Start Measuring Your Customers’ Trust in Your Brand

by usabilitydotcom

January of each year sees publication of the Edelman Trust Barometer.  It is a fascinating study that shows the degree of trust with which people hold four institutions – government, business, media, and NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

The report highlights the dramatic reduction in trust in governments, in CEOs as spokespeople for their companies, in banks and other financial institutions.  It points to technology companies as the most trusted business sector; it says that companies’ listening to their customers is the primary driver of trust; it speaks to people’s ever-growing trust in a people they see as “like themselves.”

Government’s precipitous fall from grace has left a trust leadership vacuum.  Edelman’s interpretation of the results lays out the opportunity to business to take leadership in the general trust-rebuilding process.  Of the 16 actions that business can take to build trust, that of “listening to the customer” ranks #1 — alongside delivering high quality products or services.

Listening programs, in which companies construct elaborate systems for tracking and, often, responding to customer feedback, are already in place in many Fortune 500 companies.  Yet how often do you see trust as the subject of a question in customer surveys?  Rarely, if ever.

Trust, however, may be the most powerful positive emotion a company can reasonably hope to develop in its customers.  Trust is a far deeper emotion than satisfaction, for example, and the behaviors trust engenders are, from a brand’s perspective, the Holy Grail of customer loyalty and advocacy.  Here’s an older Edelman chart that contrasts the behaviors people exhibit in regard to companies they trust versus those they distrust.

In order to build trust, companies must start by measuring it.  That would suggest, at a minimum, they incorporate a trust metric into their primary surveys, including those they deploy online.  The sooner that happens, the faster they can understand what aspects of the customer experience undermine trust and which enhance it.  Armed with that data, the trust-building process and the benefits it promises can begin in earnest.

Remote Usability Testing – What, When, and How?

by usabilitydotcom

Situation: As a national leader in your field, you understand user experiences may vary based on their roles and functions of using the site or product. For better insight into the needs and pressure points of the site and gather ideas on how to address those concerns, you would like to do some usability testing in California , Texas, and New York but as usual, you have a strict budget and a short time frame to complete a study. What should you do? 
In the past, companies have had very few options that would answer these questions and allow them to coordinate a study of this size quickly or frugally, outside of the standard usability test or web analytics study. However in recent years, usability professionals have utilized web conferencing software and a host of communication devices to develop remote usability testing as an alternative to conducting standard “on location” usability tests.
When is remote testing appropriate?  

Remote usability testing is a methodology that allows moderators to gather feedback about a website, software product, or wire frame via an online meeting space or web conference forum. Remote usability testing is most beneficial to clients who:

  • Are interested in multi-market studies
  • Have a tight deadline
  • Have user groups that are more difficult to schedule
  • Limited budget

It has been our experience that remote usability testing is currently the most cost efficient alternative to standard usability testing as it allows clients more flexibility in project scheduling, access to geographically dispersed users groups, and is recourse to replace or schedule difficult user profiles. Using the scenario above, this article will compare remote usability to a standard domestic usability study that includes one or all of the factors above. Please see International Testing Volume 46 for remote testing considerations specific to international testing.

 

What are the advantages of Remote Testing? 

  • Cost Savings: Typically, in addition to the standard cost of a usability test, multi-market tests require facility rental fees ranging from $1200-$1800 per day and travel expenses of the moderator(s), often including airfare, car rental, food, and hotel expenses. In a remote usability experience, moderators conduct the study in house and eliminate facility rental and travel expenses.
  • Shortened project timeline: When conducting a multi city study, a large percentage of time is spent coordinating facility reservations and traveling between locations, increasing the standard 3 week life cycle of a project upwards of 4 or 5 weeks (partly dependent upon the number of locations tested). By conducting the sessions remotely, there is no need to coordinate with facility schedules or allocate additional time to travel between testing sites. Moderators will usually host and conduct the sessions from their own usability labs, and again, eliminate the need to rent a space or make travel arrangements.
  • Geographically dispersed user groups: There are a number of companies who have developed websites and products for a smaller population of people who are usually not centrally located. As previously discussed, trying to conduct usability testing in all locations is expensive, time consuming and not often possible.  Through the use of web conferencing software, moderators are able to circumvent the need to get all the participants in one location. So as in the case of the previous example, instead of scheduling facilities in 3 states over the course of two weeks to assess the needs of 3 different markets, 12 participants can be tested in the span of a week, remotely to gather a fuller representation of the each user group.

