Consumer Psychology and the Ecommerce Checkout

Ecommerce Merchants Should Not Ignore Older Shoppers

via Practical Ecommerce http://ift.tt/1cLNCKJ

DECEMBER 16, 2013 • MARCIA KAPLAN

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Conventional wisdom suggests that when seeking customers, ecommerce merchants should pursue teens and people in their twenties. These are the people who own the most electronic devices, are the most comfortable with technology, and do the most online buying. However, you may be overlooking a large and neglected segment of the U.S. population that is eager to spend money online — people over 50.

Advertisers ignore them, concentrating mainly on the 18 to 34 age group. Nielsen, the research firm, estimates that only about 5 percent of advertising dollars are directed at seniors. Merchants too tend to offer products that appeal only to younger shoppers. Marketing efforts are directed mainly at this group.

Myths about seniors abound. Among them are that most seniors are poor, they don’t shop online, and they only buy necessities. Yet statistics show that this overlooked segment of our society has money to spend. Ecommerce vendors that can reach out to older Americans can be richly rewarded.

Why Target People Over 50?

Quite simply there are a lot of them and they have money. Nevertheless, brands focus on the under 50 age group. Yet the almost 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. — those born between 1946 and 1964 — are fairly affluent, well educated, comfortable with technology, and willing to try new products. They were raised in a spending-driven economy, unlike their parents who grew up during the Depression.

Yet the almost 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. — those born between 1946 and 1964 — are fairly affluent, well educated, comfortable with technology, and willing to try new products

Indeed, according to Nielsen, Boomers’ online habits are similar to those of the 18 to 34 age cohort. Boomers represent 38.5 percent of all consumer packaged goods expenditures. Research firm Ipsos, in cooperation with Google, conducted interviews with 5,100 Boomers and seniors in April 2013 and found that while the most common reason to use the Internet was to find out about the news and weather, 57 percent shopped online in the prior month and 45 percent looked for coupons or daily deals.

As a society, we tend to stereotype seniors. The only advertising directed at them emphasizes physical infirmity. But older people do buy things other than pharmaceuticals, adult diapers, and scooters. Even those who are retired have disposable income. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Bankrate, a financial services company, Americans over 50 account for 77 percent of all financial assets, and 54 percent of total consumer demand. They comprise 47 percent of all car sales and 80 percent of luxury travel purchases. They also buy toys, games and electronics for their grandchildren.

According to the 2010 Census, there are 51.6 million Americans aged 60 to 84 comprising 16.6 percent of the population and 41.9 million between 50 and 59 years of age. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that approximately 18.5 percent of Americans age 65 and over were working in 2012. This percentage will likely increase in future because of erosion in traditional pension plans, a decrease in the value of financial assets, and the uncertainty of 401K plans. Working people need clothing, cars, and electronics.

The results of the 2012 Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey showed that over half of those 65 and older are online and 70 percent use the Internet on a daily basis. However, persons over 75 do not use the Internet very much. But the age group right behind them is comfortable with the Internet and when they reach 75 they will likely continue to use the Internet for email, research, and shopping.

Thirty-four percent of those over 65 visit social networking sites, while 86 percent use email.

Is Millennial Purchasing Power Overestimated?

Merchants who target people in their teens and 20s may be overestimating the purchasing power of this segment of the population. A substantial number of them are living with their parents, are underemployed or unemployed and don’t have a great deal of discretionary income. In 2012, 36 percent of the country’s young adults ages 18 to 31— the Millennial generation — were living in their parents’ home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Of those still living with parents, only 29 percent were employed. Millennials may actually have considerably less purchasing power than Baby Boomers and seniors.

What do Older Shoppers Look For Online

U.K. research firm Shoppercentric advises that seniors look for quality and value over bargains when shopping. However, they do tend to use coupons and discounts.

Seniors have the inclination and time to perform extensive research before making a purchase decision. Be sure to provide detailed information about your products and services. Visuals are helpful too. Seniors like to do online research on hobbies, vacation destinations, auto, and appliance purchases. They also rely on the Internet for health information.

Seniors are receptive to email marketing. They are more likely to respond to that than other online forms of communication.

In most cases, it’s not necessary to change your website or your product offerings to attract seniors. It is simply a matter of letting them know that you are interested in their business. Many online businesses find that partnering with organizations such as AARP and offering a discount is a good first step in attracting older customers.

