest in more failure–the consumers deserve better than this, and sooner or later, the competition will figure this out before the brands you’re working with do and then it may be too late.

All of these companies NEED to better understand what their consumers want. If that is the almighty coupon, then by gosh, give the consumers coupons (and make them ridiculously easy to find) as a reward for coming to the site. Start to build up some traffic, find out what consumers really want and find a way to provide it to them. It may be a community, in which case you can provide additional information and interactions to consumers and give them a voice. Cultivate and grow those voices into brand advocates and evangelists who can eventually help guide the brand toward its next product decision.

This is not hard math.

I’m just some guy in Chicago who thinks he knows a thing or two about User Experience. I think that “user experience never ends” means that I can’t just think about the website I’m working on today, but that I need to consider all the touchpoints along the way. I want your consumers to come back to the website, because I want you to be successful because my success is in part based upon that. Success makes us all happy. Then, umbrella drink time! (You’re buying)

Oh, and I also want you to build the right experience because it is a helluva a lot more fun for me to work on–that money thing should be an investment and should be able to be figured out. I mean, really, does one more commercial during America’s Top Model really have THAT much of an impact on whether or not you sell another can of <insert beverage here>?

But, if you want a basic website with a sitemap that I can put together on a single 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, I’ll build that, too. My heart probably won’t be in it (but I’ll still do you a solid and give you quality output, of course) because I’m guessing it is going to be a crappy, potentially dead-ended experience and no one will come back and visit. These kind of sites don’t even make for good conversation in an interview.

That sort of thing castrates us. It makes us think “I could have been working in Insurance doing complex systems and never have to sweat all this social networking online viral blogging stuff that is so damn sexy” (not that Insurance isn’t the bees knees, mind you).

These poor experiences, the less-than-exciting websites lead me to inform you that if, as companies with brands and as the firms that do work for them, you don’t start getting it together, User Experience professionals may start becoming more difficult to find. For you, at least.

Again, Don’t Take My Word for It..

David Armano blogged:

We can actually create models of engagement that are sustainable over time. This is where the opportunities lie and we have to get serious about it…

There’s nothing there to loosely interpret. Big brands and advertising agencies and “interactive” shops and so on and so forth, you need to listen up. You need to wake up. This needs to be the extra shot in your latte.

User Experience Designers, Information Architects, Interaction Designers or whatever else you think we are and so title us, well, we want to do the right thing. We want to do the best thing for your consumers.

Partly because WE ARE YOUR CONSUMERS and we don’t like things that suck. We want to build loyalty, we want to see the bar raised and we’ve probably got some fan-F’ing-tastic ideas that you should be listening to.

Oh, and partly because we yearn to innovate and affect positive influence and change.

So What?

I’ve been trying to get people to ask and answer that question for years. No, it’s not my question, but ever since one of my favorite professors, Dr. Arthur Doederlein at Northern Illinois University, required students to not only right papers that answered specific questions, but also required us to prove our points, our rationales and establish what made our thinking valid by answering the “So What?”, I’ve used this.

It’s so simple, it’s silly.

When you create something–anything–for any audience, ask yourself “So what?”

Got that?

“I just made this marketing website for my brand. So what?”

If the answer is something like, “So my customers can have a place to get information and share their experiences with us so we can continue to evolve the brand to meet their needs”, you might be on the right track.

If not, you might be on the path of epic failure.

Posted in Rant, User Experience, User Experience Design | 1 Comment »