 

Disadvantages of remote testing:

  • When viewing a video of participant reaction is important:  While remote viewing software will capture the desktop activity, clients are not able to see a capture of the participants.  To alleviate this as an issue, consider requiring participants to own and have the ability to operate a webcam to use during the session.  However, keep in mind this may require more setup/prep time with each user and slightly longer sessions are in order.
  • When secure content is of high concern:  Though remote sessions are conducted in private online meeting spaces, moderators are unable to guarantee users are viewing the session without observers in the room.

Decision: Remote usability testing, when executed correctly, provides companies a cost-effective and time-efficient alternative to get valid user feedback without the added burden of travelling to multiple locations, renting additional facilities or dealing with recruiting challenges. For these reasons, an increasing number of companies in recent months are opting to conduct remote usability testing in lieu of the standard usability test.
For more information about usability testing and other solutions, please visit http://www.usabilitysciences.com/services.

Best Practices for Mobile Site Checkout

by usabilitydotcom

With the constant evolution of smart phones and mobile devices, users are expecting more efficient and intuitive functionality from mobile websites. This is especially true for those mobile sites designed for touch screen devices.

According to a 2009 whitepaper from Gomez, Inc., almost 75% of mobile web users expect to complete a simple transaction in a minute or less before giving up and exiting the site. This is due to a variety of reasons such as interruptions from everyday life, incoming phone calls, and changing network strength when on the move.

Customers are continually frustrated when attempting to make a purchase on a mobile website, especially when they invest a lot of time and energy researching to find the perfect item, only to struggle when going through the checkout process. Sometimes their frustration stems from a number of factors, and other times it is something as simple as not having a guest checkout option. So, how can mobile site managers make the customer experience of their mobile checkout process more intuitive and enjoyable? We conducted an internal study of mobile websites to find out.

We looked at the mobile websites for Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Target.com, and BarnesandNoble.com with a focus on their Add to Cart and Checkout processes. Users were asked to search for and purchase a DVD of their choice on some of the most commonly used smartphones, such as the iPhone 3Gs/4G, Android (Droid X/Evo), and Blackberry Curve. From this study we have compiled what we consider to be some of the most important factors to consider when improving the checkout process on your mobile site.

  • Provide an ‘Add to Cart’ option from the Search Results.
    A Search feature is often paramount on mobile retail websites as several users prefer to search for products instead of clicking through various product-related pages. Also, the ability to add an item to the cart from the search results, instead of only the product page, saves users a click and an additional page load.

  • Place a ‘Checkout’ button at the top of the screen, as well as at the bottom.
    Placing a ‘Checkout’ button at the top of the screen expedites users’ ability to dive into the checkout process as it is easily accessible. Additionally, a button at the bottom of the screen saves users from having to scroll back to the top of the page to checkout if they have multiple items in their cart.

  • Allow users the ability to checkout as a ‘Guest’.
    Customers do not like being forced to register with the site in order to purchase an item. We have heard some customers say they would simply discontinue the transaction or drive to a store to find the same item, simply because they are being asked to register at the beginning of the checkout process. However, it is worth providing users with an option to create an account at the end of the transaction as they have already entered their information. If you offer users the option to create an account at the end of the process, ensure the benefits of registering are displayed.

  • Provide a step/progress indicator throughout the entire checkout process.
    This feature helps manage users’ expectations and lets them know where they are in the process. Customers like knowing where they are and how much further they have to go before completing their checkout process. Lack of communicating the progress may ultimately hurt conversion if users encounter issues during checkout.

  • Provide a field-sensitive on-screen keyboard.
    When clicking in alpha-fields (i.e. First Name, Last Name), display an alpha keyboard. When clicking in numeric fields (i.e. Zip Code and Phone Number), display a numeric keyboard. Email fields should have <.com> and <@> keys. Also, in an address field, begin with a numeric keyboard for the street number and switch to an alpha keyboard after a space is entered to enter the street name. See the examples below:

  • Default shipping address to billing address or vice-versa.
    Regardless of which address information you ask your customers for first, ensure the same address is reflecting on the following step for shipping/billing. Also, ensure a method for editing the address or entering a new address is also present in cases where the billing and shipping addresses differ.

  • Provide the shipping options on the shipping address page.
    Consolidating these related steps into one page equals one less step in the overall checkout process, expediting the transaction time.

