Mary Shaw

Archive for August, 2009

31st August

Use Strategy Maps To Visualize Promotions

There are lots of ways UX designers can support the creative team besides delivering standard task flows, sitemaps and wireframes. One way to add value is to use a strategy map.

Get The Big Picture

With regard to promotional websites, a strategy map is a visual representation of a consumer’s online experience and all the major touch points during a given promotion.

Strategy maps are a great way to paint a vivid picture of an upcoming promotion. Rather than using a traditional outline, they help teams visually identify all the necessary promotional components and any issues related to connecting the dots between them.

Case Study: Major Brand Promotion

I recently used a strategy map during the early stages of a UX project for a major brand’s online promotion. It seemed like an easy way to help the design team crystalize their vision for the project.

It began with a conversation with the creative director. Besides doing UX for the upcoming website, she asked me to help her articulate the big picture of a new product launch that tied in with a major motion-picture release.

The challenge was to get people to come back to the site multiple times and increase awareness during the summer blockbuster season.

Out Of Her Brain And On To The Screen

The creative director had everything in her head but was struggling to communicate it out to her team and the client. I asked her to describe everything to me in detail. Together we created a simple map with rectangles representing all the promotional elements involved, how they tied back to the site and when they needed to launch.

The promotional elements involved included several emails, Twitter, and a grass roots print campaign.

Works With Paper Too

The really nice part about using diagramming software for this excercise was the ease with which we could move stuff around. Looking back, we also could have used post-it notes if my laptop wasn’t handy.

The first iteration was almost like a mind-map, with lots of scattered ideas and very little organization. But soon things started to gel as we put a timeline against these ideas and started to organize them by different launch dates.

Easier Client Approval

The final version was a very simple illustrated timeline that clearly represented the life cycle of the final promotion. Even better, the client was able to see how the team had clearly thought out all aspects of the program. She quickly approved the strategy map and was also able to use it for her own internal communications.

Give strategy maps a try and see if they help your teams more clearly express and communicate creative ideas. What other types of tools do you use to help teams focus on the big picture? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Tags: Strategy
Posted in User Experience Design | No Comments »

23rd August

Why You Need A Content Strategy

How many times has your web project been delayed due to missing content or issues related to existing content? Wrangling website content can really make your workplace feel like the Wild West. In the 13 years I’ve been working on the web, content problems are the biggest reason for launch delays. You can help alleviate this by implementing an effective content strategy.

What The Heck Is It?

According to consultant Jeff MacIntyre, “Content Strategy” is an emerging discipline within the field of User Experience Design. I believe many UX practitioners (including me) have been doing it for years but didn’t realize there was an official name for it.

Content strategy helps businesses create and manage all web site content within the context of a site’s business goals and user needs. Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, defines it like this: “Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

Bottom line, we all need a better way to plan for and manage our website content. An effective content strategy strengthens our up front planning efforts so we’ll have a better idea of what we need and when.

More Than Words

Your web site’s content needs to be accurate, relevant and just enough to communicate clearly. So content strategy includes much more than a site’s branding, messaging and copy. It covers managing and tracking anything that can appear or be measured on your website:

Text
Images
Audio
Video
Links (working, please!)
Forms
File Downloads (.PDF, .doc, .xls, etc.)
Error Messages
Metadata
Site stats

Your content strategy needs to define how you will source, create, track, implement and maintain all of these moving parts. Yikes!

In the old days at the agency we used the copy deck as the master document to track all this stuff. But that was asking too much from one document/person and it ultimately fell on the project manager to pull all the missing pieces together.

What’s In Your Web Site?

An effective content strategy begins with a content audit. You need to know what you have before you’ll know what you can do with it.

In her book, Kristina Halvorson discusses two flavors of content audit; quantitative and qualitative. First you need to know what you have (quantitative). Then you need to know what to do with it (qualitative). A thorough content audit will give you the information you need to figure out what to keep, what to delete, and what needs to be created from scratch.

When I was working on a big university’s website redesign, our first order of business was figuring out what exactly was on their 1000+ page site. For our quantitative audit we used a simple yet very detailed spreadsheet template to catalog the site’s content (see below). Yes, it took a ton of time, but the analysis we were able to do afterwards was incredibly useful and had a big influence on the final design.