Utilizing ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Competitive Advantage

via Practical Ecommerce http://ift.tt/K8aGsd

JANUARY 9, 2014 • MARCIA KAPLAN

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In the extremely competitive retail environment, merchants are always looking for a competitive advantage. If you haven’t considered using “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) feedback, you may want to give it a try.

VoC involves capturing and listening to what your customers are saying, in their own words in text and speech. It encompasses both solicited and unsolicited comments. Feedback can come from email messages, online chats, forums, social media sites, surveys, and call centers. Ecommerce merchants can glean useful data from these listening posts. When used as a research methodology, VoC can assist merchants in implementing improvements suggested by customers.

While listening to customers has always been important, it is critical in an environment where negative online product or company reviews can destroy a business. New ways for shoppers to critique merchants are constantly popping up. Twitter didn’t exist 10 years ago. Pinterest is less than five years old.

While listening to customers has always been important, it is critical in an environment where negative online product or company reviews can destroy a business.

Well-managed companies need to be both organized and prepared to respond to and act on customer feedback. That means having a systematic feedback program in place with a process for how and when you respond to feedback, and how you integrate customer comments into your business strategy. To be successful, companies must listen and analyze the feedback in the context of business objectives, devise a strategy to respond to customer comments, and implement the strategy in a timely manner.

Customer Experience Specialist Adele Sage at Forrester Research states in her blog, “At Forrester, we describe the continuous cycle of activities that make up VoC programs as: listen, interpret, react, and monitor. ‘Listen’ is all the customer feedback you’re collecting via listening posts like surveys, emails, calls, and comment cards. ‘Interpret’ is the analysis you do on that feedback (and other related data) to understand what it all means. ‘React’ is what you do to fix the experience based on the analysis you’ve done, and ‘monitor’ is how you make sure that whatever you did to react is actually working. It’s critical to go through the full cycle with whatever data you’re already collecting. Because here’s the hard truth: You get no ROI from listening or interpreting. None. Zero. Zip. You only get business results from actually improving the experience.”

What Can VoC Do for an Ecommerce Merchant?

While most unsolicited comments might be negative, once in awhile you get a compliment. Highlight what you did right and try to repeat it. In fact, merchants should view all feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve. Often unsolicited comments are the most revealing and useful because they are not in a structured format (such as a survey) dictated by the business. Sometimes one customer’s suggestion results in new product features that many other customers want as well.

The advantage of using a software tool is the elimination of silos of information — customer service, marketing, and product silos are typical for ecommerce vendors. Integrating feedback from all channels provides for an overall picture that can provide greater insight and lead to better solutions.

Use VoC to:

• Ascertain customer satisfaction with their shopping experience.
• Retain customers and increase market share by meeting their expressed desires. This boosts customer loyalty.
• Increase efficiency by eliminating products and services that customers don’t want.

Should You Purchase a VoC Platform?

If your customer base and the volume of feedback are small, you may be able to manage and analyze feedback on your own without the benefit of a platform or software. However, you must have the time and discipline to review the comments on a regular basis. While you can delegate the analysis to a customer service representative, that individual may overlook a very important piece of feedback, not realizing its importance. Top-level managers have to be involved.

If you have a large customer base, a prominent social media presence, and receive a lot of feedback, a software or cloud solution would be cost-effective. The benefit of using third-party platform is that you get analytics tools such as reports, dashboards, and scorecards and visual results that make it easier to spot trends. A third-party platform or software also offers real-time collection and analysis, something that is critical if, for instance, you sold a product that is defective. By the time you find out about the problem on your own, there could be hundreds of negative comments on Twitter and Facebook and your business might not recover.

While many of the software solutions are designed for large enterprises, there are tools for small businesses. Software covers both speech and text feedback. The speech analytics component requires that telephone calls with customers be recorded.

Among vendors that offer VoC or customer experience management software solutions for small businesses are Allegiance, Mindshare, NICE, and Verint. For cloud-based social listening tools, see “Social Listening: Benefits, Tools, Tips,” a previous article.

Mine that Data: “Every customer has a story.”

via Ecommerce Consulting http://ift.tt/1a5M5Rt

January 14, 2014 by Dan Smith - Add Comment

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When I was in high school, I worked – a lot. I had my own gig mowing lawns, and I eventually added an evening retail job.

