ux & cro optimising accessibility relevancy and conversions

UX & CROUX & CRO

www.greenlightdigital.com

FE

BR

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2017

UX

& C

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OPTIMISING ACCESSIBILITY,

RELEVANCY AND CONVERSIONS

http://www.greenlightdigital.com

2 www.greenlightdigital.com | +44 (0)20 7253 7000

WHAT IS CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION AND USER EXPERIENCE?BY SARAH FABER PETERSENHead of CRO & UX

Greenlight is a multiple award-winning integrated digital marketing agency that designs, builds, deploys and measures marketing solutions and campaigns across Search, Content and Engagement, Display, Mobile, eCommerce, and more, with the unwavering objective of achieving dramatic growth for its clients. Greenlight promotes brands and products in 32 languages and 42 territories on behalf of such clients as Hiscox, ghd, Dixons Carphone, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Laura Ashley and many more.

Ready to grow? Call us on +44(0)20 7253 7000or go to www.greenlightdigital.com/get-in-touch

4 6

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: GET DIGITAL RIGHT BY APPLYING A CUSTOMER-FIRST APPROACHBY MATTHEW WHITEWAY Client Services Director

HOW CRO AFFECTS YOUR BUSINESSBY SARAH FABER PETERSENHead of CRO & UX

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http://www.greenlightdigital.com/get-in-touch

3www.greenlightdigital.com | +44 (0)20 7253 7000

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UNDERSTANDING UX AS AN SEO RANKING FACTORBY BEA PATMANHead of SEO

UX: STAYING AHEAD OF THE GAME IN 2017

BY MONNY LAM Senior Digital Designer

UNDERSTANDING DATA-DRIVEN OPTIMISATIONBY SARAH FABER PETERSENHead of CRO & UX

IS SHOPPING ON YOUR SITE LIKE TRYING TO FIND A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK?

BY CHRIS DUNNOperations Director, FoundIt!

PUTTING USERS AT THE HEART OF YOUR BUSINESSBY SARAH FABER PETERSENHead of CRO & UX

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Ever found yourself shouting at your

computer when attempting to buy

something online? Whether or not it’s

just me that reacts that way, what’s clear

is that we now expect to have a seamless

experience when buying online, regardless

of where we are at the time and of the

device we’re using. That being said, we often

forget how much digital has evolved over

the last decade, and that it really wasn’t too

long ago that playing Snake on our mobile

phone was considered revolutionary. But

we do forget, and we do expect. The pace

at which digital has evolved is massive,

but at the heart of success is the ability for

marketers to take the time to ask themselves

some core questions which are focused on

customer behaviour and how well their

offering responds to key needs.

The fact of the matter is that media consumption

over the past few years has changed, and we’re now

seeing a paradigm shift in favour of consumers,

where they define the terms and parameters. Just

look at the way TV has evolved and think about the

last time you watched your favourite show; statistics

would suggest you viewed it “on demand” rather

than live, confirming the degree to which users are

controlling when and how to consume. Online is no

different. Simply being able to buy or enquire online

is no longer enough.

GET DIGITAL RIGHT BY APPLYING A CUSTOMER-FIRST APPROACH

BY MATTHEW WHITEWAY, CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR

INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION


“Users want an experience that is tailored to them; they don’t want

to have to think about on-site navigation, they don’t want to have to

click through dozens of filters. They want instant access to content

or items, all on their terms – and they expect that journey to be

perfect from start to finish.”

That’s why user experience (UX) and conversion

rate optimisation (CRO) is so important. Creating

a frictionless experience that guides users from a

landing page to a purchase button should be a key

consideration for any digital marketing process today.

Digital marketers have been the envy of traditional

marketers for years due to the data they have at their

disposal. However, it’s up to website owners to use that

data to really understand how their consumers are

engaging with their website, and to identify pain points

and clarify how to tackle those. All too often, digital

marketers simply accept their site conversion rates and

instead put more money into the top of their funnel to

attract more traffic, and the potential gains that come

from site optimisation to get more from your existing

traffic are often overlooked.

It’s been suggested that it takes 1/20th of a second

for a user to decide whether they like a website or

not. Whilst I don’t entirely agree that a key purchasing

decision is really made that quickly, it’s clear that

users are now expecting and demanding a far richer,

engaging, and personalised experience than ever

before; and long-term growth and brand value will

effectively be offered to those who optimise to meet

those requirements.


UX & CRO

6


WHAT IS CONVERSION

RATE OPTIMISATION AND

USER EXPERIENCE?