Why It Works

When you know what you have, what you need, and why you need it you’ll know:

What you need to create
When you need to get it approved
Who needs to create and approve it
How much space you need for it
How to organize it so people can find it
When to update it
When (and if) to archive it

Less Craziness, More Consistency

An effective content strategy will help you rein in some of the more frustrating aspects of your web design process – mainly getting the required content when you need it. You’ll also keep better and more informed tabs on how your site is communicating to your audience. For example, you’ll be able to make sure everything stays in the same tone of voice throughout the entire site. This is especially important for large sites with multiple contributors.

How To Get Started

First assign someone to be responsible for your site’s content strategy. Then introduce them to your web design team and get them up to speed on the current status of your website. Their first task should be to conduct a thorough content audit, both qualitative and quantitative.

Next, identify any content gaps and determine who will be responsible for filling them. For example, if the site has video, does the video exist yet? If it needs to be created from scratch, who’s writing the script and when will the final production file be available?

Content Strategy Templates

Download and use the templates below to get started making your website better and more effective.

Content Inventory Form (from the IA institute – please note this is a 6MB file)

Content Plan – I use this to manage all types of content

Content Template (from A List Apart – scroll down to the end of the article for a very useful template.)

Posted in User Experience Design | 1 Comment »

15th August

5 Tips To Run A Winning Wireframe Meeting

Presenting wireframes to clients is a big milestone in a web design project. Recently some readers asked how to run a wireframe meeting, so here are 5 tips to help you create and deliver a wireframe presentation that gets great results and rave reviews.

1. Preparation

As UX designers we lay out the project vision, so proper preparation is critical. After updating your files to include any internal team feedback, make sure your presentation files are as clean and well organized as possible. Run a spell check, proof read and confirm that all pages are clearly labeled, in the correct order and have a logical flow before you distribute them to anyone.

If possible, rehearse your presentation out loud. I find this is very helpful and helps me identify areas for improvement. Most importantly, it helps me relax during the real deal.

2. Confirm The Meeting Time And Deliverables

Confirm the meeting time and place with everyone involved. If you are working with a project manager ask them to do it on your behalf. Most importantly, make sure everyone knows what to expect.

Almost all of my clients work in distributed teams, so I usually do my wireframe presentations remotely using Gotomeeting. Occasionally I work with agencies that insist on onsite meetings, but even those events usually include one or more people on the phone.

As for deliverables, I prefer to deliver wireframe decks as online PDFs and do not print them out. Other UX designers may disagree, but in my experience people pay more and better attention when everyone’s eyes are directed to the same place, whether it’s their own computer screens or a large conference room projection screen. Besides, wireframe decks can get huge fast and I’m tired of killing so many trees.

3. Presentation Day

On the day of your presentation, distribute your PDF and conference call information at least one hour before the meeting. Your PDF will probably be too big to email as an attachment, so use a secure storage facility like Box.net and email a secure link to your team.

Dial in to the conference call at least 15 minutes early. This will give you a chance to launch your presentation, get settled and catch your breath. Do the same for an onsite meeting.

4. Showtime!

As soon as everyone is assembled, thank them for coming and ask if they can access the presentation and hear you clearly on the phone. After everyone confirms it’s time to start the show.

Set ground rules for the meeting and give people an overview of your presentation. In other words, tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em.

Start by reminding everyone of the site’s purpose, goals and audience. Then take them through each wireframe as if you were the user. Walk the group through all of your annotations – although they might, don’t expect anyone to read them after the fact.

Be sure to ask for feedback after presenting each individual page. Most people don’t want to wait until the end and may forget their two cents by then. So give everyone a chance to be heard when they want to speak as long as they are polite. Take careful notes or record the meeting so you can review any requested changes later.

5. Next Steps

Clarify all feedback and confirm any agreements for requested changes. Also agree on when the next round of revisions will be completed or if (yay!) the current wireframe deck is approved. If no one has further questions or concerns, thank them again for their time and end the meeting. Summarize any agreed upon changes in writing and get this approved before moving forward on the next round of revisions. This is critical to ensure you clearly understand any changes.

Your Turn

Hopefully these 5 tips will help you make winning wireframe presentations. How do you run effective wireframe meetings? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Tags: IA, UX, wireframes
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10th August

How To Create An Effective Web Site Strategy

Web sites are so much more about people than technology. As UX designers, a big part of our job is helping everyone working on a web design project understand and agree about what needs to be built. That means involving all the right people and capturing the right information from the start. Creating an effective web site strategy gives design teams clear direction and focus. The best way to approach it is to 1) gather requirements, 2) review existing content, and 3) create a visual blueprint based on 1 and 2.