In both cases, I interacted with my customers face-to-face every day. Of course, a lawn can be mowed without the customer present, but because most of my clients were elderly (my target market, but I’ll save that discussion for a future post), they were generally at home while I was there. Indeed, most of these folks were looking for more than just someone to keep their yards tidy; they were also looking for some company. Someone to talk to or to share lemonade with on a hot summer day, which I gladly did. I didn’t realize this at the time, but this afforded me an incredible way to really get to know my customers.

For example, I knew that Mr. Rasmussen liked his lawn cut a bit closer than I’d normally recommend; but after learning that he was a retired engineer, he explained how he had created a unique irrigation system to keep his lawn green despite the lower trim. And I knew that while his neighbor, Mrs. Boeske, admired his close-cropped putting green of a yard, she didn’t believe in watering her lawn (such an egregious waste of a precious resource), so the mower deck got raised when I went next door. I knew what they wanted, how they thought and what they felt, and I tailored my service accordingly.  So, too, was the case when I worked in a retail store, although not quite to that degree, as time to chit-chat with customers was limited. But at least I was able to interact with my customers in person and give them a custom experience.

Fast-forward to present-day ecommerce.

You’re selling things to a lot of people – people you’ll never see, much less get a chance to speak with. So how do you know who they are? What makes them tick? And how do you deliver your product or service in a manner most compelling to them? Many companies use advanced analytics to determine how their customers behave on their site. But few ecommerce marketers delve into understanding who these people really are and why they behave the way they do. And that, in all my years at this game, is what I consider to be the most fulfilling question you can ask …

Why?

Of course, getting to why involves qualitative research. Voodoo, as one of my superiors once called it. Yes, I know, as digital marketers we live for data. I get it – I’m a direct response marketer at heart, and I love learning about my customers through data. But I also love a good story (in case you haven’t noticed), and believe me, every customer has a story. A qualitative story coupled with facts and figures can really give you a clearer picture of what your customers want and who they really are.

Mine that Data.

I will also tell you that it is not a foregone conclusion that every company has a solid handle on their customers’ data. I can recount several times when I was told that a company’s customer profile was one thing, but when I dug into the data I found that it was actually quite different. It goes something like this: Our customer is a 25 year-old professional female who lives and works in the city and has more money than time. Wrong. The data shows us a large cluster of 44 year-old females with a few kids in a house in the burbs, and she’s hunting for discounts. Call it wishful thinking or time-worn legends, but somehow the demographic fairytale got woven into the corporate vernacular, and it was never challenged. But that demographic difference certainly changes how you’d design, merchandise and advertise your site, wouldn’t it?

All right, enough storytelling.

Where do you start? If you don’t have a solid understanding of your customer file demographics, I would recommend starting with a customer file deep dive analysis. This isn’t as simple as sending a survey to your file and compiling their responses. Instead of self-reported data, it is best to send your data out to a company like Experian where your customer records can be matched against verifiable records. Doing so will not only provide you with a view into your customers’ demographics, but also a view into their buying behavior outside of your store. You can then create clusters of like customers to categorize and treat differently. I know this may sound elementary, but I have seen this process deliver myth-shattering and strategy-changing results. Really, scientists are subscribing to your service for their research? No, it’s actually parents of middle-schoolers. You get the drift.

Once the quantitative pieces are understood, it’s imperative that you get to why. So talk to your customers. Talk to your former customers. Talk to your competitors’ customers. This can be done in phone screens, in person or in focus groups. However you do it, do it, and don’t stop doing it. Make gaining insights from customers a regular part of doing business.

Let’s face it, there’s no way you’re going to be able to sit down and have lemonade with every one of your customers. But understanding whom your customer file is composed of, as well as the motivations and buying habits of your customers, will go a long way toward helping you devise the right strategy and tactics to increase response rates and sales.

UIEtips: Design is the Rendering of Intent

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/12/30/uietips-design-is-the-rendering-of-intent/

BY JARED M. SPOOL

Originally published: Dec 30, 2013

In 2008, the US Customs and Border Protection agency launched the Global Entry program, which allows pre-verified, low-risk travelers to receive expedited clearance to re-enter the United States. The CBP’s Global Entry web site is where folks sign up for this service.

The Home Page for the multi-screen Global Entry Signup Process

Signing up for the Global Entry system is no simple feat. It’s a multi-screen application, with confusing requests for information and uninformative error messages when you miss something. As the first impression of the program, it sends the message that you’re entering a bureaucratic process of grand government proportions.