  • Automatically save the cart contents.
    On return to the mobile site, items added to the cart should persist, regardless of whether or not the user has signed in. If the user is signed in and items are added on the mobile site, allow items to carry over to the html website’s shopping cart, should the user choose to complete the transaction later from their home.

Implementing these best practices within the checkout process of your mobile website will help to ensure that customers have any easy and enjoyable purchasing experience.

Listen To Your Website Visitors 24/7

by usabilitydotcom

A survey that offers continuous, real-time customer comments is a very valuable resource. 

Companies who deploy a site intercept survey on their website and collect survey data for an extended time find this affords them extensive opportunities to improve their site.

Rather than trying to understand what your site visitors want, need or expect from your site within the confines of a brief window of time, consider tracking their responses over a full year of data collection.

The benefits of such a program?

  • Allows you to determine if your online business site has seasonal aspects, and if so, when they occur. For ecommerce/retail sites this allows you to know around which holidays your site visits spike, and which ones are, in effect, duds. For travel/lodging sites you can see if your heaviest visit numbers come two months ahead of the summer vacation period, or at some other time. In both of these cases; you can plan online incentives, promotions and sales to match appropriate ‘seasons’.
  • Enhances a Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) of your website by offering visitor suggestions about your website on a daily basis. These small, individual suggestions from your own customers can be evaluated and, if appropriate, implemented very quickly to improve your website.
  • Enables you to present results to your marketing, sales and executive teams on a frequent basis in the form of ‘dashboards’. Interactive dashboards allow you to select a group of visitors who came to your site with a specific purpose and determine how successful they were in their visit. Perhaps more important, if your survey includes open text options, you can learn why in their own words certain visitors failed. It’s very empowering information!
  • Frees you from your calendar. You are not tied to a specific, limited time period like a few weeks to gather input on how to improve your site. You can have your data 24/7. You can schedule your IT team to assist in regular/frequent upgrades through the year.
  • Allows you to prioritize suggested ‘tweaks’ to your site. If you find that visitors are vociferous in their complaints about your login requirements, but complain not nearly as often about your checkout process, you can determine which improvement to place at the top of your ‘to do’ list.

Think of your site visitor’s comments and responses to your survey questions as raisins in a loaf of raisin bread. One slice of the bread will give you several raisins, yes, just as will a briefly presented online survey, but those raisins (and that particular survey) may not bring you all the information you need to make a business decision about your company website. It takes the entire loaf, and optimally an entire year of data collection to get the whole story…

A Time to Share

by usabilitydotcom

In these competitive times of the online world, optimizing web pages for Google and other search engines is often not enough.  Many sites have already added another successful tool to their online marketing toolbox – and it has to do with something we (or most of us) learned to do as children – sharing with others.

Commonly, we see ‘Email’ and ‘Print’ options on web pages, but ‘Share’ icons are gaining popularity on a variety of site types.  By providing ‘Share’ icons, site visitors can link the content within the page to their social networking page on sites such as Facebook, Digg, and Twitter (just to name a few).  This is an effective and easy way for visitors to share content with others and as a result, increase the chance that your site will be visited by a greater audience.

News-related sites were some of the first to offer ‘Share’ icons, but we have begun to see them on all types of sites, as well as in email advertisements.  Figure 1 below is an example of an email sales announcement from Gymboree, a children’s clothing store, and it includes options for customers to share the information via a number of social sites.  The social site icons are referenced with ‘Share with your friends!’ and display near the bottom of the email.

Figure 1 – Gymboree Email Sales Advertisement with ‘Share’ Icons

In the usability studies we have conducted with sites that offer ‘Share’ icons, it is typically those users who are members of one or more social sites that quickly understand how to use the icons.  However, they can be foreign and unknown to visitors who do not participate in social sites, and therefore should be defined, at least subtly.  In Figure 2 below, USAToday.com provides a discreet ‘What’s This’ link directly beneath the ‘Share’ icons.  By clicking the ‘What’s This’ link, a small pop-up window displays and provides a brief explanation of the icons; therefore, users can learn about the icons and how they work if they so choose.