SARAH FABER PETERSEN, HEAD OF CRO & UX

Over the years, I’ve met quite a few clients

asking for ‘conversion experience’ and

‘user rate optimisation’ – this is, of course,

an exaggeration, but the point remains:

user experience (UX) and conversion rate

optimisation (CRO) are often confused,

combined as one or thought of as two terms

for the same practice. By having a look at the

ever popular ‘granny remote’ analogy, it’s easy

to understand what CRO and UX really mean

and how they operate in different spaces.

We all use remote controls, probably daily (depending

on your TV viewing habits, of course), yet we’ll rarely use

more than a few of the buttons. In fact, if we’re being

really honest, very few of us (engineers and avid techies

aside) are likely to know the functionality of 90% of the

buttons on them.

So, why are they there? All they do is clutter up the

‘interface’ and cause frustrating moments of “why is

everything blue? How do I undo that?” after hitting a

random, and often unknown, button when you pick up

the remote. Wouldn’t life (read: TV watching) be much

easier if we removed all the clutter and kept the most

used buttons on display with a ‘view more buttons here’

option, should you ever need them.



The illustration below shows three remote controls. The first remote is your standard non-optimised festival of

buttons – the functionality you need is there, but it takes effort to find them, and making a mistake is easy.

UX & CRO

Remote #1

Standard

Remote #2

UX optimised

Remote #3

CRO optimised



After extensive user research and data analysis of

button use (not really, but you get the point) we’ve

optimised the user experience of the second remote;

the most used buttons stand out and are further

enhanced with supporting titles, and all remaining

buttons are hidden but remain available. This makes

for an easy to use remote, an effortless user experience

where you’re not required to do any thinking or

endless searching. This is a remote my two-year-old

niece and seventy-year-old mum can both use – it

excludes no one.

Moving on to the third remote which has been further

optimised with a bit of conversion rate optimisation

(CRO) logic. In this example, we want viewers to pick

up the remote, turn on the TV and keep it on for as

long as possible. We encourage them to do so by

applying a few psychologically persuasive cues. We

separate the ‘on’ and ‘off’ buttons and enhance ‘on’

while ‘off’ is discretely placed to the side. To really get

people excited at the prospect of watching TV, we

add a few prompts or USPs to remind users why TV is

the best. We highlight channel 2, because that’s the

one we make most money on, and add some urgency

with a countdown to when the next show will begin.

Finally, we add some social proof for good measure

– other people love TV, you probably will too! This

fully optimised remote is not only easy to use, but also

encourages users to engage with it.

Now, let’s apply this logic to your website: does it

offer content, navigation and functionalities that may

confuse users and distract from the main purpose of

your site? Is it clear what users are meant to do on

your site, how it benefits them and how to proceed?

These are the questions that we need to ask ourselves;

your site isn’t really serving a purpose that’s of true

value to your business unless it’s optimised to your

user base and their behaviour and makes the user

journey clear and simple in order to engage and

convert. What’s interesting is how often the seemingly

greatest of websites are, in fact, not serving their

audience correctly and aren’t making their most

valuable touchpoints visible – and that’s exactly where

UX and CRO come in to help improve those journeys

and maximise the value of touchpoints you want users

to engage with.


“Your site isn’t really serving a purpose that’s of true

value to your business unless it’s optimised to your user

base and their behaviour and makes the user journey

clear and simple in order to engage and convert.”


UX & CRO

HOW CRO AFFECTS

YOUR BUSINESS

While conversion rate optimisation (CRO) has always been around in one way or another, it has yet to find proper ground in many businesses, big or small. As a marketer of any kind, your success is likely measured on ROI and growing sales. And so, when it’s time to develop a digital strategy geared towards acquiring more high quality traffic, CRO would be the obvious path to follow – after all, more users must mean more sales. That being said, investing in CRO is often at the bottom of the list when allocating budget, and as a function it tends to get what’s left of the marketing budget

at the end of the year – something which really puzzles me.

HOW TOUCHPOINTS IMPACT KPI’S

Over the years, I’ve been told by many brands that they

just don’t have the funds to invest in CRO services due

to low sales numbers and a need to focus on traffic

performance first. In my (granted, very biased) opinion

this makes little sense as this very challenge would

suggest that conversion optimisation is where they

stand to gain the most.



“Working with CRO means

optimising the performance of your

site and with that, the performance

of your traffic, benefitting the overall

business and improving different

teams and channels’ performance –

everyone’s a winner!”

If, like many brands, you invest in paid traffic and as a

result achieve an increase in conversions of 2%, that’s a

great ROI. But if you optimised your website alongside that

activity and achieved a further increase in conversions of

50%, you’d be getting more conversions at the same ad

cost (lowering your overall CPA). Such cost savings would

give you the option to reinvest your savings back into

more digital activity, but most importantly, your site will

be performing at its best and adding a net improvement to

your paid media activity.