Contrast the design of this signup process with the We The People online petition system. Released by The White House in 2011, this is an interactive web site allowing citizens to petition to The White House’s policy experts.

A petition on The White House’s We The People

The release of We The People brought state-of-the-art web site production values, taking advantage of typography, layout, and color, along with a smart interaction design, to make it easy for visitors to sign existing petitions or add a new one. It gives the impression of welcoming citizens to participate in a process of civic engagement.

Both the Global Entry and We The People were designed by teams of government employees. Both teams wanted their constituents to engage successfully with the design. Yet the two designs approach that in a very different way.

The Global Entry sign-up process, though well meaning, is less friendly a process as interacting with We The People. Assuming each had similar resources and constraints, why would the two designs appear to be so different in interaction quality? The answer lies in the team’s intentions and how they rendered them.

A Working Definition for Design

Over the last year, we’ve started explaining design as “the rendering of intent.” The designer imagines an outcome and puts forth activities to make that outcome real.

We’ve found this definition seems to resonate with people more than any other. People can see the relationship between the intended outcome and the process that renders it.

It seems pretty clear to us that the Global Entry team had a typical intention of many government (and non-government) design teams: get the service up and running. A participant only has to sign-up once, then they are in the program. The application process is a necessary, first-step, but once it’s done, the participant will never have to deal with it again. The team’s intention was all about getting something in place.

In contrast, the We The People team wanted to showcase that a government design team can produce designs on par with the best non-government commercial teams. They chose to approach the user’s first interaction with the petition program as an opportunity to highlight how clean, easy-to-use designs play a role in the experience of interacting with the government.

Each team rendered a completely different intention. They each came to a completely different design.

There’s no technical reason why the We The People team had to end up with the design they did. It could’ve been frustrating and hard-to-understand, just like the Global Entry site or many other government web sites. Similarly, there’s no technical reason why the Global Entry site couldn’t have been designed to be easier and better looking. The only reason either team ended up with these sites is because they came to their designs with different intentions.

What Experience Do You Intend?

Once enrolled in Global Entry, travelers find it to be an awesome program. In most of the U.S.’s international airports, the Global Entry traveler only needs to walk up to one of the kiosks, put their fingers on the reader, and check a few boxes on the screen. They can skip the long lines to wait to talk to a Customs Officer, spending no more than a few minutes re-entering the country. It makes arriving from international travel almost as easy as getting off a domestic flight.

(As an added bonus, getting into the Global Entry program automatically qualifies you for the TSA’s PreCheck program. This dramatically improves the airport security experience.)

The experience of signing up on the Global Entry web site is in direct contrast to the experience once you’re using the service. While the web site is cumbersome and bureaucratic, the service is efficient and friendly.

The Global Entry team had great intentions for the overall service. And they’ve rendered it beautifully. Somehow, the web site didn’t get the same treatment.

Experiences are the journeys that people take before, during, and after coming into contact with our design. We can choose our intentions for what we want our users’ journeys to be. And when we render those intentions, we’re designing for our users’ experiences. Experience design is rendering intentions of the user’s journey.

Are You Rendering for the Behaviors You Intend?

A cryptic field label on the Global Entry site will stop the user in their tracks, and often result in a confusing error message. The user’s frustration will mount as they experiment with alternative approaches. Sometimes they’ll discover what the site really wants to know, sometimes they won’t, ending up abandoning the application process.

Was this game of guess-what-we’re-looking-for part of the design team’s intent? Probably not. In cases like these, the team is focused on a different intent: get the underlying database filled with the right data. Little attention is given to how that intention is rendered in the user interface.

What if the team had approached the design with a different intention? What if they had intended that users would get through the sign-up process without ever seeing an error message?

Designer extraordinaire, Robert Fabricant once said, “Behavior is the medium of design.” When we encounter a user’s behavior that isn’t what we’ve intended, we change the design until we see what we want.

The Global Entry team could get a different behavior than the frustration-based data entry confusion they get now. It would take a different design process and a consensus of the entire team that this is worth rendering.

Who Can Render the Intent?

An implication of this definition for design is how it changes our notion of who is a designer.

In any organization, many people share what they’d like to see as the intentions of the design. The business people have intentions with regards to how the business makes money. The technical people have intentions to best use servers, networks, and other technical resources. The legal team has intentions on how to best protect the organization from legal threats.