Figure 2 – News Article on USAToday.com with ‘What’s This’ link

Some best practices for presenting ‘Share’ icons on a web page are demonstrated in Figure 3 and Figure 4 below:

  • Do not devote prime screen real estate to the icons or allow the icons to get in the way of what the user is trying to accomplish.  Placing the ‘Share’ icons on the right side of the content or directly below the content will ensure users are not hindered by their presence.
  • Provide the icons in context, such as on an article or announcement page.  Displaying them on your Homepage is not necessarily appropriate.  For example, a real estate company’s website might use ‘Share’ icons on a Property Listing page or a hospital might provide ‘Share’ icons on Birth Announcement pages.
  • Do not overwhelm your visitors with too many icons.  As the number of social sites continues to increase, it is becoming more common (and necessary even) to place all of these icons behind a single ‘Share’ link to avoid icon overload.  If you’d like to provide more than 5 social networking site icons, consider using a single ‘Share’ or even ‘Bookmark & Share’ icon and upon mouse roll-over, display a fly-out box with all the community icons.
  • Finally, place the ‘Share’ icons in close proximity to the ‘Email’ and ‘Print’ links or combine all of them into a single ‘Share’ link as previously recommended.

Figure 3 – News Article on CNN.com with ‘Share’ Icon Collapsed

Figure 4 – News Article on CNN.com with ‘Share’ Icon Expanded

As social sites continue to gain popularity and more sites adopt the use of ‘Share’ icons, they will become as common and as well understood as a ‘Home’ link.  In fact, according to a survey by the Pew Internet Project (August 2011), 65 percent of Internet users in the United States aged 18 or over now use at least one online social network.   So, it may very well be time to invoke your site’s good manners and share!

Best Practices for Mobile Site Checkout

by usabilitydotcom

With the constant evolution of smart phones and mobile devices, users are expecting more efficient and intuitive functionality from mobile websites. This is especially true for those mobile sites designed for touch screen devices.

According to a 2009 whitepaper from Gomez, Inc., almost 75% of mobile web users expect to complete a simple transaction in a minute or less before giving up and exiting the site. This is due to a variety of reasons such as interruptions from everyday life, incoming phone calls, and changing network strength when on the move.

Customers are continually frustrated when attempting to make a purchase on a mobile website, especially when they invest a lot of time and energy researching to find the perfect item, only to struggle when going through the checkout process. Sometimes their frustration stems from a number of factors, and other times it is something as simple as not having a guest checkout option. So, how can mobile site managers make the customer experience of their mobile checkout process more intuitive and enjoyable? We conducted an internal study of mobile websites to find out.

We looked at the mobile websites for Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Target.com, and BarnesandNoble.com with a focus on their Add to Cart and Checkout processes. Users were asked to search for and purchase a DVD of their choice on some of the most commonly used smartphones, such as the iPhone 3Gs/4G, Android (Droid X/Evo), and Blackberry Curve. From this study we have compiled what we consider to be some of the most important factors to consider when improving the checkout process on your mobile site.

  • Provide an ‘Add to Cart’ option from the Search Results.
    A Search feature is often paramount on mobile retail websites as several users prefer to search for products instead of clicking through various product-related pages. Also, the ability to add an item to the cart from the search results, instead of only the product page, saves users a click and an additional page load.
  • Place a ‘Checkout’ button at the top of the screen, as well as at the bottom.
    Placing a ‘Checkout’ button at the top of the screen expedites users’ ability to dive into the checkout process as it is easily accessible. Additionally, a button at the bottom of the screen saves users from having to scroll back to the top of the page to checkout if they have multiple items in their cart.
  • Allow users the ability to checkout as a ‘Guest’.
    Customers do not like being forced to register with the site in order to purchase an item. We have heard some customers say they would simply discontinue the transaction or drive to a store to find the same item, simply because they are being asked to register at the beginning of the checkout process. However, it is worth providing users with an option to create an account at the end of the transaction as they have already entered their information. If you offer users the option to create an account at the end of the process, ensure the benefits of registering are displayed.
  • Provide a step/progress indicator throughout the entire checkout process.
    This feature helps manage users’ expectations and lets them know where they are in the process. Customers like knowing where they are and how much further they have to go before completing their checkout process. Lack of communicating the progress may ultimately hurt conversion if users encounter issues during checkout.
  • Provide a field-sensitive on-screen keyboard.
    When clicking in alpha-fields (i.e. First Name, Last Name), display an alpha keyboard. When clicking in numeric fields (i.e. Zip Code and Phone Number), display a numeric keyboard. Email fields should have <.com> and <@> keys. Also, in an address field, begin with a numeric keyboard for the street number and switch to an alpha keyboard after a space is entered to enter the street name. See the examples below:


  • Default shipping address to billing address or vice-versa.
    Regardless of which address information you ask your customers for first, ensure the same address is reflecting on the following step for shipping/billing. Also, ensure a method for editing the address or entering a new address is also present in cases where the billing and shipping addresses differ.

