Philanthropy.com the “Newspaper of the Non-Profit World” has an article today on how confusing websites discourage donors from giving online. They point to both communication/marketing issues as well as usability issues with many non-profit sites. Many sites that were tested didn’t even clearly state their mission and where donations would go.

Jakob Nielson of the Nielsen Norman Group released highlights of a study of 23 non-profit websites that the article was based on. The report is $98 on NN/groups’ site, but here are some highlights.

Test subjects were observed performing two tasks: Choosing a recipient and making a donation. By far, the thing the users sought first was an understanding of the organizations’ goals and objectives. Only 43% of the websites studied put their mission on their homepage and only 4% stated on the homepage where the donor’s money would be applied. This information was often provided inside the website, but users had trouble finding it and this affected their donation decisions.

Nielsen Norman group estimates that donations could be DOUBLE current donations in many cases if best practices in usability, communication and trust were used. Shockingly, they say 17% of testers couldn’t even find WHERE to make a donation. Wow.

Unfortunately, many commercial sites have similar issues. I posted in January 2007 “10 Steps: Making it easy for your customers to trust you” based on some research Stanford University did. It’s probably my most-referenced post of all time, as I still forward it to companies that I work with. Keeping these 10 steps in mind and constantly evaluating your website, Twitter, Facebook and other social media properties against them are crucial to effective communications.

Related to this, NN/group also has an “Alertbox” summary and research report on “About Sections of Websites”. These are HIGHLY recommended reading, as the About section of any site, from services, e-commerce, government or non-profit sites all need to explain who they are to visitors. For anyone considering a relationship with an organization, knowing who a company IS, is a first step towards trust and a relationship.

Is your company’s mission, goals and About section clearly enunciated to visitors that don’t yet know you? How does your site stack up on trust metrics? Could your grandmother understand your mission and use your site?

MSNBC reports that Target was just hit with a US$6 million settlement and damages for not making it’s site accessible to blind. They’ve agreed to a 3 year oversight relationship with constant testing by National Federation for the Blind and their screen reader testing software.

Wow. This is a bit of a wake up call for American businesses that have long ignored or under delivered on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The key here is that Target contended that the ADA only covered physical spaces, not electronic ones. I’m no lawyer, but this is at least some type of precedent for other lawsuits agains US businesses for non-accessible and unusable sites.

It’s a good time to get into the accessibility consulting business! Anyone wanna work together on one?

I really feel for the people who get put in the middle of a mess like this email from Bill Gates. It’s a somewhat amusing read coming from the world’s richest man and the leader of the largest software company in the world, criticizing his own products.

The email is an overview of his frustration while trying to download some movie making software from his own company’s website. Issues include unclear naming conventions, (which Microsoft is notorious for) grouping of programs non-intuitively, not being prepared for users to go to a “download” page to download additional software, unlabeled system software updates and even required restarts without explanation.

I think it’s great that a CEO actually uses his product and sees how his customers are treated when using it. The opposite happens day after day… confusing experiences based on an inattention to detail, poor product development and lack of usability as a priority.

When was the last time you approached your company and it’s products as a new user? Have you done some simple “listening labs” to watch and listen to people use your site or product? Can your grandmother use your site/product?

I’ve had an OpenID for nearly 2 months now, and I have to say I’m really enjoying the ease and simplicity it offers.
From the OpenID Wikipedia page:

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site.

I’ve been using it for as many online sites/services as I can, including my Basecamp projects with 37Signals’ Openbar which ads simple project switching and even product (to Highrise) switching!, online mind mapping at MindMeister, and will soon get some plugins for WordPress to use it on my blogs.

As a site or product owner, I’m not sure how easy it is to enable it’s use yet, but I do know it does a lot to lower the bar for signups and participation. How many times have you stopped reading an article, downloading something, commented, or even join a new service because you didn’t want to go through a long painful signup process? It certainly has stopped me.

But OpenID makes it easy to join any online community activity, as you can control how long your authentication lasts, how much data/info is shared, etc.

There are several providers, but you can also use the url of many common services you may already be on, from Blogger, flickr, Technorati and AOL. I went with VerisignLabs Personal Identity Protection, part of the website security/trust company Verisign.

I’m certainly going to be recommending an optional OpenID implementations to all my clients with sites. If you own a website with logins, what’s keeping you from implementing OpenID as a login/password option and making it easier for new signups/users?