As these people use their influence to define the outcome of the design, they are, in effect, designing. There’s an old saying, everyone thinks they are a designer. Well, everyone who participates in the rendering of their intention is a designer, using this definition.

The notion of the academically-trained, experienced designer holding the keys to the design outcome fades with this definition. In fact, when we think about design in these terms, it becomes clear that many of the people rendering their intention don’t know they are designers. This implies the role of the experienced designer shifts from owning the design outcome to educating all the other designers on the team on how to best render their own intentions.

Having everyone on the team act as a designer is not, by itself, a bad thing. It brings a lot of power, knowledge, and experience to bear on what are often complex problems to solve. In fact, it can be a great thing when the team has the same intentions.

Does Our Process Get Us What We Intend?

With this definition of design, the process shifts its focus to two distinct activities: Having the team arrive at the same intentions and ensuring we render our intention the way we desire. The teams that produce the best designs are those with the process that separates these activities out.

User research and other design research activities are the core of what we use to make sure our team has a unified set of intentions. We discover what’s happening with our users that we didn’t intend. We look for places where we could do something that would improve the users’ experience. We look at what the competition is doing and ask what we could do that’s even better.

All this research helps us hone in on what our intentions should be. The best teams engage in research like this frequently and often discuss intentions explicitly. They explore different possibilities and arrive at something that everyone agrees matches their overall intention.

Many of our design deliverables, such as wireframes, prototypes, and style guides, are as much about getting agreement on what we intend as they are to move our intentions closer to done. But the deliverables themselves do not produce the designs. It’s having all the people on the team, from the product managers through the developers, sharing the same intention.

We need to look at our design process as a way to come to a single intention as much as it is to make that intention real in the world. And it’s with the lens of this new definition that we can see we still have much work to do before every design will be a great one.

About the Author

Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering. He spends his time working with the research teams at the company and helps clients understand how to solve their design problems. You can follow Jared on Twitter @jmspool.

Share Your Thoughts with Us

How do you assure your design process is a way to come to a single intention? Tell us about it at theUIE blog.

User Experience Versus Users

via UXmatters http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/12/user-experience-versus-users.php

By Paul Bryan

Published: December 23, 2013

“Recently, … it seems that user experience is increasingly playing a role in formulating designs that diametrically oppose users’ wants and needs for the sake of generating greater profits.”

The field of user experience has, from its inception, championed the notion that meeting users’ needs is the path to success for digital products. Recently, however, it seems that user experience is increasingly playing a role in formulating designs that diametrically oppose users’ wants and needs for the sake of generating greater profits.

The Growth of User Experience

By the early 1990s, the term user friendly was in common use for describing software that was easy to use. Throughout the ’90s, as more companies recognized that useful, easy-to-use Web sites led to fewer customer-service issues and greater profits, the topic of usability gained prominence. Around the year 2000, the field of user experience blossomed as more and more designers recognized that the design of digital products should focus on users’ complete experience with a product rather than paying attention only to ease of use. At each new step in this progression, meeting the needs of users was the primary goal. Over the past few years, user experience has enjoyed explosive growth, as evidenced by UX-focused LinkedIn groups with more than 60,000 members and international conferences like UXPA and UX STRAT springing up to meet UX professionals’ growing need for professional development.

Subverting Users’ Needs

“Where once the goal of user experience was to increase user satisfaction, companies are increasingly leveraging user experience in a manner that is contrary to users’ needs and, in some cases, even causing users harm.”

With great growth has come increasing sophistication in the practice of user experience, as well as in the role that user experience plays in digital product design and development. Unfortunately, not all aspects of this sophistication are positive—at least not for users. Where once the goal of user experience was to increase user satisfaction, companies are increasingly leveraging user experience in a manner that is contrary to users’ needs and, in some cases, even causing users harm.

Not long ago, I raised this issue in the UX Strategy and Planning LinkedIn group that I manage. I received some passionate responses that confirmed my suspicion that some companies are using user experience to better understand users’ needs, but then deliberately thwarting rather than meeting those needs.