Embarking on a CRO adventure may seem daunting to

some, and resources may be a cause for concern. Sure,

a list of recommended changes to the site which will

improve conversions sounds great, but who’s going to

implement the changes? How do the changes fit in with

current schedules? What if the recommendations don’t

have a positive effect after all? These concerns are exactly

why we test.

CRO IS APPLICABLE TO JUST ABOUT

ANY SITE

If your site has sufficient traffic volume and conversion

or goal touchpoints, CRO teams can conduct experiments

across your site based on thoroughly researched

hypotheses. Conducting experiments leaves us

with scientific proof that a given recommendation,

if implemented on your site, will result in a lift in

conversions of x%. This takes away any uncertainty and

guess work, and you’ll not lose any resource implementing

changes unless you’re certain they’ll have a positive impact

on your bottom line.

On the other hand, some businesses overlook CRO because

they don’t feel it’s relevant to them; their product is not

click-to-buy or they offer a service that requires quotes

and a longer sales process. The reality is that no matter

what product or service you offer, there’s almost always

a way to help enhance sales through online conversion

optimisation.

Let’s say you sell yachts. Sure, it seems highly unlikely

anyone is going to make an impulse purchase based on

a big flashy call-to-action – even if it were possible to

complete an order online. But, if you break down your

main goal (selling a yacht) into sub goals, you can work

on optimising conversions on these. Examples of these

could be downloading a brochure, filling out a request

form, setting up a viewing or making a phone call. Digging

into your data further will allow you to discover how often

a document download leads to a viewing, and how many

viewings ultimately lead to sales. This allows you to set a

value for each goal and gives a clear indication of where

you should be focusing your CRO efforts.

And so I rest my case that CRO is definitely worth investing

in for just about any business. CRO is an effective tool no

matter what, whether you have a big budget and want to

do lots of test plans or you simply want to do some low-

cost investigative analytics and observe user behaviour.

Ultimately, CRO can give you enough insights to develop a

list of quick wins which will improve conversions based on

your goals and your site’s overall performance. Irrelevant of

how much you spend, you’re almost certainly guaranteed

that your money will be well spent – after all, you’ll

continue to reap the benefits of a better performing site

for time to come, alongside visible improvements across

other marketing channels.


UNDERSTANDING UX AS AN

SEO RANKING FACTOR

It’s only been a few months since Sarah (Head of

CRO & UX) joined the Greenlight team, but in no

time at all we’ve fallen into step on all things site

optimisation. So much so, in fact, that we spent

the back end of last year attending a number

of industry conferences together, preaching the

gospel of integrated UX and SEO. For us it feels

like a no-brainer – working so closely together

means that we’re easily able to identify the many

ways in which our respective channels overlap

and the many benefits that we can bring to one

another’s traditional KPI sets. I have to admit that

we’ve found it a little odd to still be encountering

dissent from those who feel that the two channels

continue to operate at cross-purposes, or who

frequently encounter conflicts between the two

teams within their own organisations.

BEA PATMAN, HEAD OF SEO

SEO



I want to convince continuing doubters of the

symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines,

and hopefully provide some constructive methods for

better integrating siloed UX and SEO departments.

After all, whether your focus is on acquisition

or retention, the likelihood is that any website

stakeholder will ultimately be striving – and in some

way accountable – for conversions. So, with that

common goal in mind, how is it exactly that these two

channels overlap?

ENGAGEMENT IS AT THE HEART OF

UX AND SEO LOGIC

The first thing to keep in mind is that this intersection

of interests is by no means new: UX considerations

have been creeping into the SEO canon for several

years. In fact, the Panda algorithm, which is central

to organic optimisation and turns six this year, is

entirely focused on the depth, breadth and quality

of a website’s content – factors specific to a user’s

experience of that site. Then there are engagement

metrics to consider; search engines observe user

interaction with results and look for “long clicks”,

whereby users stay on a page that they’ve clicked on

rather than immediately returning to the search. It’s

for this reason that SEOs will obsess about lowering

bounce rates and increasing the ‘stickiness’ of page

copy. But these are the exact performance metrics that

CRO and UX teams are also focusing on, so, why is it,

then, that conflict still exists between these channels?

In my experience, disagreement tends to arise not

around content-related matters, but when bigger

decisions about site structure, navigation and user

journeys need to be made. Menus have long been

a particularly rancorous UX and SEO battleground,

with (and forgive the generalisation) SEOs usually

arguing either for fewer links or for prioritisation of

commercially significant pages, and UX managers

pushing to have all content quickly and easily

available to users up-front. In this instance, it’s likely

that SEO decisions are being motivated (consciously

or unconsciously) by PageRank, which was one of the

original driving forces in SEO. Based on the principle

that page equity is passed around the web through

links, PageRank was for a long time one of the most

visible and easily measured ranking factors, which is

why it’s ended up playing such a significant role in

shaping the way that organic optimisation is carried

out.


