"From the very start, e-commerce has empowered the customer to an unprecedented degree...
If the customer is in the driving seat, the logical next step is to rethink everything from that perspective."
Electronic commerce, 2000 Special Report on the Financial Industry
CAP GERMINI, ERNST & YOUNG
  

Susan Harkus
Home Focus on the user agenda Engagement - get it right My work

Focus on the user agenda     Don't ask users     Design useful websites     Fix user experience problems     Validate your online strategies

Validate your online strategies

User-centred architectures + content & communications that engage
=> Business outcomes

A user agenda is always in play

Adapted from The User Experience, The iceberg analogy of usability, Dick Berry, User Experience Design, IBM Ease of Use team

Users know what they want to do. They just don't realise how much their decisions and behaviour are triggered by their sub-conscious agenda.

A user agenda is specific to the task  and any number of people from different demographics or social backgrounds will share the same set of agenda triggers for a particular task.

Realistic or doomed to fail?

Are your web strategies the stuff of fairy tales or grounded in realistic, achievable outcomes?

How do you know?

Your answer is provided by the people who achieve your business outcomes. They are a quiet bunch. Rarely say anything when they are satisfied. Just disappear if you fail them or demand too much. Only complain, and then vehemently, when they're really annoyed.

They're your website users and email subscribers!

You know your users. Use that knowledge!

Assess what is needed to engineer agenda intersections

Test your online strategies against your customer and user knowledge.

Assess where your web or intranet products and services fit within the user and business agenda rings. As A? B? C? or D? [users in red, business in blue]

  • Confirm website tasks that are succeeding or have a strong likelihood of success because both you and your customers want success outcomes. Confirm criteria for customer and business success. (A)
  • Identify business-outcome tasks that will succeed if you increase their intersection with the user agenda. That is, discover ways to align the business-outcome task more closely with the customer agenda. (B)
  • Detect business-outcome tasks that seem to have low value outcomes for website users. Gather the insights that you need to decide whether to defer your investment in that content or redefine your offering. (C)
  • Uncover unexpected opportunities for new online products or services in potential matches between what users want to do and what your business can profitably enable. (D)

Validate before committing $$$

Before commissioning creative services, before turning a single HTML sod, leverage the power of your 'informed intuition'1. Give your cross-functional business team an opportunity to test your strategies in an analysis and validation workshop.

Validate

  • the information and functions that you offer your users

  • the way you have grouped and layered content - your site architecture

  • the labels you are using for menu options and strategic links

  • page content and content sequencing

Talk to me

If you want to make sure that your website and your email communications are on track to deliver the business outcomes that you have set, talk to me about an analysis and validation workshop.

  1. This left of field approach was advocated by Geoffrey Moore for businesses confronted with 'high-risk, low-data decisions'. "... you need to approach the [high-risk, low-data] decision from a different vantage point. You need to understand that informed intuition, rather than analytical reason, is the most trustworthy decision-making tool to use."
    Moore, Geoffrey A., 1999. Crossing the Chasm, Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers, p. 89.

© Susan Harkus 2009

Contact Susan Harkus