Many of the comments that I received in response to this topic of discussion described Web sites that had poor usability or violated UX design principles. However, such cases have been common for decades, and they are not the focus of this column. The remainder of the responses—as well as my own research into this topic—fall into three distinct categories:

1. Not allowing users to do what they want to do
2. Impeding key task paths with forced interruptions
3. Tricking or persuading users to do something they would’t normally do

1. Not Allowing Users to Do What They Want to Do

“I love Apple products. … But their walled-garden approach to user experience has been a source of frustration to me for many years.”

This is the issue that got me to thinking about writing this column in the first place. I was working on a UX Strategy workshop that I was to give at UXPA in Shanghai—deep in thought and under the gun to complete the final presentation deck before the deadline—when the OS X Updates Available window shown in Figure 1 appeared in the upper-right corner of my screen. Unlike 99% of the other annoying pop-up windows that someone thought were a good idea, this one did’t have a close box, button, or link—or any visible way of closing it. There were two options, neither of which I wanted: Details and Restart. I discovered that the fastest way to escape from this cognitive pothole was to click the Detailsbutton, then quickly click Command-Q—all the while, silently cursing Apple.

Figure 1—OS X Updates Available window

Don’t get me wrong. I love Apple products. I own several MacBook Pros, a couple of iPads, an iPod, and a new iPhone 5s. But their walled-garden approach to user experience has been a source of frustration to me for many years. Why can’t I simply delete songs from my iPod without connecting to a computer? Why can’t I cut and paste files? No, I have to copy, change directories, paste, then return to the previous directory to delete the file. Training wheels in the OS that users can’t bypass are the Apple way.

More recently, some UX person at Apple thought it would be a good idea to remove the venerable Save As command in Lion. So now I need to go through a long chain of commands to accomplish the same thing. And I think about that UX person every time I do it and hope he or she has been fired—but not really. Apple must have realized the problems that this so-called innovation caused for users, because they’be re-enabled Save As in Mountain Lion.

Another user experience that prompted me to write this column was LinkedIn. LinkedIn is awesome! They have accomplished something amazing. Nevertheless, I get very irritated when a capability that I’be relied on for some time unaccountably disappears. All of the information that is necessary to do what I had been doing is still there. They just took out their UX surgical knife and—snip, snip—goodbye useful feature!

The UX Strategy and Planning group that I manage on LinkedIn now has a little over 8,000 members. Over the past couple of years, LinkedIn has taken away several useful group-management capabilities—presumably to create its own walled garden, so it can charge a fee for features that make the network useful. While this obviously makes sense from a shareholder perspective, it may make LinkedIn susceptible to an upstart competitor that figures out how to suck the data out of LinkedIn and return the most useful features back to its members.

One capability that I found really helpful was filtering group members by geographical region. I could tell how many people were in New York or in Europe, and this helped me in planning events like my UX STRAT Masterclass series. This capability just disappeared one day.

Members used to be able to communicate with one another without having to pay to send In Mail. I found this feature very useful for community building. But LinkedIn removed this capability, presumably to drive members out of the free zone and into their paid services.

LinkedIn has also reduced the abilities of group managers to control how content appears on the group’s main page, thwarting managers like me who curate the content carefully. They used to provide very logical displays of most-recent and most-popular comments, with Manager’s Choice items appearing at the top of the page in a carousel. However, in recent months, LinkedIn has rejiggered the formula that determines how items appear on the group’s main page—and to be honest, even though I look at it several times a day, I still don’t have any idea how the new content arrangement works, especially the Manager’s Choice feature. I imagine that they did this to push advertising slots upward in the visual hierarchy of the page, but it seems to have made the group landing page more random and less useful for getting a quick view into what’s happening in the group. Less control, more advertising. Snip, snip.

2. Impeding Key Task Paths with Forced Interruptions

“Most of the comments that I received from … group members … centered on such road blocks—that is, interstitial screens that interrupt users’ chosen path or content to display something they did’t select.”

Recently, I was sitting in Starbucks with my 14-year old daughter Carina. We were having a father-daughter work day, and both of us had our notebook computers out. For some reason, we were having a hard time getting on the free wireless network that Starbucks offers—and that I’be been using for years. It turned out that Starbucks had changed the sign-in user experience for its wireless network—from clicking a checkbox to agree to terms to watching a full-length commercial with a choice at the end to either follow the ad path further or go online, as shown in Figure 2. I finally figured out that closing the window after the commercial did’t take me online. I had to watch the entire commercial over again, then click the option to go online. I explained this to my daughter once I’d figured it out. She laughed incredulously and asked, “You’re joking right?”