[tag]openid, open id, data portability, usability, product management [/tag]

The US Census Bureau is getting ready to conduct the 2010 Census, the population count that will be used to calculate congressional districts and funding. The trouble is, they have usability problems with the handheld computers they were planning to use, in addition to the organizational communication issues you may expect from a government agency that does the bulk of it´s work once every 10 years. Here´s the story.

Evidently, they built and are doing at least some testing of the systems, but it sounds like they fell into the classic “waterfall” development trap: build it out, then test it.

Big worries for the nation’s first high-tech census should have been obvious when tests showed some of the door-to-door headcounters couldn’t figure out their fancy new handheld computers.

Agile User Experience Design (Agile UX) would likely have prevented this problem by introducing low-detail (paper-prototype) testing earlier in the development process. By testing with paper prototypes and even more functional prototypes on computers much earlier in the development process, the problems with the interface and system logic could have been found, and new solutions created that worked better BEFORE the systems were written and constructed. As it is, the budget may QUADRUPLE for this project… not anything I´d like on my resume!

Of course the CEO of the company that built the devices offers this excuse:

“After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it’s as easy to use as a modern cell phone,” Raimondi said.

As “easy as a modern cell phone”? You´ve got to be kidding me… modern cell phones, with some notable exceptions, (iPhone and a few others) are a total confusing mess of features and functions. Most tech-savvy people take days of focused use to master some of the interactions and complexity. They can probably make a phone call, but I´d hardly call modern cell phones “easy to use” in general. You can take the massive migration to the iPhone as some small proof of that.

Besides the obvious error in logic above, the CEO also ignores the demographic and usage scenarios of the users… Census takers are likely not to be super-tech saavy computer enthusiasts, and they may not have days to train or get familiar with the systems.

I´m not belittling how tough the problem of designing this system is, but their process and understanding of how to design systems could use some modernization… I think they should try going back to pencil and paper themselves…

Turns out that the oft-quoted “market choosing an inferior technology” and “training trumping usability” story of the QWERTY keyboard versus the Dvorak keyboard layouts may not be as clear cut as some (including me) have thought.

This article points out some of the background research and it’s flaws… I guess it still isn’t clear which one is more efficient or even if that matters, given enough training.

Have you ever tried Dvorak?

Todd Wilkens from Adaptive Path starts out with a very interesting “idealist” perspective post, and generates an amusing (and very interesting/informative) discussion/flame war in the comments about “usability being a path to failure”.

Here’s a nice/simple overview video of Greg Verdino on BusinessWeek talking about social media becoming a great equalizer between large and small businesses. How small businesses can use social media, community, blogging, etc. (web 2.0) to touch their customers…

Maureen Kelly has a “how-to” post on Boxes and Arrows about quick functional/interactive prototypes in powerpoint. I like the idea… simple, pervasive and quick to build.

I love this concept of a one page overview of a complex idea/process/step. Over at IAOneSheeters.com, they have 3 (so far) examples covering the basics of Wireframes, Heuristic Evaluations and Usability Testing. They are great for sharing with business people or other team members that don’t have an information architecture background… they cover the basic overview, some visual examples, benefits and how each adds value to a project.

I’ve been thinking of doing some work along these lines with some of the newest media topics that are hot… mobile marketing, social media, social networks and more. Anyone want to help?

An good Ad Age article on some large companies using design personas.

Alan Cooper’s great book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity is really where you want to start reading up on personas and goal-directed design in general.

Also, Boxes and Arrows have several articles on their use, link goes to article mentions. I love that site.
Enjoy!

I just came across Jonathan Mendez’s “7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization” blog post. I understand Jonathan is somehow related to Offermatica, an online testing company which I’ve always been interested in working with.

The main points he covers are:

1. Have a Clear and Direct Headline
2. Place High Value on Whitespace
3. Deliver Your Value Proposition with Short Direct Messaging
4. Have a Persuasive Message Directly Above the Call to Action
5. Large Red Buttons Rule
6. Call to Action Copy Matters
7. Trust and Security is Still Incredibly Persuasive

Most of these are things I advise almost daily to my clients, especially the “trust” item. I’ve blogged on that before, as I still see it as a problem on many sites.

The “large red buttons” point though is new… and an interesting thing to explore.

Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate. Green can be good as well but most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins. Also, don’t skimp on button size. Make users notice where the button is upon landing.