On the 12th January, I had the chance to be invited by the student organization Sorbonne Symposium to their symposium on Neuromarketing. Neurosciences play a role in usability, and the symposium specially covered Functional Magnetic resonance imaging. The idea is to use a scanner (as used in a hospital) to measure the effect a website (or an ad, or any kind of stimulus) has on our brain activity. So we can measure (1) which functional zone is activated in our brain, (2) with which intensity, and (3) whether it is positive or a negative effect.
Why do users abandon shopping carts? This very relevant ad for Google Analytics shows some evidence in an entertaining way. And I like it! Just wonder if your website doesn’t ask too many questions, or complicated data to recover. Everybody has to gain from a simpler buying process.
Quebec Amerique First Aid application for iPhone was the first mobile application I ever worked on. The application was released on the Apple Store a few months ago, and it is considered a success as it has been downloaded more than 900 times since then. This project was a good occasion to start thinking about mobile Usability and information architecture, and build wireframes, use cases, flowchart and scenario. Not bad, for a start, I’d say!
Adviso, a brilliant web strategy company, for which I have worked during the last years, has recently made the news. In the magazine L’Actualité, the company was ranked as one the 20 fastest growing companies in Quebec, Canada. And the magazine Profit Canada ranked them among the fastest growing companies in the country. Well done: congratulations to all the team and all the best! And it is quite clear that their success does not provide them from having good fun (see pictures below).
A study was recently published in the Psychological Review about efficiency at work. Dr. K. Anders Ericcson studied the way musicians trained, and how long they trained, and compared their focus to their efficiency. The conclusion is that 80% of our outputs come from 20% of our inputs. And that working focused for 4 hours is more efficient than working unfocused for 8 hours. Otherwise said, this study advises us to be more focused for short periods in the day, and allow ourselves to rest: answer less phone calls, check emails less frequently and leave work early. Want to improve your work? Be ready to leave office early!
The 9th World Congress on Railway Research, which took place in Lille this May, was the opportunity to discover a new touch screen terminal. Well, as a matter of fact, Kyo does not involve any touch screen: the user can purchase a train ticket using only his gesture, and without any contact on the terminal. This idea was presented among other innovative processes for selling terminals, but could lead to new navigation methods in the next years. To be followed.
Recent strategies are based on users: to succeed, a website (or a brand, or a product) must be adapted to its users. But there was a time when strategies were decided without thinking about users. This time is not so far ago, and some companies still think their users have to adapt to their website, rather than the opposite.
I was recently surprised by the French strategy for the Eurovision song contest. They chose to present Amaury, an Opera singer. The Eurovision winner is voted for by the public (50%) and the jury (50%). Well, the results of the French team prove that Opera was not popular among the voters. The French team chose to ignore what the public was looking for, and would vote for, to present an artist they personaly appreciated. But rather than accepting their defeat (Amaury ranked 15 out of 43), the French team openly criticized the bad taste of the voters…
Users make their choice, and the only way to make them choose you (rather than a competitor) is to adapt to them. Which is why user-centric is so important.
Cross selling is often the key to a performing e-commerce website. If the user wants to buy a dress, he could be in the mood for buying an accessory or another dress, for a competitive price? And while he’s in the checkout process, it can be a good idea to suggest additional and relevant articles. Cross selling is most of the times suggested in the products pages and in the shopping cart, and sometimes even during the checkout. In this example, the user purchasing a plane ticket has to decline twice the Insurance suggestion: once in a page displayed during the checkout, and once more (after clicking on Cancel) on a pop-up. A little too much, don’t you think?
Spams can be a hassle, and I agree sometimes you have to find a way to get rid of them. With current email systems and a few unsubscriptions, it’s become quite easy though, and I, for example, almost never see a spam: they go directly in my junk box. But according to how you use your email address, it can be more difficult. Last week, I tried to contact a company, and was surprised never to get an answer. Today, I finally realized it had been sent. Not only was the answer in my junk box, but it was an automatic reply. And this was not coming from the company itself, but from a website providing anti spam solutions. Basically, I had to click on a link, and then enter a captcha, before my first email was actually sent to the company. I was not a spammer, and could have become a client. Why make it so difficult to contact you? Except if you are overbooked for a few years, I wouldn’t advice going to so restrictive solutions. Let users contact you: this kind of process can definitely make a company loose customers and is of course quite bad for conversion.
Le Devoir website homepage has been granted a great place on Apple Canada website: it is featured as a page seen through an IPad (it is not a mobile version, but actually the website homepage). A good sign (and the feeling of a victory) for this not-easy to wireframe and 4-columns homepage.