Figure 2—Barrier to using Starbucks’s free Wi-Fi network

Most of the comments that I received from UX Strategy and Planning group members when I asked for input for this column centered on such road blocks—that is, interstitial screens that interrupt users’ chosen path or content to display something they did’t select. Inserting advertising into the path of free content was one of the main complaints.

Lan Guo wrote, “YouTube! Those painful commercials you have to sit through before you can skip.” Chris Mockus described the barrage of advertising that appears when watching TV or movies online: “You can pretty much watch anything for free in a browser, but have to survive a gauntlet of anti-usability, trying to get you to click an advertisement.” Michael Boyer pointed out Forbes.com as an example of content companies that display full-screen interstitial ads like that shown in Figure 3 before presenting the content that a user has selected.

Figure 3—Intrusive ad on Forbes.com

Nick Choo noted a couple of ironies in the full-screen ads: “OpenRice HK forces users to look at advertisements that cover the entire landing screen. Users have to close the ads before they can use the app. Funny, but I can’t remember any of the ads. It’s quite annoying, but … I’m still using [the app].”

Some commenters defended advertisers. Gabriel Patru wrote, “People expect ads when browsing for content. Yes, ad blindness is a behavior that is characteristic of heavy users and, most of the time, goes hand in hand with non-relevant ads. But, guys, online ads are still working. If not, they would naturally disappear.”

“It’s pretty clear … that ads are not working the vast majority of the time. The only people who don’t think that is true are the people embedded in the advertising world….”—Jared Spool

Jared Spool disagreed: “It’s pretty clear, as someone who spends a lot of time watching people use Web sites, that ads are not working the vast majority of the time. The only people who don’t think that is true are the people embedded in the advertising world—either advertisers or publishers that have decided they can survive only with advertisers.” Jared also proposed a solution: “But the smart publishers are seeing the writing on the wall and are moving away from ads. One doesn’t have to go much farther than the new designs coming out of the NY Times—like The Jockey—to see how they are moving away from pages riddled with ads, decreasing their page views and click-through revenue. I expect we’ll see more of this in the future, as business-model alternatives like metered paywalls become more prevalent.
Just because we’be done it for years doesn’t mean that everyone wants it.”

Danielle Cooley focused on other kinds of roadblocks: “I have seen a crazy rash of newsletter sign-up roadblocks lately and auto-playing videos that just has me going nuts. When did this become the new standard?” Danielle pointed out a recent roadblock with a surprisingly deceptive outcome: Clicking the close box took viewers to the promotion in the interstitial! Danielle explains, “One egregious [example] was the recent Slate debacle, where they put in a roadblock for their new online store (bad), then the X to close actually took the person to the store. Slate competitor salon.com [published] an article about it….” Figure 4 shows the offending roadblock.

Figure 4—Slate roadblock

Danielle also pointed out companies that present full-page offers to current customers who are trying to complete a task. She wrote, “This overlay appeared when I went to shutterfly.com, where I am already a customer. A sign-up form [was] the last thing I wanted to see.” Figure 5 shows the overlay.

Figure 5—Shutterfly newsletter sign-up form

Ronnie Battista took a different tack from most of the people who responded to my question: “I’ll be the first to hammer those commerce companies that either use deceptive, dark patterns or just obfuscate the process to extract primary or additional revenue in whatever form. When I have chosen to enter into a business transaction with you, to give you my money for your product or service, I expect an experience that demonstratively convinces me that I’m the center of your universe. Or, at the very least, that you’re not trying to get one over on me.

“But when it comes to anything free, it’s a completely different ballgame. As the saying goes—I’be seen this attributed to Facebook most often—“If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” I’d put it this way: The customer is king; the window-shopper is meat. Free is free. If you did’t pay for anything, you aren’t owed anything, including a good experience.”

3. Tricking or Persuading Users to Do Something They Would’t Normally Do

“Many people who responded … were disturbed by UX designs that deliberately push or even trick users into making choices that benefit the company sponsoring the experience. These so-called dark patterns … are creeping into many Web sites and mobile apps….”

Many people who responded to my discussion thread were disturbed by UX designs that deliberately push or even trick users into make choices that benefit the company sponsoring the experience. These so-called dark patterns that are creeping into many Web sites and mobile apps have become so numerous that a Web site is now dedicated to them: Dark Patterns.