 

 

  • Provide the shipping options on the shipping address page.
    Consolidating these related steps into one page equals one less step in the overall checkout process, expediting the transaction time.

 

 

  • Automatically save the cart contents.
    On return to the mobile site, items added to the cart should persist, regardless of whether or not the user has signed in. If the user is signed in and items are added on the mobile site, allow items to carry over to the html website’s shopping cart, should the user choose to complete the transaction later from their home.

 

 

Implementing these best practices within the checkout process of your mobile website will help to ensure that customers have any easy and enjoyable purchasing experience.

Author: Tony Moreno, Usability Analyst
Contributors: Jeff Schueler, President & CEO
Jason Vasilas, Senior Usability Specialist

A Wrap Up on Gift Checkout

by usabilitydotcom

“Is the sweater I’m sending my daughter going to arrive in a gift box? I have no way of knowing what the gift-wrap looks like.”

“If I want to send 3 items to my dad, is each item going to be individually gift-wrapped?”

“It’s not clear how I can add a personal note to go along with the gift to my mom.”

“I don’t want the invoice to show pricing on it when my friend gets the gift. But there’s nothing on the site to tell me how that would work.”

“Would a gift receipt be included with the shipment?”

“I don’t want to give my credit card info before I know what options are available on the site for me to send a gift to my wife.”

The questions and comments above capture some of the uncertainties that site visitors encounter while shopping online to send items as gifts to family and friends. This underscores the importance for retail sites to assess if their checkout process is optimized for gift checkout. To that end, our focus in this article is to examine best practices as they relate to the following:

  1. Availability of gift box/wrap options
  2. Options to add gift messaging
  3. Details about invoicing and gift receipts
  4. Presenting gift options prior to collecting credit card info

Availability of Gift Box/Wrap Options

Ensure site visitors are provided an option to select a gift wrap. An optimal way of incorporating this into the checkout process is to include a ‘gift wrap’ option on the order summary because the summary lists all items ordered, making it easy for users to select gift options for each individual item. Additionally, providing it in the order summary makes it early enough in the process for users to know at the outset of the checkout process that the site offers gift options. An example of how the gift box/wrap options can be presented in the order summary is illustrated by the red highlighted box in the screenshot below from a major retail site:

 

Once visitors click on the ‘gift wrap’ option, provide them the ability to view the types of gift wrap offered and ability to specify gift wrap options for each item in their order summary.

This is illustrated below by the red highlighted boxes. The site presents visitors a visual of the gift wrap options and fields to decline or specify gift wrap options for each item in the order summary.

 

 

Options to Add Gift Messaging

Users interested in sending gifts expect the ability to add a gift message along with their gifts. Below is an example from a site that gives visitors the choice of selecting either a complimentary basic message to be included on the packing label, or a personalized greeting card to be included for an additional charge.

 

When visitors click on the ‘Sample’ link (see red highlighted box above), a pop-up of a sample package label message is displayed, as illustrated below:

 

Additionally, those who opt to add a personalized message are given the option to select a greeting card and a field to include a personal message:

Details about Invoicing and Gift Receipts

Visitors often are concerned that the gift package that is sent out to their friends or family may contain a bill with pricing on it. Visitors expect to see a statement letting them know about the site policy regarding invoicing and gift receipts. It is a best practice to ensure that once visitors are done with selecting their gift wrapping and personal message option, they are presented with a statement informing them that the invoice sent along with the gift package will not include any pricing. Additionally, if business policies allow, consider including a gift receipt with the package and ensure visitors are informed of this in an additional statement.

Present Gift Option Selections Prior to Collecting Credit Card Information

Users want to know what types of gift options are available to them prior to entering their credit card info. Hence, ensure options pertaining to the gifts are presented at the beginning stages of the checkout process. As noted in the first example in this newsletter, a good stage in the checkout process for introducing the gift options feature is the order summary because it is early enough in the process for users to know that the site offers gift options.

‘View All’ – The E-Commerce Version of Window Shopping

by usabilitydotcom

Many of the websites we have usability tested are e-commerce sites containing multiple product types. The products on these sites often include items such as clothing and shoes for the family along with house wares and other home goods. In each of these cases, the female in the household was considered the primary shopper for the family for these types of items and therefore the main audience for the retailer.

