Visualization

The challenge of vizualization is to tell your story as clearly as possible, in an interesting manner, without overwhelming your user with too much detail.

Several months after 9/11, I came across an article that left a long term impression on me. It described how the FBI went about connecting relationships between all the terrorists involved in executing the plot.

The investigators began to feed all the data they had into a software program. The data included all the communications between the terrorists, their in-person interactions and transactions. This began to create a visual chart with lines showing the relationshops. As the investigators tweaked the data based on confirmed data or strong assumptions, different relationships and leadership began to become apparent.

I found this absolutely fascinating and have described this often to colleagues in the years that followed.

In the last few months, I’ve came across similar applications of this visualization method. For example, News.com has certain subjects defined in their “The Big Picture” feature. They color code stories vs topics vs companies that are all related to the core news article you started on.

Live Plasma is an interesting visualization tool that allows the user to search on musicians/artists, actors, movies. Here’s an example of a search for relations to the movie “.”

I’ve also had the good fortune of being exposed to teachings of Edward Tufte. Check out his Web site for many interesting examples of how to present complex information. Better yet, attend his training course.

The point to all this is to start thinking in different ways. Consider your audience. Think about the story you want to tell. Examine your data and come up with a creative way of presenting the information.

Enjoy the challenge!
-Roland

10/13/2006 update: Check out these visualization videos of air traffic flight patterns over the U.S., elapsed over time and set to music.

10/31/2006 update: Check out 3D Weather Data Visualization in Second Life.

Test your site search engine

Many of the clients we work with have site search engines that fail miserably at the job of making it easy to find content on the Web site. Usually that can be attributed to bad setup and long-term abandonment by the developers and marketers.

I visited the Mobile Marketing Association Web site and found their site search function to be very odd.

The advanced site search explicitly states “Keywords shorter than 5 characters will be ignored”

Well, typical keywords for mobile marketing include: SMS, MMS, WAP, PSMS, TXT, text — all of which are 3-4 characters long. Plus, if a user tries some sort of natural language phrase like “how to …” or “new law” or “opt in rules”, he/she will get the same obnoxious message.

This just struck me as lacking in common sense and not very user friendly.

Marketers, be sure to check out your Web sites. Put a reminder in your To Do list to check it thoroughly, at least once a month. Click on random links. Search for common and obscure terms. Put yourself into the shoes of your user. You might be suprised what you find.

-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Usability checklist

A great reminder to share with a difficult client or colleague about the critical task of designing with the end user in mind…

Usability Principles
• Know your users.
• Know the tasks your users perform.
• Know what performance means to your users.

Check out this Usability Checklist for Site Developers

Also, be sure to check out the ongoing dialogue on Web site usability and research at: Jakob Nielsen’s Web site

So, don’t let a closed-minded individual bully you out of it. The success of the Web site may depend on it.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: user research is critical

Does your client think the Web site redesign can be done without benefit of any basic research? That’s a sure sign of trouble ahead.

You need to understand how the site is currently being used, who is visiting and are their needs being met.

You can gather this information from a variety of sources:
- Primary research
- Secondary research
- Site logs
- Interviews with stakeholders
- Customer service

If you can’t get the above, set up an online survey triggered by site visitors. If you want to assess customers, set up a survey triggered when a customer logs into his account. If you have email addresses for consumers who registered at the site for something, send an email inviting them to participate in research. In my experience, inviting 50,000 consumers by email usually yields 1,500 completed surveys within 72 hours. That’s a significant representative sample to gain some learnings from.

Questionnaire design is an art form. Most research professionals keeping survey length to 10 questions max. Best is to sketch out what the most critical learnings your after. Then prioritize the questions, rewrite and rewrite again until you’ve come up with a good balance. Don’t forget to include 2-3 profile questions at the end to help segment your responders.

A good survey should:
1. Set expectations upfront as to what you want the participant to do and how long it should take.
2. Include clear, easy to understand questions. Include instructions (e.g. Please select one of the following choices.)
3. Set expectations as to how much longer the survey will take (e.g. “Almost done, just 3 more questions please.”)
4. Use form field validation to ensure you questions are answered.
5. Be error free. No spelling errors, confusing text or broken functionality.
6. Include a thank you message at the end.

Interested? Check out these easy to use and relatively inexpensive online survey tools:
Insight Express
Zoomerang
Survey Monkey

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: prioritize stakeholders

So who is your day-to-day client for the redesign project? Does she have decision making authority? Does he have a boss to please? Who else has input on the project?Understanding and getting input from all relevant stakeholders is critical to the success of the project. But managing their expectations and prioritize their importance is just as critical.

A single point of contact (SPOC) is critical to take all the internal input, distill what is critical and DECIDE on what will and wont be accepted. That person must also be able to push back on some of his/her colleagues and not allow someone with lower importance insist on something or derail the project.

Face it, there is no way to make everyone happy. But there are ways to managing expectations.

Upfront, make it clear that input is welcome from all parties — business unit owners, customer relations, Marketing, Product, IT, R&D, HR, etc. — as part of the discovery phase. But do not invite all these disciplines to comment on creative design, copywriting, development. That’s inviting too many cooks into the kitchen, will delay the process and possibly muck up your project with political posturing.

Once you know what’s important to each stakeholder, it all gets prioritized against the main site goals AND THE VISITOR GOALS. Then you stick to your plan.

What do you think? Please post your comments.
Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Assess the Competition First

Part of your discovery research on a redesign project must include an assessment of what the competition is doing. Have your client define exactly who they believe their top competitors are. Try to break those down into several categories, such as: manufacturers, retailers and niche specialties.

What you should hope to achieve is an understanding what other companies in the space are doing, how they are talking to consumers and what unique approaches they have implemented.

Create a grid for basic comparison. Make each Web site a column and each row a unique attribute. Be sure to include the client’s site as well. Then methodically go through and identify what each site does. Examples:
- Types of consumer registration (newsletters, free trial, purchase, etc.)
- Types of customer support (24/7, online chat, email, phone, etc.)
- Types of consumer tools for decision making (product education, product comparison, etc.)
- Search Engine Optimization — have pages been optimized for natural search?
- Brand voice or essence — Does the copy speak to the consumer in a compelling way, or is it dry, corporate/marketing speak.

Be sure to sign up for any free stuff to get a sense of how the registration processes work and what types of email marketing they do.

This comparison is only limited by your imagination. But as you begin to cruise through each site, you’ll think of more points to evaluate.

Now you’ll be armed with good ideas to deliver on a best in class Web site.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Define How to Measure Success

To claim a project was successful, you have to define upfront how success will be measured. (And make sure the project owner and stake holders agree upfront!) Here are some examples:

- Improved user flow through the Web site. Getting a visitor quickly past the home page to a desired destination.

- Improved a specific activity on the Web site. That might be visits to a specific page, or registration of some kind, or just interaction with an application that educates the user.

- Improved a specific offline activity. Perhaps your migrating a portion of your customer service online to empower customers to self-identify solutions online without interaction with customer service or the sales group.

- Reduced visitor drop-off in a process. Perhaps you need to provide more information or reduce the number of questions asked or pages displayed.

I would argue that “increasing visits to a Web site” is not a self-sufficient result of a redesign project. It is dependent on other factors, such as improvement of natural search rankings or other marketing efforts such as paid search, online media, email marketing, offline marketing, etc.

So take the time early on to define your success metrics, then plan a redesign effort around achieving these results.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

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