“Whether your focus is on acquisition or retention, the

likelihood is that any website stakeholder will ultimately be

striving – and in some way accountable – for conversions.”


SEO

But PageRank is just one factor of many – and a

deprecated one at that. Google began pulling back

support for public-facing PageRank measures after

about a decade, slowly decommissioning the Open

Directory, the Search Console interface and, eventually,

the Toolbar view. At the same time, new measurement

tools were being introduced to help with optimising

more experience-focused site features, such as speed.

In fact, Google introduced the family of PageSpeed

tools at its 2010 developer conference – the same year

the Open Directory was shuttered. This isn’t to say that

PageRank is dead: it’s still operating in the background

as a component of the ranking algorithm. However, its

importance has decreased significantly over the past

six or seven years while that of user experience has

increased correspondingly, and it’s important that we

SEOs learn to adapt our old habits to align with this

new state of play.

FINDING A MIDDLE GROUND

So what’s the compromise? Well, sticking with the

menu issue for another minute, I don’t believe there

really needs to be one. The priority for SEO is ensuring

that the navigation helps robots to crawl sites

effectively and understand their hierarchy, while for UX

it’s a case of making it easier for users to move around.

This is because UX and CRO are founded on a “don’t

make me think” rubric – a user shouldn’t have to apply

any mental effort when interacting with a website.

Fundamentally, therefore, both channels are working

to clear a simple, intuitive path around site content.

This parity extends beyond just navigation, too. I

mentioned earlier that content tends to be an area in

which UX and SEO see eye-to-eye, and that goes right

down to the granular details. Mark-ups such as H1s are

clear demarcations both for robots and human users;

quality copy benefits relevancy, ranking performance

and adds value to a user’s interaction with a site; and

meta data helps both robots and users to understand

what a page is about and what information it might

help to deliver. In almost every aspect of on-page

optimisation, both teams should be working towards

the same goals, albeit for subtly different purposes.



If that still isn’t the case in your organisation, how

can you go about bringing the two teams into line?

Probably the most powerful olive branch is data.

Each team has insights into particular aspects of

the customer journey that the other lacks – SEOs

are likely to have much more data on search query

volumes and intent than UX teams, while the latter

will know how users behave on-site after they’ve

clicked on the organic result. Sarah’s team favours

Hotjar1 for user analysis because of the invaluable

insights its visitor recording can deliver. For me, these

have been revelatory: imagine discovering that a

page that we’ve carefully optimised and have ranking

for a given search query is confusing the hell out of

visitors who land on it from that SERP! Watching their

cursors frantically search the page for mentions of the

topic, or perhaps for products they expect to find and

don’t, is helping us to reflect on accuracy, relevancy,

content and layout to make sure that the journey from

acquisition to interaction is much more seamless. This

helps to win longer clicks, lower bounce rates, higher

relevancy scores and, of course, better conversions.

Meanwhile, I’ve been able to reciprocate with search

query data; helping, for example, to shed a light on

why a highly competitive short-tail term might not be

converting as the CRO team anticipated.

Once you’re integrating data at the top end of your

working processes, the next step is to review KPIs. The

likelihood is that you’ll discover a lot of similarities

– probably in the form of conversion and revenue

targets. It’s these, more than anything else, that really

serve to highlight the fact that you’re not dealing with

two parallel channels; rather two teams that handle

different points on the same user journey (one lines

them up while the other knocks them down, in other

words).

With algorithmic advancements making it easier

for search engines to measure user signals, and the

mobile-first index placing speed and simplicity at the

very centre of site optimisation, the significance to

SEO of what were once purely UX considerations is

only set to grow. My bet is that the brands that thrive

will be the ones that take proper steps to integrate

their digital teams rather than allowing them to

continue working in siloes. The reality is that much

of that work has been done by Google anyway: little

by little, the requirements placed on both teams

have been pushed closer in line over the last few

years. Now, the final step is communication, which, as

marketers, is inherent to our roles so should be the

easiest step overall.

1. https://www.hotjar.com/



UNDERSTANDING

DATA-DRIVEN

OPTIMISATION

UX & CRO

SARAH FABER PETERSEN HEAD OF CRO & UX



UNDERSTANDING

DATA-DRIVEN

OPTIMISATION

In my years working in conversion rate optimisation,

I’ve often come across companies which insist that

they’re already doing CRO and have been doing so for a

long time. Many will settle with installing heatmapping

technology such as Crazyegg1 on their site and running

the odd A/B test. The only problem is, they don’t use

the data they gather through Crazyegg and there’s no

hypotheses or purpose behind the A/B tests they’ve

run – and while they may get lucky and strike gold here

and there, it’s not a winning strategy, and will rarely

ever result in major long-term improvements.

