Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
It seems like the utopian usability research tool; place a bit of JavaScript code on your website to track what users do, and then playback videos of your customers using your website at your leisure. Click tracking has been around for many years and the CRO community seem to love it. Some services have very advanced & pretty reporting tools and others that let you run an in-house system yourself. It looks great, but how reliable is it?
The truth is, unless you’re running a website without dynamic content, click tracking has some real big issues that will waste your time and potentially harm your conversion rates if you base decisions on this data.
We’ve heard horror stories – so it was nice to stumble on an in-depth article by Red Ant that matched our experiences of click tracking.
I’ll summarise the big ones below.
The playback recording is false
- It’s not a true recording of the session, it’s just clicks and screen grabs. There’s a huge difference between what you see on the playback and what the user sees. See these two videos to understand what you’re missing.
What the user sees:
What the service records:
No Cookies
- The bot that visits the site to take screen grabs of the visit is session-less if you use cookies. What it captures and what the user saw will be different.
No Ajax
- The bot will miss all dynamic/conditional content and interactions that are delivered by JavaScript. This is pretty huge. Take a look at the different images below:
What the bot recorded
What the user saw
Privacy?
- There are huge privacy issues with recording everything a user types. Are your customers happy that you are logging every click and letter they type with a third party service?
Eye tracking with click tracking?
- There is no useful correlation between mouse tracking and where you are looking. Click tracking services misquote out-of-context research to support their claim of this being a cheaper way of gathering visual attention data. We have a detailed article here about mouse eye tracking.
This is just the tip of the iceberg to get you thinking.
Now go and read the great article on Red Ant about their experiences of click tracking.
Native app or mobile site? What is a fashion retailer to do? In this article we will explore current thinking on the relative strengths and weaknesses of apps vs. mobile sites as applied to the specific needs of the fashion retail market, as well as have a look at what some of the UK’s major fashion retailers are already doing.
To read the article published in the December issue of Mobile Marketing Magazine you can go here.
Alternatively if you would like to read the full version of the article with case studies of ecommerce sites then you can go here Fashion M-retail
Twitter is a highly accessible way to appeal to a wide audience of readers. Nearly 500 million tweets are posted every day, so brands need an edge in order to stand out and win attention from readers. This is particularly crucial in the build-up to the Christmas season, with consumer spending high, and competition huge.
To look at the ways in which readers interact and view twitter feeds, we investigated using advanced eye tracking technology to determine where readers looked and to gain insight about how users interact with a Twitter feed. From these findings, we were able to uncover some tips on how to stand out with Christmas tweets.
As a business we are always challenging the UX space. UX seems to be the trendy thing that everyone wants to do, everybody says they do, but no one quite agrees on what it is. We presented this thought piece at the NUXONE conference in Bradford on 27th October 2012, and we’d like to share this in the hope that more professionals within this space will take up the challenge.
Wishing you a very social conversion – Improve conversion this Christmas through Social Media
Nov 12
Introduction
How do you maximize the cents/pence per tweet and the share/like worth of your social media efforts this Christmas? Whilst these kinds of metrics are still largely out of reach of the average digital marketer, there are several approaches you can take to maximize the monetisation of your social media/content strategy this year.
In this article we will discuss what we think works well to convert, why it should engage social media users and what themes you need to think about if you are still crafting and perfecting you plans for Xmas 2012.
INTRODUCTION
In just over 10 years mobile gaming has gone from Snake II on a Nokia 3310 to a multi-billion dollar industry for mobile phones and tablets.
More people than ever are playing mobile games thanks to the rise of cultural phenomena like Angry Birds which, at over 20 million downloads, became the best-selling app of all time.
But what makes a handset or tablet-based game great? What problems can hinder the experience? Usability experts SimpleUsability look at the top ten features in mobile games.
This article is also avalable as a PDF for download: Moble Gaming Usability Study 2012.pdf
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Within our world of behavioural research we see a split regarding where our clients come from; either from companies approaching us directly, or referred by design agencies. Increasingly eye tracking is being sought out by agencies that have a need to add user research and also diversify their product services to clients. Companies are looking to create the best experience for the end user within their sector, and for this to happen a user centred design approach needs to be adopted with user research supporting the process.
Benefits of eye tracking to agencies
The benefit of eye tracking is that it enables a type of research where you can access the reasons why people do what they do. It allows research to take place that is very natural and not stressful to the person taking part. This means more truthful findings that can be trusted by the team.
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What could possibly go wrong? (Why all eye tracking is not equal)
1. Participant recruitment
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of careful and thorough selection procedures when recruiting for an eye tracking study. In a conventional depth interview or focus group a close, but not ideal fit of participant to the recruitment criteria can often be overlooked. However, the subconscious nature of eye movements makes it very hard for a participant to ‘hide’ behind scenarios and imagined motivations, you need the real thing. It might surprise you to learn the range of behavioural and attitudinal criteria we typically recruit against. Experience has taught us that shared behaviours are far more important than shared demo- and geo-graphics.
2. Research environment & technical quality
Some providers offer remote testing methods for screen based quantitative eye tracking, where users are not required to come in to a lab. There are obvious cost savings associated with this as users can be in different locations. However, several grave issues arise with this approach;
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Hasn’t Eye tracking been ‘done’?
Eye tracking in market research has a chequered history. Like many methods that have made it into the researchers’ toolkit it followed considerable hype. However eye tracking has proven a particularly difficult labour of acceptance, largely through no fault of its own. The tools, techniques and surrounding methodology have grown up considerably of late and the eye tracking industry has come a long way in a few short years. Today eye tracking is frequently applied in the field of web design and usability testing yet remains relatively under used in market research.
We recognise that early adopters of eye tracking, done badly, may have been burned and that this had bred a hesitance to engage. This article is intended to re-familiarise the research buyer and agency researcher alike with the initial enthusiasm for the method and to help them rediscover the meaningful insight and opportunities eye tracking can provide. This article covers the basic uses of eye-tracking, what to consider when buying it and, crucially, how the range of ways eye tracking can be conducted and analysed contribute greatly to its quality and potential value to a business.
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When deciding all the details about carrying out usability research, it can be difficult to work out exactly where you want to do the testing. The benefit of doing usability testing is that the equipment needed is quite portable so you are therefore not restricted to geographical locations, but there are a few considerations to take into account when planning.
Things to consider if hosting usability testing at your company’s premises.
- By telling the person where they have to turn up to take part in the usability testing, you are giving them an indication of what the subject matter of the testing will be. This gives them time to conjure up a pre-determined opinion about the company which they will then bring with them to the testing.
- Users want to please and be able to perform well within the session so they will do their homework. This means that they will learn all about your services and how to use your website and can be especially detrimental if you want to test users’ natural behaviour on the existing website.
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