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You are here: Home / Archives for User experience

How Google is Altering Our User Experience

March 12, 2018 by David Geddes Leave a Comment

Thoroughly researched and highly thought-provoking, Dr. Peter J Meyers presents a fascinating insight into Google’s ‘direction of travel’ with regard to how it is fundamentally altering our user experience.

He argues that by breaking the implied ‘pact’ between its search engine and website owners (the providers of the content that built it into the multi-billion dollar giant that it is today!) they are creating an online environment where it is now possible to have a complete, customized content experience without ever leaving Google.

The examples that he uses will not be new to you, however, the real value in the article is the way that he builds his argument and the conclusions that he draws.

The implications for marketers are significant.

You can read the article here: https://moz.com/blog/googles-walled-garden

Improving our UX with Ptengine and A/B Testing

September 13, 2016 by Fiona Roddis 2 Comments

Image of dock on water and title textOver the past few weeks you may have noticed a couple of things; we’ve taken a short hiatus in posting and the site design/elements have changed. You may remember that at the beginning of March we introduced the beginning of our journey with Ptengine.

What started out as a general trial of Ptengine turned into a review and then a full on case study study with some A/B testing thrown in for good measure. Guy and Jeff from Ptengine sifted through the data collected by Ptengine over a 4 month period, including heatmaps and after sending it to us we started working our way through the changes on the site.

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Supercharge Mobile Screen Performance with UX Analytics

November 24, 2015 by Alon Even 1 Comment

Image of finger using mobile screen with icons coming out of the screen

Image courtesy of edan via Pixabay.com

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has been a hot topic for quite some time and is a vital part of any company’s digital marketing strategy, and there aren’t too many marketers who would argue that. The essence of CRO is getting visitors to convert and with many companies leading the way to optimize desktop sites, site owners are empowered to maximize the user experience and increase conversions.

For example, let’s say you have a site that is doing very well in a number of different areas and you’re attracting massive amounts of traffic via SEO, content marketing and paid search. The goal is to get those visitors to convert. If they aren’t, you need to take a look at your website optimization strategy.

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It’s time to put the customer back into Behavioral Analysis with multi-screen, multi-device analytics

November 5, 2013 by Karen Bellin Leave a Comment

Measurement protocols are adapting to track customers instead of cookies.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time helping clients understand the difference between “unique visitors” and “people” when it comes to measuring web site audiences. The “unique visitor” metric comes from web analytics and is defined in terms of browser cookies. The “people” metric comes from IP/panel data (like Quantcast) and is typically an estimate based on a representative audience sample. Neither metrics actually represent a person, like you or me or the people we interact with in real life (irl) every day.

The “unique visitor” metric is expected to be greater than the number of “irl people,” or customers that access your sites, and the “people” metric varies according to how representative the sample is of your audience.

If only there was a way to tell how many “irl people” are visiting sites.

Universal Analytics (UA) from Google moves us one step closer to being able to have the “irl people” metric and associated insights.

As the prevalence of multi-device browsing grows, brands are investing in mobile experiences in addition to web ones. But are they reaching the same customer twice – once on the web site and again on mobile? Or are they reaching a new audience on their mobile properties that they weren’t reaching before because they only had a website? Are customers converting at a higher rate thanks to being able to have a mobile touchpoint with the brand instead of just a web one?

Many web analytics tools let you capture the User-IDs for logged-in visits in a variable, but the reporting effort needed to answer questions about the impact of cross-device browsing is clunky since the measurement protocols are cookie based, rather than customer based. The measurement protocol for UA is designed around the User-ID, so once you start tracking that information, associated activity is attributed to one visitor in the reports – one “irl person.”

The seamlessness of the solution provided by the new measurement protocol in UA means clunky work-arounds – like having to adjust unique visitor numbers by the number of times a User-ID shows up in visits reports, are obsolete.

Battle scars gained from explaining the difference between “unique visitors” and “people” have made me shy away from reporting on those metrics and made me recommend that analysts focus on discrete sessions which are better captured in cookie-based web analytics tools. Now, with UA, I am excited to see analysts putting the “irl people,” the customers, back into their analyses.

Are new measurement protocols, like cross-device tracking, changing how you measure your site audiences?

Web Analytics: How deep should you dig?

June 4, 2013 by Ralf Haberich 1 Comment

Nothing is more important than knowledge in professional life. Contextual knowledge, knowledge of usable networks, sources and future developments. Nothing should be more important in a company (apart of course from the people who work with the data) than data. Only reliable data sources can provide managers with information on historical successes and current and future target achievements. Only data provides a usable, combinable and valid source of assessable decisions.

Web Analytics is an integral part of this vital data flow for entrepreneurs, managers and experts. Web Analytics may act as primary and/or complementary source of knowledge and is therefore indispensable, especially in the future.

Analytical Benefit

How much benefit can be derived from web analysis that provides optimization options based on metrics and analytics reporting? The general answer is certainly “a lot!”, although subjectivity will always augment final decision making.

However, in this process of analysis remember to apply the law of Gossen. We all know Gossen’s law of diminishing marginal utility – even in terms of web analytics and conversion optimization Gossen’s Law comes into play.

A redesign of email format might lead to increased newsletter registrations. Avoiding getting lost in the minutest detail, probably also helps the conversion. Even a minimal chance of synergy between two campaigns may have a positive effect on sales.

But at what price?

At what cost?

Gossen´s law

There is the law of diminishing marginal utility of the economy (or First Gossen’s law), which is based on the assumption that the magnitude of a given pleasure decreases continuously as we continue to satisfy it until, at last, saturation occurs. Applying this in a digital context, it can be represented, albeit simply, here in this chart:

Gossen Law in Digital Analytics

The more investment a web analyst makes in a project or a general optimization, the smaller the benefit over time. A quick optimization change is often the beginning of a project; leading to more continuous improvement or conversion increases which are only achievable with significantly higher costs. This law of diminishing marginal utility is universal enough to be frequently observed in practice with users!

In order to make the available (though often necessary) small steps, requires a maximum effort of the staff. But – and here is the crux of this model – in most cases it is necessary to accurately perform these minor improvements, or to gain a competitive edge through detailed work, in order to become a successful online store rather than a less successful one. Human effort is required to succeed in taking a confusing, not goal-orientated, search and redesigning it to create a perfectly designed internal search tool – so that you might achieve that essential digital competitive advantage.

The real challenge is that we have long since arrived, in many areas of the knowledge economy, at the point of the minimum marginal utility, so that the difference is small, but crucial. Relevant optimization and targeted increased conversion that can identify a market difference – can only be achieved with great effort. This effort must always be set against the potential benefits. Economic models that are applicable across a range of sectors and which have stood the test of time are becoming increasingly popular. Be it the phenomenon of over-optimization or the Six Sigma DMAIC cycle (Define, Measure, Act, Invest, Control). 

Nowadays a lot of companies still struggle with the benefits of using Web Analytics software. This will change and more and more departments will see the value of data-driven decisions. So, do not only feed your software with data – feed your brain with knowledge and experience. As soon as you come to a border and remind yourself on Gossen´s law; you need to decide if it is worth investing the additional efforts to get close to perfection or if you should concentrate on parallel projects within Digital Business. 

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