Gisella Famà, Senior UX Architect at Digitas Health, complained about the RyanAir flight booking process: “Every single page, tick box, and drop down is designed to make you pay more—and pay for things you did’t really want.” Gisella wrote that RyanAir’s site design is an "…example of UX completely designed on the client’s needs, without really considering the user experience and satisfaction at the end of the journey. User experience should be the best possible solution, considering both the client’s objectives and user needs.” Antonio Starnino concurred, “The Ryanair checkout process. Dark Patterns; dark patterns everywhere.”

As an example, Gisella described the approach that RyanAir uses to offer travel insurance to its customers, shown in Figure 6: “The possibility of choosing to travel without insurance, [with] no added fee is [hidden] on purpose…. You have to scroll down in the countries options to find it.”

Figure 6—Travel insurance offer on RyanAir

But Is This Really Wrong?

“Get the stakeholder [or] client to explain the problem they are trying to solve. Once you understand their problem, you will be able to present options and explain the risk of each option. Hopefully, you can find a way to solve the core problem that won’t hurt users.”

Jessica Hall provided some concrete advice for combating requests to design dark patterns: “I’ve received a few questionable requests in the past. Luckily, most of the time, the client or stakeholder [didn’t] intend to be irresponsible; they just didn’t think it through. I have two ways of handling this that have worked for me.

1. Work the problem. Resist the urge to recoil in horror, and get the stakeholder [or] client to explain the problem they are trying to solve. Once you understand their problem, you will be able to present options and explain the risk of each option. Hopefully, you can find a way to solve the core problem that won’t hurt users.
2. Use a business frame. Frame the user problem as a business problem. Shady tactics may work in the short term, but they have disastrous consequences in the medium-to-long term. Does anyone have data on how dark patterns are hurting businesses?”

Josephine Giaimo wrote, “Of course, revenue needs to be generated. The question is how to do so effectively and as part of an overall design philosophy that does not diminish, but empowers the user.”

Doug Morrow suggested that the key is respect: “Good user experience is based on mutual trust and respect. If I go into a store and am harassed and demeaned by the staff, I will leave and not come back. If, however, staff engage me with respect and courtesy, I am not upset when they ask if I ‘want fries with that’ or offer me a credit card….” Mike Cunningham agreed with Doug, but adds: “The question that has to be answered is: long- or short-term relationship? The [long-term view] of this relationship is at stake.”

Paul McAleer notes that there are some concrete disincentives for changing the status quo of UX dark patterns: “Conjecture based on experience: These dark patterns bubble up because they have very clear perceived value—whether it’s … true or not—that is, people click banner ads [or do] not remove defaults in checkout. Coming up with other options that would cater more to a user’s needs may cost more—time, money—and that carries additional risk. Some people simply don’t have the stomach for that.”

Mateus Barreto thinks that the issue is not just our being asked to create one or two sites whose user experience works against users’ wants and needs, but rather, that it’s starting to appear in UX job descriptions. He wrote, “It’s really not just about ads. I’ve seen job descriptions from Web agencies in which UX was basically defined as conversion optimization. While a UX practitioner must take into account all stakeholders—including taking business strategy very seriously—that is an absurdly myopic vision of the profession and bodes poorly for the perception of value [that] our work brings to companies.”

Conclusion

“I don’t want to do work that makes people buy things they can’t afford, don’t want, or don’t need. … However, I don’t think it’s wrong for other UX professionals to devise clever designs that push users from free to paid services.”

I don’t want to do work that makes people buy things they can’t afford, don’t want, or don’t need. There’s plenty of opportunity for helping people to satisfy their needs and reach their goals using digital tools, and that’s where I’d rather spend my time. However, I don’t think it’s wrong for other UX professionals to devise clever designs that push users from free to paid services. It’s a risky business—in that as soon as there were an equivalent free version, people would likely to switch to that option. But it’s not wrong.

Advertising will always be with us because marketers lack the imagination to design user experiences that entertain, engage, and inform, while also building awareness of a product or service. That’s where we come in. I don’t want to design roadblocks to content, but it’s not wrong to advertise.

Deception is clearly wrong. If the intent of a design is to obscure the fact that a site is adding costly options to a purchase without a user’s making a deliberate choice to add them, I consider that an ethical breach in which UX designers should refuse to participate.

- See more at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/12/user-experience-versus-users.php#sthash.RYzt9aQk.dpuf