See Le Devoir homepage

Related posts:

1. biokplus.com
2. Workshop: coupdecoeur.qc.ca

Home page

• Industry: tourism
• Average trafic: 18 000 visits/month
• Objectives: experience
• Delivered: use cases, flowchart, wireframes, business requirements, QA
• Copyright: Adviso and Quebec maritime

Personal tinerary tool

See quebecmaritime.ca

Related posts:

1. voyagesfleurdelys.com
2. biokplus.com
3. conservatoire.gouv.qc.ca

A welcome feeling

First of all, the place is made to make you feel good. People are elegant and fashion, there are big sofas to sit on while you wait and the last Cosmos and Elle to shorten your wait. Then, most of the times, you are welcome by a bright smile. As soon as you say your first name, you are recognized and offered a cup of tea, a glass of water, anything to make you comfortable.

Some of us who go to the hairdresser every week (like my Grandma) feel this even more: no need to say their name, they are welcome like old time friends. No need to repeat what you want: your cup of coffee is right in front of you. And though they know what you want and what fits you, they still have the kindness to make you feel like you’ve chosen.

«I feel good» experience

For the half and hour / hour you sit in front of the mirror, the hairdresser takes care of you as if you were valuable: «is the water hot enough? Not too cold?» You’re being taken care of, big time! Just relax, and chit-chat a little if you’re keen on. Nothing to worry about. A friend used to go to a hairdresser where they offer a shoulders massage before washing your hair. No wonder you feel good!

And at the end of the experience, though you still have to open your wallet, you still feel good. Because the conditioner smells nice, because your hair looks shiny and light, because you feel beautiful, you pay without any regret. You feel so good you even let a tip!

Contextual specials

Last time I went to the hairdresser’s, there was a manicure salon within the place. While my hair was cut, I could read a leaflet promoting a 20% off specials on manicure. I had never tried it, and the moment was well chosen for a start: a good offer, a trial product, and the thought the manicure was a part of the salon. It was so simple I fell for it, and I did like it.

Tips for Web marketing

So, are there some Web best practices we could learn from a hairdresser’s experience? Of course, yes. And here is a short list of them:

• First of all, welcome the user. I mean, just writing a small and invisible «Welcome» after she logs in is definitely not enough. Let’s use cookies to recognize the user (when possible), and cheer her up with a real and personalized welcoming message. After all, we are happy to see her on the website again, aren’t we? Let’s show them.
• Then, the website has to make the user feel valuable. For doing this, why not thank her for her visit or last purchase? As well, ask her opinion on new products or grant her with private sales could be a good idea. Without going that far, making the user feel good starts with helping her in her tasks on the website, and especially within error messages (prefer «We are terribly sorry, but the system could not understand this field value. Maybe you could help us out and try to figure out what’s wrong with it? Thank you.» to «Wrong field value.»)
• Finally, and I think this a key point, marketing should support the user’s needs and wishes (it seems obvious, but often the user is forgotten on the way). Complementary products offer or specials should not be suggested for sales needs, but because it will make the user feel better. Writing this article made me realize usability is often about making things easy for the users, or helping them do tasks, but making them feel good is more than that, and could have an even higher influence on the satisfaction!

In one word, think the website strategy in order to help the user feel good through her experience. Then, she will be back, just like my Grandma who has been going to the same hairdresser’s for 20 years now… (We’re talking about a weekly 50$, so 2 400$ a year.) See, we can learn valuable Web marketing tips from a hairdressing salon!

Related posts:

1. FDLD: tourism industry and Internet
2. How the Internet changed advertising

Environment-friendly

First of all, of course, online surveys are more eco-friendly than printed ones. I bet most clients use printed surveys as a note sheet, or throw them directly in the (recycling) bin. Users can as well throw away their email or close the window, but at least you saved a tree. It could seem odd, but as more and more hotels focus on their environmental policy, I think they should think about this too.

Send it when you want/can

Whether you arrive in your hotel room after a long and exhausting trip, or if you are looking forward to visiting the new place, you are not always in the mood for filling up a survey when you push the door (not to mention when you discover the paper on your pillow, just before going to bed). So what do most people do? Probably just like me: we put the survey somewhere we can find it later, and forget about it the next minute.

But if the email is in your mailbox, well, you do exactly the same. Just that you will have more chance to find it later, when you clean your messages. So that’s one more chance you’re actually going to fill it up.

The right moment

Everything is about being on the right place at the right moment, right? Well, obviously, we can’t ask customers to rate the room quality before they have even slept in it. Or to evaluate the bathrooms cleanliness if they haven’t already used them yet. Whereas if you receive your email the day after you check out, you will not only remember the experience, but also have lived it, so you can actually evaluate it.