Retail sites characteristically have a consistent way to display products. The typical browsing pattern we noticed was:

  • Select a category or department
  • Select a sub-category
  • View small product images on the sub-category (or category) page
  • Click on individual images or product titles to load a product page

In watching females browse online in this way, a striking similarity emerged: As soon as these shoppers opened a page displaying multiple small product images, at least 90% of them immediately looked for a way to see all the items on the page in order to quickly find the item or item type they were searching for. On many sites, this was achieved by selecting a ‘View All’ button or text link. After seeing this pattern on a few retailer sites, our analyst teams began probing to determine if this was something unique to the usability lab environment or if this was standard shopping procedure (SSP). Guess what? It’s SSP. Typical comments we have heard from female users as they reviewed retail sites include, “I typically go to ‘view all’. I don’t like clicking through pages.” and “A ‘view all’ button would make life easier for me. It would take me forever to go though all these pages!”

Recognizing this has some interesting implications for any online retailer. We have seen that female shoppers in particular not only desire to scan every item in a particular category on a single page, but also wish for similar products to be grouped together within that single page. For example, female users expect to see dresses of similar lengths to be displayed adjacent to one another as they scroll down the page. They do not want the long dresses to be randomly placed among the knee-length dresses because then they have to scroll up and down to compare like items. Since we have seen few apparel sites with a product compare feature, the correct placement of products within category and sub-category pages becomes very important to provide the user with what she needs to have a successful site visit.

Based on our research and observations, here are a few necessities to remember when structuring your category and sub-category pages for retail sites:

  • Establish ‘View All’ functionality.
  • Verify the ‘View All’ button or link is easily accessible.
  • Default subsequent results pages to the view all option, if the shopper clicks ‘View All’ once
  • Group similar products adjacent to one another within the page to allow for easy, visual comparisons.

 

The Holidays are Here. Are Online Food Sites Meeting User Expectations?

by tsusc

It is that time of year when many of us pull out our cookbooks or go online to our preferred cooking or food websites to find just the right meal to adorn our holiday tables.  Some of us just want our old favorites, not bothering or caring about nutrition.  But trends show many of us are paying more and more attention to our family’s health and that good nutrition is becoming a key ingredient in our food preparation, even during the holidays.

A survey conducted by the American Dietician Association shows the percentage of people who don’t want to be bothered about diet and nutrition has decreased substantially from 2002 to 2008, dropping from 32% down to 19%.  This segment was as large as 40% in the mid 1990s.

By and large, this trend significantly impacts websites whose primary objective is to provide recipes, menus, culinary information and cooking techniques to the consumer.

In usability studies we’ve conducted on two popular cooking and recipe websites, it was revealed that health and nutrition were important concerns.  In particular, site visitors voiced two distinct requests when it came to healthy living:

  • Visitors wanted a robust selection of healthy recipes, grouped together and easily located by searching or browsing.  In fact, on one site, 40% of the visitors reported healthy recipes were among the most common type of recipes sought, including recipes to accommodate people with special health concerns.  Some comments:

    “Your website has a pretty good ‘healthy eating’ section, but it would be nice to see it explained a little more.”

    “Recipes suited to diabetic exchange.”

    “Add gluten-free recipes for people with celiac disease”

    Healthy Recipe content access from a
    top level navigational button

    DropDownEnhanced.JPG

  • Visitors wanted to see nutrition information included for all recipes, and not just for recipes classified as healthy. On one site, 15% felt they had an unsuccessful visit because nutritional information was hit or miss as nutrition information was not provided for all recipes, except for those in the healthy category. Some comments:

“I would like nutrition information with all recipes.”

“I didn’t see any nutritional information for the recipes.  That’s very important to me.  I would like to see that included with the recipes.”

“A huge drawback for me is that nutritional information is not included for any recipes (except, I believe, those from Healthy Appetite)…adding nutritional data would make me much more likely to visit your site.”