In my younger days, I always cringed a bit when

someone mentioned the word “data” – I thought it

sounded a bit geeky. Now, I’m all aboard the geek

train, and I’m hoping after reading this article you

too will jump on board (if you haven’t already). Many

marketers will use data to measure how different

marketing channels perform and to monitor overall site

performance. But why not also use the data to discover

where the site is suffering and take it a step further to

discover not just where the problems lie, but also what

the problems on those pages really are for users.


Your analytics platform is a gold mine of

information and should be the foundation

of any data-driven optimisation strategy.

“

”


UX & CRO

A high bounce rate is the first

indicator that something is

wrong. Something on these

pages discourages users from

engaging further with the site.

It’s also worth checking the

traffic source here, as that may

also be a factor.

BOUNCE RATEIdentify the pages with high

volumes of traffic and low

conversion; these are often

the pages where there’s most

to gain. It’s also worth taking

a look at how pages convert

compared to the site average.

CONVERSIONSHow is your traffic split between

devices? Do the majority

of users visit your site on a

mobile device and, if so, does

that channel lead to more

conversions? This is a great way

to learn where your efforts in

optimisation should be focused.

DEVICES

If you haven’t already, set

up a funnel in your analytics

platform to discover at what

point within the funnel your

users tend to drop off, as that

will be a marked pain point to

investigate further.

FUNNEL VISUALISATIONDo some browsers convert

much better than others? You

could potentially be losing out

on lots of conversions due to

technical and compatibility

issues.

BROWSER

HERE’S A LIST OF SOME OF THE FIRST THINGS TO EXPLORE

WHAT ARE YOUR CHALLENGES, AND WHERE DO THEY OCCUR?

Your analytics platform is a gold mine of information and should be the foundation of any data-driven optimisation

strategy. It helps identify where your site is struggling and gives insights on what to include in your optimisation plan.



WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AND HOW

DO WE FIX IT?

Now we’ve identified where the problems are, but we

don’t know why or how we go about fixing them.

Sometimes the answer will be obvious once you’ve

had a second look at the issue in question, but more

often than not you’ll have to dig deeper and do

additional research before you can develop a valid

hypothesis for implementation or testing. To gain this

kind of insight, we need to study how users interact

with your site. Fortunately, we live in an age where

there are tools for pretty much anything, and user

insights are no exception to this, with tools like Hotjar2,

Clicktale3, SessionCam4, Crazy Egg5 and Lucky Orange6

(the list goes on) which can help to gather all the user

behaviour data you could wish for.

These tools allow you to set up scroll, movement

and click maps to discover where on the page users

engage (and where they don’t) so you can identify

areas and touchpoints which are ideal for conversions.

Form analytics will tell the story of how your users

are interacting with key forms, as well as which

fields make users hesitate and where they drop off

altogether.

And then there’s the most qualitative data of them

all: user playbacks, which are end-to-end recordings

of individual user journeys. Playbacks, however, can

be tricky and aren’t the easiest insights to analyse

– they’re time consuming and, without a systematic

approach, can result in more confusion – and

sometimes even the wrong conclusion altogether. But

with the right approach, there are invaluable learnings

in observing how your users interact with your site

from which you can easily notice trends and walk away

with some immediate takeaways.

Ultimately, when it comes to optimising your site, data

is vital. It’s impossible to develop a valid optimisation

strategy without knowing where opportunities lie and

without having gained an understanding of how you

can achieve them. And while this article can only give

you a tiny glimpse of the amazing world of data, I hope

it’s inspired you to explore it further.

1. https://www.crazyegg.com/

2. https://www.hotjar.com/

3. https://www.clicktale.com/

4. https://sessioncam.com/

5. https://www.crazyegg.com/

6. http://www.luckyorange.com/


IS SHOPPING ON YOUR SITE LIKE TRYING TO FIND A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK?

UX & CRO

CHRIS DUNN, OPERATIONS DIRECTOR,


In its latest annual report1, ASOS acknowledged

that because it offers one of the largest product

collections, shopping on its website could feel like

searching for a needle in a haystack.

“ASOS is the online fashion

destination with one of the

largest collections of products

and content anywhere in the

world. It’s why we’re growing so

quickly. But having everything

any customer could want is a

challenge – how do we make

sure that, among the tens of

thousands of items available, our

customers can find just the right

ones for them? Go onto our site

and search for, say, ‘black dress’.