This is without speaking about the pen I can’t find, because I’ve put somewhere (I don’t know where) in my backpack. On the other hand, I just need to click. And also that I’d rather press Send than take the elevator back to the reception just to give them the paper. (And what will they do with it? Maybe they’ll get mad at me and stop cleaning my room?)

Once more, the context is a key element for the success of a communication, even if we’re talking about a satisfaction survey. There has been a time when putting a leaflet on your pillow was the most efficient way (and it still is for numerous cases). Tourism is changing, and Internet is becoming more and more important for hotels communications, and this email I received is one more proof of it.

Related posts:

1. Multiple OR conditions in Survey Gizmo
2. Test email newsletters in webmails
3. FDLD: tourism industry and Internet

Voyages Fleur de Lys.com Homepage

Offer an experience

Web 2.0 tourists ask for more than a simple catalog. They need a real experience. Shopping for your next trip in Asia shouldn’t be limited to a text-list of dates and prices. Well, it could, if the company sells cheap flights. But in the case of a quality agency, it should be more than that: it should be fun, interesting, visually rich, simple ; it should make you feel like boarding in your plane already ; it should be an experience on its own.

Pictures and videos

How could we speak about our last travel in New Zealand better than with pictures? Of course, today’s tourists choose their destination on Internet. When did you last choose a hotel without checking its pictures on its website or Flickr and its reviews on TripAdvisor? A website about travel should offer beautiful pictures, to appeal to users’ emotions.

A big picture and seductive text describing the trip.

Pictures even in the itinerary.

Rich navigation possibilities

My colleague at Adviso, Simon, is at the origin of this navigation system. He conducted several interviews, and noticed users had different decisional motivations according to the category of travel. That ain’t quite true. Actually, they had the same motivations, but not in the same order: destination and activity (South-East Asia, tour) or activity and destination (Safari, Kenya).

Community and networking

We were speaking about TripAdvisor and Flickr just before. It would be a mistake not to offer community and networking possibilities on a travel agency website. On FDLD, that meant offering Facebook and Twitter links, as well as Send to a friend (I don’t know why the design agency hasn’t put this online yet: I’l have to enquire about it). But this is not it: think about testimonies, a blog with comments and the option for users to like a product. And there are other possibilities to think of.

Of course, these four points are not everything. There are a lot more possibilities to think of, and especially on a strategic plan. But it’s already a first list of what a travel agency should include, speaking about navigation options. Can you think of any other one? I’ll complete the list when another project comes online: Quebec maritime.

Related posts:

1. How the Internet changed advertising
2. Tourism: email surveys vs. real life survey
3. Workshop: coupdecoeur.qc.ca

Strengths and inspiration

Design: strong personality. The global aspect of coupdecoeur.qc.ca can seem a little strange, as it is all with shiny colours and hand-writing, but I do think it corresponds a lot to the festival’s spirit, like a family event, very human. I have already seen this year’s ad campaigns in the street, and it’s fun to see the ad’s design reflected on the website.

Search options and interactive calendar. On every page, visitors can browse the interactive calendar to find an event, as well as look for a specific event with the quick search form. As it is displayed on the home page too, visitors who know what they’re looking for, whether they know the date and the place or they know the artist, can very quickly navigate to the contents they’re interested in.

Featured artists on the home page. The featured-artists zone on the home page is even more relevant knowing that most artists are not well-known by everyone. So on the home page we have both search options, for visitors who know what they’re looking for, and featured artists for people who wish to discover, without a precise idea of what they’re interested in.

Artists list: incitative. The Artists page lists all artists taking part in the festival. Though the page doesn’t offer a lot of navigation possibilities, its layout gives the feeling of a big family, and the introductions to each artist allows visitors to scan the list and discover artists they don’t know yet.

Booking links: good alternative. Coup de Coeur’s website is not and e-commerce site, neither has it a booking engine (its only goal is to promote artists and shows). The linking made to Admission, a very popular booking network, is a good way to go round this and let people book, but on another site. Also, the Full sign is a good solution not to give visitors wrong hopes, and not to ask them for the one click too much!

Coup de Coeur gives a very human feeling, and going though the website is a fun moment, thanks to creative navigation systems and design. The web team managed to avoid current mistakes, using easy-to-implement and creative solutions, like with the Full sign and a relevant partnership with Admission network. Visitors are always offered search solutions, so few visitors should be lost.

Full signs and links to Admission booking network: 2 good practices.