Recipe with no nutritional information,
found outside of “Healthy” Category

NoNutrition.jpg

Recipe with nutritional information,
found in a “Healthy” category

AbbreviatedNutritionPanel.jpg

It was also revealed through these studies that there was not always an adequate amount of nutrition information with the recipes to make a decision. Following are examples of more elaborate nutritional “panels” found with recipes on other popular cooking and recipe websites:

NutritionLabel.jpg

So, when it comes to health and nutrition on cooking and recipe websites, keep the following short list of best practices in mind to satisfy your growing number of health conscious visitors:

  • Provide a “Healthy Recipe” category as well as categories to accommodate visitors with common health concerns, like diabetes.
  • Provide adequate nutritional information to satisfy the greatest number of visitors.  The most common nutritional requests are information for fat, calories, cholesterol, carbohydrates and sugars.
  • If possible, elaborate on nutritional information to include daily values, vitamins and other supplemental nutrients.
  • Provide nutritional information for all recipes, not just for the recipes that fall into a “healthy” category.
  • Ensure nutritional information abuts the recipe, ideally on the left or right side.
  • Ensure nutritional information is well designed, using an easily readable format such as the labels found on product packaging.

Your efforts to give your site visitors a healthy and nutritious perspective could be one of the most important ingredients in a culinary website.

How to Build a Usability Lab – Part 2

by tsusc

This is the second in a series of ongoing blog posts aimed at giving you a blow-by-blow account of our upcoming move to our new offices and the ensuing adventure of building out our new state-of-the-art usability labs.

When building a usability lab, you have to take into account some basic physical considerations such as:

  1. You need two adjacent rooms to represent the control room and user room.
  2. Sound proofing between the control and user rooms.
  3. Sound-proofing the usability lab from the outside and vice versa.
  4. A two-way mirror that allows observation of the user room without being seen.

Sound-Proofing

As the floor plan included in the first part of this post showed, of the four usability labs with the paired control/user rooms, three share a wall with one or more labs and one shares a wall with an office.  When sound-proofing the lab as a whole, one of the major structural changes to keep in mind is to ensure the walls go from the floor of one level all the way to the deck of the floor above. Normal office buildings have 2-3 feet between the ceiling of one floor level to the deck of the floor level above, usually with panel/grid ceiling tiles. By taking the wall all the way up, you keep the sound from reaching into empty spaces above.

There is extra cost involved in building these walls but the major cost incurred is to ensure that 1) the HVAC is designed to go through the walls, and 2) for special sound dampeners to be placed in the ducts between the rooms.

Lastly, where the labs share walls with other labs, we have to ensure the walls are constructed with extra sound insulation inside them. Two major sound-proofing options we have chosen to forgo until we test out the new labs are the sound dampening of ceiling tiles, and a installing a type of sheet rock called ‘quiet rock.’ Together, these two options could add $5,000 to the cost of each lab. The decision was made to wait on these options because they can be easily added after initial construction if it is deemed necessary at a later time.

Two-Way Mirror

What is the first thing that you think of when you think usability labs? For fans of Castle or The Mentalist, it might be watching Beckett or Cho (this character really needs his own show) conduct interrogations on the show from behind the two-way mirror.

The design of our current two-way mirrors has been very effective and we intend to utilize the same design.

For two-way mirrors to work effectively, you need to limit the sound that travels through the mirror between the lab and control room, and you need to limit the amount of light in the control room because with the wrong lighting, you can still see through a two-way mirror. Glass obviously is a great conductor of light but it happens to also be a good conductor of sound so the effectiveness of the mirror coating and dark flat paint in the control room help with most of the light issues but not the sound issues.

One of the most effective techniques to address the sound issue is the use of a unique double-paned window approach. This also helps diffuse the amount of light from the control room.

As you can see from the architectural diagram above, the two-way mirror is set flat in the window frame on the side of the user room and a second piece of plain glass installed on the control room side is set at an angle starting about ½ inch from mirror angling so that at the top it is 2 inches away from the mirror. (I’ll save you from a riveting physics lesson on why the angle of the glass disrupts the sound and light waves more than a normal double-pane window! Let’s just say it works.) The result of this is that voices are muffled so no normal conversation can be heard between the two rooms.

One structural requirement for our new usability labs not listed above is the need for dedicated HVAC in one of our labs. In most office buildings, air-conditioning and heating are only turned on during regular business hours. For our new office space, we have set up one of our labs with a dedicated HVAC system so we can run studies nights and weekends. Not all labs need this option, but with the increase in international remote-testing that we have been doing lately, and the vast time zone differences and having to work on weekends, and all night, when doing international testing, this is an option that would make sense for us. This of course adds additional costs and design considerations to the build-out.

We currently are in the process of getting bids on the audio-visual portion of the new usability labs and focus group room.  The next blog post in this series will be about this process and the options we choose.