You’ll get close to 3,000 results.

Who can find the needle in the

haystack of 300 dresses, let

alone 3,000?”

This really struck a chord with me, and it’s not

just ASOS that’s creating haystacks. In my role at

FoundIt!2, a ground-breaking journey optimisation

platform, I see it happening industry-wide – with

many well-known eCommerce brands actively

expanding their range and moving into new

product areas.

I can just hear those conflicting boardroom

discussions now:

“We have a key strength in that

we have significantly expanded

our range of products, and now

have a great amount of choice to

offer our customers.”

“We also have a key weakness…

in that we have significantly

expanded our range of products,

and now have a great amount of

choice to offer our customers.”

That’s exactly the crux of the issue; by adding more

and more product lines to eCommerce sites we are,

in effect, creating a journey for many customers that

truly is like finding a needle in a haystack.

CV

R%

T I M E S P E N T O N S E A R C H / B R O W S E

There is a significant negative correlation with the time and effort taken to find products and CVR:


UX & CRO

All that clicking, searching and filtering. Then there’s

the sorting, the scrolling, and all the ‘click here for

page 2’. It’s a minefield. And it’s no wonder that

customers who are unable to find what they want is

one of the biggest sources of customer frustration, low

conversion rates and lost sales opportunities.

This is a major headache for CRO and UX practitioners

alike. As the title of this article suggests, we’ve

created haystacks and, by and large, we don’t help the

customer when they’re trying to find those needles.

Search functionality and navigation bars should be

our friends here, but quite often those features are

unintuitive, not relevant and, crucially, not reflective of

human behaviour.

Take this page:

“

”

Search functionality and navigation bars

should be our friends, but quite often those

features are unintuitive, not relevant and,

crucially, not reflective of human behaviour.



If we stop and think about it, do we honestly

think the user’s most likely next step on the

site shown on the left is to filter by price (let

alone by £5 to £10 for that matter)?

We could check our page analytics, but that

would be swayed by a self-fulfilling prophecy

and also reflects clickable activity rather than

easily highlighting direct painpoints when

navigating a page.

Better still, we can talk to our search marketing

colleagues and gauge what the wider market

thinks by looking at keywords and customer

intent around a category. In this particular

example, it’s all about ‘Brand’ and ‘Storage

Capacity’, and in fact when digging deeper,

the lion’s share of the demand is in just two

brands: Seagate and WD. This issue could

be further exacerbated for our customer if

this was an A to Z sort as well, which would

effectively bury Seagate and WD, the most

likely next steps, even further down the

page. The problem here is we don’t surface

this language front and centre to help our

customers navigate and filter to the products

they’re most likely to be looking for.

By understanding what customers want

before they land on a website, we can present

more personalised and intuitive customer

experiences. Many eCommerce marketers are

looking beyond the out-of-the-box eCommerce

platform capabilities and facet navigation

engines to solve this problem. As I point out

above, inherently those solutions offer a one-

size-fits-all approach, which no longer fits our

customers’ ever-changing needs.

In order to have any chance of finding

needles in an ever-increasing haystack world,

eCommerce marketers are going to need to

really understand their customers’ continually

changing intent, at every level of their website

navigation while also instantly surfacing those

‘best of the best’ navigational options at scale

and front and centre in an always switched-on

environment. To do this, retailers need to invest

in technology that utilises customer data to

create more relevant journeys. ASOS, a digital-

first business and leader in the respective field,

has built its own systems to help surface the

right content and products, at the right time,

using an array of customer data and machine-

learning algorithms to make sure it holds its

customers’ hand each step of the way.

However, if you’re not ASOS and don’t have

the budget or resource to create your own

systems, journey optimisation technology has

been developed that can quickly be added to

your site and start improving the customer

experience, and your conversion rates, in

weeks. With the amount of information that

can be collected to create a personalised and

relevant user experience, I’m hoping that going

forward we’ll see an important shift away

from sites that resemble haystacks and move

towards fast, sleek and simple interfaces that

are driven by user data and interactions.

1. http://www.asosplc.com/~/media/Files/A/ASOS/

results-archive/pdf/2015-annual-report.pdf

2. http://www.foundit.com/



UX & CRO

In UX, how you deal with your

users and how they feel when

using your product are key

factors of success.

“

”24 www.greenlightdigital.com | +44 (0)20 7253 7000


With the digital landscape constantly evolving

and new UX trends frequently appearing, it can

be a challenge to make sure your brand is as up

to date as can be. To give you a head start, we’ve

summed up three new user experience practices

that we believe will be the biggest game-

changers for brands in 2017.