Requirements Gathering

The word “requirements” is a wonky, old-school IT term. But it’s useful because it reminds teams to focus only on what’s required to achieve site goals. Capturing site requirements begins with a simple conversation.

“What does the site need to do for the business?”
“What does it need to do for the users?”

According to Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements Of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web, answering these two fundamental questions will form the foundation of your website strategy. This exercise typically results in a preliminary “wish list” of desired features and functionality.

Stakeholder Interviews

“Stakeholders” is another wonky term for 1) the people who pay you to build a website and 2) anyone associated with building the website. You have to talk to all of them to really nail the requirements. Often the biggest hurdle is identifying who needs to be included and then getting time on their schedules. These meetings don’t need to be formal – people are busy. The point is to make sure everyone who needs to be involved gets an opportunity to be heard.

Customer interviews and user surveys are also a key part of this process. But many businesses may not have the resources to implement these. At the very least, the team should create 3-4 personas (written descriptions of specific audience members) and how they will interact with your site.

Who’s The Competition?

Looking at your online competition will show you where your product or service fits in the overall competitive landscape. Ask clients to provide you with links to 4-5 competitor websites and a list of what they like and don’t like about them. While a full competitive analysis will reveal lots of details about the competition, it’s possible that a cursory website review will be enough to see what works and what doesn’t.

Content Review

If you’re doing a site redesign you’ll need to review all the existing content. Create a simple spreadsheet that lists all the navigation and content areas of your current site. Then ask yourself these questions:

What do you have now?
What should you keep?
What do you need to get rid of?
What new content do you need?

How Will You Measure Success?

What are the success factors that will confirm you achieved your goals? Be sure to include some sort of success metrics. They can be as simple as increasing unique visitors and page views by 25%, or more complex, such as “signing up x number of new online sales leads in our prospect database”. Google Analytics gives you great analytics tools and it’s free. Simply sign up and copy and paste the tracking code into each page of your site.

How Will You Drive Traffic?

How will you get the word out when your site launches? To reach your market you’ll need a highly targeted promotional strategy to persuade people to visit your site. You’ll also need to give them a compelling reason to return. If site promotion is the responsibility of a separate team make sure they are aware of your activities and vice versa.

Documenting Requirements

Once all the research is done and stakeholders have put in their two cents, it’s time to officially get the requirements down on paper. The easiest way to do this is to create a more refined version of your original wish list, this time with all the features and functionality prioritized and described in more detail. This becomes your “requirements analysis document” and should be approved by all decision makers.

Information Architecture/UX Documents

The approved requirements can now be organized into a visual blueprint:

User Flows – short diagrams representing suggested user paths.
Sitemap – a high-level view of the overall site structure and navigation.
Wireframes – black and white diagrams of each page that show what content goes where.

These documents should go through a few rounds of revisions as the team becomes more familiar with what the final site will look like. Wireframes are especially valuable since changes are easy at this stage. They allow lots of room for design exploration and different layout choices. But it’s critical to get them approved before moving on to formal (e.g. more expensive) design.

Ready For Design

Taking the time to create an effective website strategy will help you strike the greatest balance between business objectives and user needs. It will also reduce the likelihood of mistakes and re-work later in the project. This will make your design team much more efficient and help everyone keep things on track.

How do you create an effective website strategy? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Tags: Strategy
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »

5th August

10 Questions For Customer-Focused Copywriting

What’s the best way to find out what’s on your customer’s mind? Ask them. Same goes for prospects. You need to understand the market on their terms. Too often marketers make incorrect assumptions about their audience. This can lead to expensive mistakes. It’s better and easier to ask the people closest to your product or service what they want. This will give you the key information you need to write clear, succinct, customer-focused copy that hits the mark and leads to more conversions and sales.

Script It Out

Below is a handy script of 10 questions you can use and edit to help get inside your customers’ heads. While you could create this as an online survey, it’s more effective to schedule a live conference call since direct contact will give you an opportunity to build the relationship further.

Make sure you first ask your customers’ permission and schedule a convenient time for the call. You’ll need less than an hour unless you get lucky and your interviewee provides lots of detailed information. Schedule an hour up front and ask if you can book a follow up call if the session goes overtime. If you’ve never done this before, you’ll be amazed at what you find out.