Weaknesses and recommendations

Fonts sizes: bigger. The content is written in 11px Arial font on all pages, which makes it a bit hard to read. Growing the fonts sizes to 12 for main content, and to 14 for subtitles could really have a good impact on the lisibility of the content.

Consistency between links and subtitles. At some places (like the Introduction), subtitles are in capitals and underlined. Though, they are no links. On the Événements pages, some subtitles are black and not underlines. Goind through the website and working on making links and titles more different could too optimize the lecture comfort.

Submenu: more lisible. Whereas the main navigation is very creative, the submenu which appears on MouseOver lacks this creative and human spirit. It’s all white on a black background, which is far from optimal speaking about easy to read. Links are very concentrated, which makes it difficult to read and clik on them. Giving more space to each option and making the font larger would help navigate with the submenu.

Événements section: more contextual home page. Apparently, this section introduces each part of the festival, according to where it’s happening: Québec, whole Canada, etc. Though, the section home page really doesn’t explains a lot what the section purpose is. It could be more introductive by introducing every part of the festival, with a little introduction text. And the page of each part should display a very visible link to the related concerts.

Artists list: give more navigation options. It wouldn’t take so much time to improve this section: a good move would be to offer options to filter the list. By default, artists are sorted by alphabetical order. It could be relevant to allow to filter/sort by genre, town of concert, country of origin, etc. We could also suggest visitors another search field, to quickly look for a specific name, with a suggestive field (suggesting names according to the first entered characters).

Richer artists pages. Rigth now, the artists pages are a little incomplete. On many of them, there is this huge void space on the upper right, and the offered content could be much more interesting! Why not offer more pictures, a video or a MP3 player for a few songs? A well as links to the artists’s website, which would also create more external links.

A little work on a few points, like the fonts sizes and submenu could take little time to do and imply major optimization of the navigation. Also, offering more contextual contents, and rich-media like video and MP3 could really be a great added value for the website.

One recommandation: add MP3, videos and more pictures to an artist page.

Opportunities

Sharing content and visitors contribution. It is quite strange that coupedecoeur.qc.ca doesn’t offer a lot of community-building features. The only call-to-action for visitors contribution is to send it by email, but further sharing possibilities could very quickly be offered, like with a ShareThis link. As well, why not allow visitors to contribute to the content? For example, comments or votes for artists could certainly be interesting. So the featured artists on the home page could be the most popular ones.

News: a blog? The News category is presently very informative. With important French-speaking communities all over Canada taking part in the festival, it could be interesting to offer a blog, to follow the events in the whole country. For example, relate how many people were at this concert in British-Columbia, let the organizers there write a few words, and why not artists’ interviews?

The major opportunities I can see for Coup de Coeur website for now is to bet on visitors contributions, and start to build a strong community of visitors.

Threats

Design in a few years? The website takes the same colours as the ad campaign, which changes each year. It is a good thing as much as it can lead to major programing problems if the design changes. When the ads change radically, maybe in a few years, how is the website going to follow? Will it need to be totally reprogrammed? And how will visitors like their website to change so much, without being lost? Maybe it would be a good idea to start thnking about an own identity for the website, and make it less dependent on the ads.

French-speaking event only for French-speaking persons? It could seem logical to offer the content only in French, as the public is mostly French-speaking, and the concerts are only in French. Though, the festival takes place all over Canada, and we could imagine local English-speaking persons being interested by the event happening in their town, even if they don’t know the artists or don’t understand the lyrics. It could be interesting to monitor the Web analytics to see if some visitors’ navigators are settled in English, to study if it could be an opportunity to offer the website in this language too.

Conclusion

Coup de Coeur Francophone’s website offers rich contents and interesting navigation. It probably reaches its visitors needs and wishes, and allows different profiles to navigate according to their needs. A few changes, like offering rich-media contents and building a community, which mostly require little work, could improve the navigation a lot, and make the content much more interesting. Speaking about the design, the present concept is very creative, but giving the website its own identity could prevent visitors to be lost if the ads campaign change.

Limits

Of course, this analysis is only empiric, and I probably don’t get all issues related to the website for the festival team. The recommendations I give are based on my navigation on the site, and I decided to write only what I could see in less than an hour, so I certainly missed a lot of things. Then, the changes I suggest require little work, rather than a radical change, as I like to think optimization doesn’t need a full remodelling of the work that has already be done. And finally, if you are working on Coup de Coeur’s website, or if you have anything to add, don’t hesitate to let your comment!