1. AGE RESPONSIVE DESIGN

A one-size-fits-all approach to web design is quickly

becoming a thing of the past. Already, responsive web

design adjusts the content of your website to fit around

a device screen size or resolution. With a plethora of

audience data now available at our fingertips, designers

will increasingly take advantage of data to identify

unique visitors and offer them age-specific adaptations

over the coming years.

Through the intelligent use of audience data, there’s a

growing ability to create universally user-friendly, age-

appropriate experiences.

Age-responsive websites can be designed to tailor the

perfect user interface experience depending on your

target audience’s age, which could feature adaptations

such as:

• Font sizes and kerning adjusted to be

bigger and clearer for the elderly

• Select colour schemes dependent on the

user’s age; for example, the use of more

vibrant colors for kids or higher contrast

color schemes for older users

• Navigation options optimised to suit a

user’s competency level; it’s much easier for

beginners to navigate around a site using

prominent menu options, whereas more

advanced users may prefer less clutter

Web users today have a dramatically different level

of digital literacy - from digital natives right through

to silver surfers. With that in mind, UX designers need

to start taking advantage of audience data to make

subtle changes to accommodate for younger or older

audiences.

UX: STAYING AHEAD OF

THE GAME IN 2017 BY MONNY LAM, SENIOR DIGITAL DESIGNER



UX & CRO

2. CHATBOTS

Chatbots are’t a new thing, but they’re definitely one of

the hottest topics in the industry right now, and we’re

pretty confident you’ll be considering integrating one of

these onto your site soon.

A chatbot, short for chat robot, is a computer program

which simulates human conversation, or chat, powered

by system rules and natural language processing,

allowing users to interact with them via a chat interface

similar to Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Slack, Telegram

or text messages. Chatbots in apps are similarly an

upgrade to a mobile user interface, as they bring the

most basic type of human interaction – conversation –

into the digital environment.

Digital audiences are currently using messenger apps

more than they’re using social networks. Strategically,

if you want to grow your online business, you need to

be where your audience is and, at the moment, that

place is inside messenger apps, which makes chatbots

all the more important. It’s potentially a huge business

opportunity for brands who want to re-create an in-

store experience online, supported by technology that

users will welcome. With chatbots in place, brands will

be able to provide more personalised customer service,

generate sales leads around the clock and subsequently

increase revenue.



3. MICRO-INTERACTIONS

Micro-interactions are the tiny on-screen animations, transitions or reactions that are triggered when a user

interacts with an interface – from pushing a button to refreshing a feed. They give users an important form of visual

feedback in return for their action and when they’re well designed, they can transform an interaction that’s usually

dull and forgetable into one that feels human and satisfying. They make the user’s life much easier by allowing them

to know what’s happening, what has happened, and what will happen next as they interact with the interface.

There are four stages that make up each micro-interaction to consider: trigger, rules, feedback and loops and modes.

In UX, how you deal with your users and how they feel when using your product are key factors of success. Even

minor details deserve close attention. It’s important that designers recognise the subtlety of micro-interactions while

also taking care to design them beautifully. Getting these right will elevate your interface from one that users will

tolerate to one that they’ll love.

The trigger is the action

that starts the micro-

interaction; it should

be clearly visible to the

user and behave in a

predictable way. The best

triggers should be able

to anticipate the user’s

need without explicitly

explaining it.

Rules determine what

can or cannot be done,

and form part of the

user flow by defining the

sequence of events.

Since rules are invisible,

feedback helps us to

understand what’s

happening and to learn

the rules. Feedback also

offers an opportunity to

add brand personality to

your micro-interaction,

such as a CSS transition or

a related sound effect.

Loops and modes are the

last components. Loops

determine how long the

micro-interaction should

last, and define how they

change over time. On

the other hand, modes

should only be used as

the critical but infrequent

action that would disrupt

the flow of the micro-

interaction.

TRIGGER RULES FEEDBACKLOOPS AND MODES



PUTTING USERS AT

THE HEART OF YOUR

BUSINESS

UX & CRO


28

“We’re spoilt with a plethora of data these days, and

there’s so much we can learn about who our users are,

which gives us a great starting point when trying to

understand how to reach our target audience and

adjust the user experience accordingly.”

Websites are made for users – or, at

least, they should be made for users.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the

case; user needs, expectations and

overall experience are often an after-

thought rather than the foundation

on which websites are built.

GAME OF STAKEHOLDERS

Developing a new website is quite

an arduous task which often requires

tedious research and planning before

you get to the design and develop-

ment stages. The general questions

that underpin web development are

usually as such:

• What’s the general purpose of

the site?

• What should it communicate?

• What’s the main end goal for the

users?

• What are the KPIs and what are

their priorities?

