Putting people right at the heart of the opportunity is a great idea when creating a new product, service, or channel…
but what does this really mean?
[source: PwC Digital Australia] Research into customer experience helps us to understand what people need and want, how they behave, and the motivations behind these behaviors. This research can be applied to help improve your products or services, including your company Website.
Taking a human-centered approach early on ensures products, services, and channels like a Website satisfy real needs and provide customers with positive experiences.
Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine what a poorly-designed Website looks like, so here is a list of five common usability problems that you need to avoid.
Confusing navigation structure
It’s common for large businesses to have huge, multi-layer Websites that cover a broad range of topics, which can become overwhelming for new or infrequent site users.
If a Website’s navigation is poorly constructed, it’s easy for users to get lost and give up on the site. You can check this by asking real customers to find information on your site — and observing how easily they complete their search.
Ineffective search function
Roughly half of all people use the search function as their primary method of navigating a Website. So firstly, make sure you have a search engine implemented on your site, then ensure relevant content can be found by checking your search engine has been optimized — through correct tagging and regular updates of Webpages.
An excruciating checkout process
Don’t make it hard for customers to give you money, or sign up for membership. This seems like a no-brainer but it’s surprising how often commercial Websites fail to make the checkout or signup process easy for customers. For ecommerce sites anticipating repeat purchasing, allow users to create a profile at checkout or once the purchase is made — but be careful how you implement that option.
Sometimes businesses collect large volumes of information because of the perception that more customer data will translate to better customer analytics. As a general rule, if your businesses hasn’t made any decisions in the past year based on information collected from customers and it doesn’t have any specific plans to do so, don’t force customers to fill in unnecessary fields.
Information overload
One of the most crucial tasks is deciding what information is most important, where to put it and how it should be presented visually. This is especially important given the increasing number of people visiting Websites from mobile phones, with smaller screens.
The solution to information overload lies in establishing a few simple, intended purposes for the site and ensuring those purposes match customers’ needs. Co-design workshops, interviews and user surveys help to establish the users’ most important needs.
Compatibility issues
Not all Web browsers are created equal and these differences often result in compatibility issues. If your customers can’t see your content then they cannot interact with it, and your sales may suffer.
The good news is that compatibility issues can be easily monitored using site performance dashboards created with analytics suites such as Google Analytics.