SIGIA-L Mail Archives: SIGIA-L: cost justifying usability: summ
SIGIA-L: cost justifying usability: summary
From: Jane Austin (jane_at_deepend.co.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 07 2001 - 13:55:28 EST
The consensus appeared to be - it depends on the site. A familiar story...
Here's the summary of answers I received. If this inspires anyone to send me any more info, please
do so. I'll summarise and post any more replies I get.
Summary:
I recommend you have a look at Creative Good's white papers. They're
well written, generally convincing, and there's a fair amount of statistics.
http://www.creativegood.com/
especially
http://www.creativegood.com/holiday2000/
and
http://www.creativegood.com/survival/
The emphasis tends to be on retail sites.
Mark Hurst, the founder, often posts on CHI-WEB.
francois Jordaan
Wheel
85 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1R 5AR
T +44 (0)20 7071 8000 F +44 (0)20 7831 0181
Direct +44 (0)20 7071 8459
francois.jordaan_at_wheel.co.uk www.wheel.co.uk
Jane
Mark Hurst at http://www.creativegood.com/ has some very impressive
claims on the efficacy of his applied user experience methods.
"Our projects typically raise conversion rates between 40% and
150%. Here is a client list and a description of our consulting services."
He also says this here (http://www.g21.net/mem22.html):
"To give you just one example, we have a client who went from
40% to 140% conversion rate among their customers ---
that means $65 million in increased sales based on simplifying
the customer experience."
You might call them for more concrete details suitable for
presentation. Looks like "Cost Justifying Usability" is something to
have handy as well.
best,
Joseph Tucker
user_experience_at_mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~user_experience (beta)
Jane,
I honestly don't think stats from other redesigns
would be meaningful. They might help sell a client,
but I'd be very careful about making that kind of
analogy. If you send a case study that says "usability
redesign brings in 150% more visitors" and your
re-design doesn't deliver that, you could be asking
for trouble.
Another approach would be to examine the current site
logs and set some goals based on the evidence from the
existing site. For example, if 33% of visitors bail
after the first page view, a re-design based on solid
usability might improve that number. You still have
the problem of not wanting to make guarantees, but at
least you are grounding your clients expectations in
current reality.
And frankly, any redesign that doesn't take some
version of this approach -- i.e. doesn't use current
site data -- is missing out on a good opportunity.
--
Chris Chandler
Information Architect at large.
<cchandle267_at_yahoo.com>
I'm about to launch a redesigned site for my business and plan to do
some compartive work between the old and new version based on user
feedback and the log analysis. Tell your friend I could share my thought
eventually if he's interested.
regards,
Livia Labate
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BizSolutions - Bringing your business online!
Brazil: +55 11 50831623 | Australia: +61 2 4970 5521
livia_at_bizsolutions.com.au | http://www.bizsolutions.com.au
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Jane,
This is somewhat indirect evidence, but we did a couple of usage modeling
studies a few years ago which demonstrated a strong correlation between site
usability
and visit frequency (c0ntrolling other factors). (Provided site re-designs
enhance site usability one would assume that visit frequency would increase
based on these two studies all other variables being equal).
The abstract for the study is at:
http://www.beta-research.com/150998abstract.html
You could try the creativegood.com site and inverseratio.com (I think). Both
have some superbly informed 'whitepapers' with documentation of the effects
of their own work. You could quote these as abstract 'acheiveable figures'.
Also the paper 'Usability is good Business' will give good amunition too. It
is not a new paper but is well constructed and argued. There is a link to it
from one of the sites.
Good luck ... and if you find anymore, do share with the rest of us!
Samantha Hobbs
Head of User Centred Design
Razorfish, London
Here is one from my files, from Nate Bolt [nate.bolt_at_CLEARINK.COM] on
CHI-WEB
"Good Web Site Design Can Lead to Healthy Sales. It is important to
understand what your users are trying to accomplish when they visit your
site. If you don't know that, you can't help them achieve their goals. The
result: In the first week after the [IBM Site] redesign, use of the "help"
button decreased 84 percent, while sales increased 400 percent."
Elisabeth Paine <epaine_at_ImageWks.com
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