Now, you’d think that the answers to

these questions ought to be fairly

straightforward, but unfortunately

they rarely are. When you’re working

on a site rebuild or are optimising a

pre-existing site, stakeholders from

different departments will get in-

volved – each with their own agenda.

This is because departments are

usually measured against varying and

different KPIs, and so they want a site

that promotes and improves areas

related to their performance.

The battle of the stakeholders often

results in a power struggle over who

gets first placement in the hero slider

(a massive bone of contention for

many, I can confirm!) and which mes-

sage can scream the loudest across

the site; in such instances, stakehold-

ers tends to lose sight of the fact that

their individual goals are all elements

of the bigger picture and the overall

business objectives. Ultimately, work-

ing against each other is not only

frustrating for everyone involved, but

it’s also counterproductive.

The biggest casualty in this battle

is almost always the user in the

form of poor user experience. The

finished product may look new and

shiny, complete with messaging and

offers which visibly compete for

users’ attention – but none of these

things mean that the site is in any

way pleasant to use. This reality will

be hard to accept for stakeholders

who have built something that they

believe is great, but in practice isn’t

a reflection of user preferences or

behavioural tendencies.


This phenomenon is puzzling to me

– shouldn’t the user experience be a

central part of the overall conversa-

tion? After all, if users have a hor-

rible experience, what are the odds

of them converting into customers,

let alone returning to your site or

recommending it to their social

network?

RETURNING TO THE

USER

So, how do you create a site that of-

fers a good user experience? Simple,

you go straight to the source: the

user. Take the time to discover who

they are and what their wants and

needs are so you can be the brand

on the market that best speaks to

the facets that matter most to them.

We’re spoilt with a plethora of data

these days, and there’s so much we

can learn about who our users are,

which gives us a great starting point

when trying to understand how

to reach our target audience and

adjust the user experience accord-

ingly. For instance, if the majority

of your users are over 65 and your

site uses font size 10, then there’s a

very good chance they can’t read any

of your content – or will seriously

struggle to do so. This means you’re

asking your users to make an effort

to engage with your site, instead of

making it easy and inviting.

To learn more about what your users’

needs are, what content they interact

with and where they’re struggling

or getting lost, look to your current

website. Many tend to overlook this

goldmine of user insights because

they believe there’s little point if it’s

being scrapped anyway, but there’s

so much to learn from how users

currently interact with your site and

your brand.

You may discover that an internally

celebrated functionality is complete-

ly overlooked by users or rejected

because they can’t figure out how to

use it, or that a feature which you

were prepared to leave behind in

the redesign is actually very popular

and helpful to users.

Take a look at the user journey and

how users navigate your site and ask

yourself if they seem confused or

lost in any way, or whether there’s a

clear path that guides them to their

end destination – these are the key

nuggets of information which will

fuel fact-based decisions that will

result in a site that’s fit for use and

that meets your stakeholders’ goals.

WHY BOTHER?

While it may seem obvious to some,

not all are convinced that UX should

have a voice, let alone a loud one, in

the stakeholder battle of the bands.

But when you look at brands that

have crushed their online com-

petitors, it’s not always because they

offer something new or different,

but usually because they’ve simply

adjusted their product to meet their

customers’ wants and needs by put-

ting them at the centre of all their

decisions.

Take Facebook as an example –

while there were plenty of social

media platforms popping up around

the same time, Facebook was the

platform that stood out from the

crowd thanks to its user-centric ap-

proach. The site was stripped down

to just focus on simple-to-use UX

functionality, without flashy back-

grounds and clutter to distract from

the features users craved.

So, note to all stakeholders, please

listen to your UX team as they’re the

voice of your end users. Without a

simple and easy to navigate inter-

face, those end users won’t interact

with your site enough to contribute

to the core KPIs that each stake-

holder is held accountable for; and

ultimately you’ll be playing a losing

game when trying to convince them

to return back to your site.


Check out our showreel to learn more about our branding and creative, responsive design and web development capabilities. Watch it here: http://www.greenlightdigital.com/build/

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

The Design & Build team are our resident creatives;

the dreamers, the rainmakers. From big ideas to

creation to ongoing maintenance, their expertise

spans the board – making what seems like the

impossible, possible. What’s more, they always keep user

experience, interactive design and ongoing maintenance in mind

so that you end up with something that’s not just fit for purpose,

but built to last.

ALL OUR MAGAZINES ARE LOVINGLY MADE BY OUR DESIGN & BUILD TEAM

www.greenlightdigital.com

The Varnish Works, 3 Bravingtons Walk, King’s Cross,

London, N1 9AJ

+44 (0)20 7253 7000

[email protected]

http://www.greenlightdigital.com

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