Customer Questions:

1. Tell me about ABC product. Why do you use it?

2. What made you choose ABC over Competitor A or Competitor B? (specifically name the competition)

3. What pain does ABC product solve that the other products don’t?

4. Can you please describe a specific use of ABC product that made a difference for you?

5. What do you like best about using ABC product?

6. What, if anything, would you change about ABC product?

7. How often do you purchase ABC product?

8. Is there anything you would change about the purchasing process?

9. Would you buy from ABC again? Why or why not?

10. Who else might benefit from using ABC product?

Follow Up

Be sure to thank people for their time and send a follow up email with your notes. Ideally, this will be the beginning of an ongoing customer conversation to help keep their needs at the top of your list. Market drivers change quickly and often, so it’s great to keep the door open to future dialogue that might impact your marketing messages. What other questions would you ask if you had the opportunity? Please share them in the comments.

Tags: content, Strategy
Posted in Copywriting | 1 Comment »

2nd August

What’s Your User Story?

Stories have been a cornerstone of design for thousands of years. The great pyramids were built to provide the Pharoahs with a safe journey to the afterlife. The Acropolis was built as a monument to the people of Athens. The Sistine Chapel is the centerpiece of any visit to Vatican City. Each of these architectural wonders started out as an idea communicated through stories. Just like them, your website or blog begins with the story of your users. Who are they and why do they come to your site? What is their initial motivation and what compels them to return?

In web design, user stories make it easier for design teams and stakeholders to share and understand project information. The best way to document your user stories is by using “personas” and “scenarios”. A persona is a written description of a specific member of your target audience and how that user will interact with your site. Scenarios are a set of user tasks performed by a given persona.

Combining personas with user scenarios is an excellent way to get to the heart of a given user story. For example, it’s much easier to understand “Susie is a 32-year old stay at home mom looking for a new online grocery provider” than pouring through reams of disparate data buried in Powerpoint pie charts and user logs. Since they are accessible to everyone, the result is often a more persuasive user experience that effectively supports your marketing goals.

Creating Personas

The best way to create personas is to thoroughly research your target audience. This can be a big budget adventure or a low-budget affair. Try to find actual users to interview. Study user logs if you have them. Most importantly, ask yourself a few questions about your user:

What are their demographics?
What influences their buying decisions?
Who else do they buy from? Who are your competitors?
What are their hot buttons?
What pain are they experiencing that your product or service will solve?
Where are they in the buying process? Did they just hear about you or are they ready to buy now?
What language do they use?

Try to identify what really motivates your customer. Understanding the answers to these questions will help you get on a personal level with your target audience. It will help everyone keep your users in mind as specs change over the course of the project. It will also have a huge impact on the copy and tone of your site.

A total of 3-4 personas should ideally represent most users. Your site can’t be all things to all people, so keeping within this constraint will help you stay focused. Be sure to get your personas signed off by all team stakeholders. It’s critical that everyone agrees on them, especially project sponsors. If there’s a disconnect they probably won’t get used.

Get Your Story Straight With AIDA

Once the team agrees on the personas it’s time to move on to scenarios. You may be familiar with the time-tested marketing formula called AIDA, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Many copywriters depend on AIDA as a creative framework and checklist to develop a compelling story. It’s very useful to apply this framework to your user scenarios. Use these questions to get started:

What do you want your users to do?
How will you grab their attention?
How will you hold it long enough to create interest in your site?
What visual and contextual clues will build desire for your product or service?
What will make them want to take action?
What will happen after they take action?
What will make them want to return to your site?

Answering these questions will help you imagine your users interacting with your site. It may also surface some design problems that need to be solved.

Story Impact

At this point you should have a strong understanding of your target audience. With personas and user scenarios in hand, the team can start sketching out a basic sitemap and wireframes knowing they have a firm foundation to move forward with design.

How have stories, personas, and scenarios influenced your design decisions? Download and use this persona template to create your own user stories. Who knows, your design just might make history.

Tags: personas, scenarios, UX
Posted in User Experience Design | No Comments »

1st August

Fairfield University Website Redesign

Fairfield University asked me to help them with their recent website redesign. Working closely with the Director of Web Communications, we conducted a full content audit, competitive analysis, and stakeholder interviews. These activities gave us the information we needed to create a set of personas representing each user type, followed by a site map and wireframes to guide the design of each page template.

We made extensive usability enhancements to the 1000+ page site. These included streamlining the navigation structure so it was more intuitive and consistent across the board.

Posted in Portfolio, UX | Comments Off

Freelance Writer and UX Designer