Focus On Your User And Take Over The World

In The Power of Good Enough - Part 1 I illustrated that if you have a product that people want or don't yet know they want, your product does not to be perfect to take over the market. It has to be good enough for people to try it, to discover how much they like it and tell you what it will take for the users to get addicted to your product.

In The Power of Good Enough - Part 2 I will tell you how small changes lead to big results, how simple questions produce incredible insights, and how you too can increase revenue from your website.

If your goal is world domination, let's get you there.

The Perfect Storm

Every department in your company has a different personality. Engineers and web developers are trained to over-think things, be ready for every possible scenario, think up every possible outcome. Thankfully, they have sales people to throw curve balls at them when they sell something nobody expected the product to do. And product management that figures out how to make the product do that unexpected thing and set the date by which it will do that. And marketing that will tell everybody that now the product does that funky thing nobody thought it could do. And customer service that will tell inquiring minds, that yes, we expect the product to do that after that date we set.

Every department in your company has a purpose. So does your website. It has to support your business and marketing and sales goals, it has to produce. Your website does not need to be perfect right off the bat. As long as you are responsive and act according to Internet community's expectations, your site will make you money.

Your website will produce if you give your customers what they want. What do your customers want? Ask them!

Ask your visitors

Even if you diligently analyze your website statistics, you can learn only what happened, not why it happened.

I implemented a usability survey on a BMW repair site (used 4Q survey). One of the questions is: "Did you find what you were looking for?" Visitors can type in what information they were looking for and did not find on the website. One response was "I am sure you do not repair motorcycles, but nowhere on the website could I find information that would confirm or deny my assumption." Boom! They just saved you tons of money on website optimization - they just told you what to improve.

That is a brilliant insight that I would have not gotten by analyzing my website statistics! The visitor would have just left. I would have gotten my 100% bounce rate for them and would have been sitting around wondering, why they did not like what they saw. Instead, by actually asking your visitors, you learn what needs improvement, not what you think needs improvement.

I will state on the home page and on the About Us page that The Driving Machine repairs cars, not motorcycles. Most likely, I will add a link to a reputable BMW motorcycle repair shop in the area. Why add a link? Actually, there is a good reason.

User experience matters, even if users don't

In the early days of YouTube, the website was not as known as the product. Like thousands of others, I typed "utube.com" in the address bar and prepared to be entertained. I was quickly disappointed, because the site I landed on was not about video, but actual tubes: Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corporation. They also had a trademark on term "Utube". Bizzaro world! Where is the video? And then - a-ha! moment: "If you came to watch videos, go to YouTube" with a link to the correct YouTube.

See what happened here? YouTube happened. Poor UTube guys did not know what hit them. They had huge increase in traffic and huge increase in bounce rate. Instead of jumping into website redesign with both feet, they figured out what the problem was first. They quickly discovered that the cause of the traffic surge is not their website, but people looking for YouTube. This innocent mistake was costing them, I bet, because they had to scale up their hosting servers to handle this kind of new irrelevant traffic.

Instead of suing YouTube for defamation of character or some other such thing, however, Utube just put a link on their Home page (!!) to direct scatter-brained people like me to the site they were actually trying to find. Because:

1. There is nothing you can do about people typing in the wrong address. Eventually, people will learn, but right now - nothing can be done.
2. Let's give the user what they want - the correct link. We will show them their mistake tactfully and they will learn.
3. The bounce rate for that "lost" user will be 0%. They clicked the correct link, didn't they?

Utube could not convert me no matter what: I had no use for any kind of tubes - new or old. Instead of ignoring me, they provided me with a good user experience. I found what I was looking for in one click. And I still remember this company.

It looks like they moved their company website to a new domain: www.utubeonline.com. Looks like people are still learning how to spell YouTube.

Takeaways

You do not have to go all out in an effort to improve your website's user experience. You need to focus. Focus on one thing: define it, measure, analyze, and improve. Find out what the problem is, what the cause of it is and give the user a solution that will make them happy. All it takes sometimes is a link.

Do not focus completely and entirely on conversions. They are important, but so are other things that eventually lead to conversions. If people like your site, if they are able to find the content you provide, they will convert. Think about your visitor, even if they are irrelevant, and make them fall in love with your website. The relevant ones will follow the suit - trust me.

Improve one thing a week or a month and you will be better off than your competition. Do not forget to focus. Define what you want to improve, analyze the issue, measure it, make changes, measure the performance. Always improve.

Do you have usability issues with your website? Are you not sure what to focus on? Leave a comment and we will try to sort it out.