Related posts:

1. coupdecoeurfrancophone.ca
2. FDLD: tourism industry and Internet
3. Coup de coeur francophone : coupdecoeur.ca

• Industry: parapharmaceutics
• Average trafic: 9 800 visits/month
• Objectives: sales, visibility in the USA
• Delivered: use cases, (flowchart), wireframes, business requirements
• Copyright: Adviso and Bio K Plus

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1. voyagesfleurdelys.com
2. quebecmaritime.ca
3. iposte (Intranet)

• Industry: tourism
• Average trafic: 150 visits/day
• Objectives: visiblity, trafic, conversions (phone contacts)
• Delivered: (flowchart), wireframes, business requirements
• Copyright: Adviso and Fleur de Lys Dupuis

See voyagesfleurdelys.com

Read the case study

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Who could use this keyboard?

In his article, the designer says it could help children learn letters. As he recalls, alphabet classes often use posters featuring a letter and a picture associated to this letter. These posters are mnemonics: they help remember a complicated and abstract concepts by associating them with familiar representations. I have the feeling this keyboard could be useful in the alphabet learning process, but it misses one thing to do so: the association with the concept. If the letters were added on the keys, then the keyboard would really help learn letters.

What about the muscle memory?

When we see posters with a letter and a picture everywhere in the room, all day long, our visual memory tends to associate and remember them. That’s one way of learning. But there are other ways, involving our 5 senses. Speaking about computers, our sense of touch is more involved. Persons who are used to typing on a keyboard usually don’t need, or need less, to refer to the visual memory: their muscle memory plays a great role in remembering the position and moves between the different keys. So maybe the visual mnemonic is not so useful, as the muscle memory is more involved. Remember touch typists learn to type with the letters hidden?

Even if this keyboard would become less relevant for a good typist (who would rather use her muscle memory), it remains a good tool to learn alphabet, if letters are added on the keys.

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1. Compress images in Visio

Who needs accessibility?

Every web designer knows about accessibility. More like a dream than as real rules to apply. Though, accessibility is needed by a lot of persons all over the world. The most easy to understand type of needs refers to visitors with seing problems. We’re talking about blindness, but also aging-related conditions, color blindness, dyslexia, etc. Their handicap prevents them from using the Web like every other users. Besides seing problems, persons with listening issues are also a special public to consider, just like seniors, nervous diseases, etc.

Last week, one of the websites I’ve worked on for usability was put online. Very fast, the same day actually, hundreds of negative comments appeared. Visitors were scared, lost, angry. Why? 80% comments were about the font size. The design agency had chosen a Serif font, and the size was very small, which made it hardly readable, moreover for the main 50 years old visitors public. So accessibility is a concern we should worry about, as information architects, but also as webdesigners, programmers and visitors.

Is my website accessible?

To determine if your website is accessible, the easiest and quickest way is to use one of many free accessibility validation tools. I tried and appreciated Fujitsu Web Accessibility Inspector, but I didn’t examine carefully all criteria analyzed. The most exhaustive way would be to go through W3C/WAI 2.0 guidelines and validate them one by one, but of course, that would be much longer.

Does it need to be?

There are three ways of answering this question, First, do you know what your website looks like in a text-only browser? Well, let’s take an example to illustrate this. Let’s take… Google. Like me, you probably think Google home page is perfect speaking about usability. Well, please have a look at the following images:

Google as we see it with a standard browser (Firefox, not to name it):

Google as we see it with Lynx:

So, what do you think? I was totally surprised! I tried to browse for some time with Lynx, but I must say it’s incredibly difficult. Besides WAi website, which of course is perfect, websites are absolutely not made for text-only. But it goes further, as text-only is the first step to accessibility. Braille emulators, among other alternative devices, base on text to translate and adapt the content. It just adds even more complexity.

The second answer to the question is that it is very simple to make your website approximately accessible. The WAI basic rules are nothing complicated, and often included in other best practices (like ALT to images for SEO, etc.) So why not make the effort?

And finally, the last answer refers to Web feelings. Why should persons with disabilities not have access to Internet? Isn’t it supposed to be for everyone? An open place? Where does this idea that only medical-related websites or gouvernmental applications should be accessible? Come on, persons with disabilities should be able to use Google as easily as everyone else, shouldn’t they?

How to make my website accessible?

I’m not the best person to speak about technical rules (and this article is already quite long), so I’ll just link to WAI quick reference to WAI 2.0 rules.

• Text Alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.
• Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media.
• Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout ) without losing information or structure.
• Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.
• Keyboard Accessible: Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
• Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content.
• Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures.
• Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are.
• Readable: Make text content readable and understandable.
• Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
• Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.
• Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.

Related posts:

1. How the Internet changed advertising
2. Workshop: coupdecoeur.qc.ca