Perceived Affordance, Usability and Online Sales:

One of the most important goals of web site usability testing is finding and fixing perceived affordance issues.  You can increase your usability, conversion and thus your web site Return on Investment (ROI) by improving perceived affordance.

What’s perceived affordance?  For web site owners, it’s the art and science of designing objects like ‘buy now’ buttons in such a way that your web site visitors know just by looking at it that they can click on it.

One of the most important functions of web site usability testing is to evaluate the perceived affordance of links and buttons.  By testing and optimizing perceived affordance of critical objects, such as “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons, web sites can dramatically increase conversion, and thus ROI.

Definition of Perceived Affordance:

According to Don Norman, the Godfather of design and usability and the author of the book “The Design of Everyday Things,” the concept of perceived affordance is defined this way;

“The word “affordance” was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal).

What the designer cares about is whether the user perceives that some action is possible (or in the case of perceived non-affordances, not possible).

In product design, where one deals with real, physical objects, there can be both real and perceived affordances, and the two need not be the same. In graphical, screen-based interfaces, all that the designer has available is control over perceived affordances. The computer system, with its keyboard, display screen, pointing device (e.g., mouse) and selection buttons (e.g., mouse buttons) affords pointing, touching, looking, and clicking on every pixel of the display screen.”

According to William Gaver, there are three categories of affordance:

• Perceptible
• False
• Hidden

By evaluating the design elements that communicate perceived affordance for various objects in your web site, you can determine which category an object fits, and if wrong, take steps to correct it.

Perceived Affordance is Critical for Your Web Site Success:

When you think about your web site, your ROI in fact lives or dies on your ability to successfully manipulate design to improve perceived affordance.  Your web site is primarily a one-way pipe of information, the majority being visual information (with the potential for some audio).  You provide the visual information, and your web site visitors consume and comprehend it (or at least try to).

Because the primary interaction that takes place on your site is one-way visual, you must be zealous in your attempts to understand and evaluate how well you are communicating perceived affordance.  Testing and optimization of elements that impact perceived affordance should be your number one goal, because it directly impacts your conversion rates, and thus your web site’s ROI.

Actions your web site visitors take such as mouse clicks or typing characters, although very important, are never going to happen unless you provide clear, consistent and effective visual clues about how to take actions.  You do this by continually testing and optimizing the crucial elements of your site that establish and communicate perceived affordance.

Examples of Perceived Affordance in Buttons:

Let’s examine a few examples of perceptible perceived affordance in action.  In order to visually communicate that a button is clickable and will enable the site visitor to take action, it is necessary to use design to visually separate, distinguish and illuminate a function.

As demonstrated above, Amazon.com uses many design elements to generate high perceived affordance of their “Add to Shopping Cart” button, including use of:

• Strongly contrasting yellow button color
• Only use of that yellow color on the page
• Heavy outline border around button
• Round strongly contrasting icon of shopping basket
• Text in button “Add to Shopping Cart”
• Larger font for button text
• Elongated shape, round on left side, squared on right side
• Gradient fill in top of button to visually mimic 3-D shape
• Dark blue background color for surrounding box

Another example is eBay, which creates a high perceived affordance of the “Buy It Now” button.

For eBay, the “Buy It Now” button uses multiple design elements to effectively communicate perceived affordance:

• Strongly contrasting blue button color
• Only use of that blue button color on the page
• Largest sized button on page
• Text in button “Buy It Now”
• Larger font for button text
• Strong contrasting colors, white text on blue background
• Dark gray background color for surrounding box

To provide contrast, let’s examine use of design elements that appear to provide a function, but in fact do not.  This is known as false affordance, and can work against web site visitors.

False Affordance:

A false affordance is an apparent affordance that has no real function.  False affordance is a major contributor to lower web site conversion and lost online sales.  This is because a false affordance breaks the faith a web site visitor has in the web site’s functional abilities, and causes doubt and confusion.

Example of a False Affordance:

In this example, the prominently displayed “Featured Gift” and photo of the toy seem to indicate that more information about the toy might be available by clicking, but where?  Web site visitors who come across the display are left wondering, because no clear action button seems available for this toy.

A common tool many web site designers use is to make the image of the product clickable.  But that is not the case here.

In fact, there is no action available, the image of the toy is not clickable, nor is the heading “Featured Gift.”  There is no way to navigate to the featured toy using the visual designs offered, thus the connection with a “false affordance.”

There are many types of designs that can lead to false affordance, some of the more common being:

• Objects that look like buttons, but are not
• Photos of objects that are not links, especially if place with photos that are links
• Placing a blue outline around an image or link, yet no link is present
• Underlined text that is not a link
• Use of blue in text that is not a link
• Form data entry fields that are not active

For web site owners, false affordances are extremely damaging, and cause many more problems than simply lost clicks to a particular item.

By prominently displaying a false affordance on the home page, a web site causes damages including:

• Lost faith (visitors wonder – “is this clickable, what about this, or this?”)
• Lost focus (visitors spend more time trying to solve a navigation problem than shopping)
• Lost sales (frustrated visitors will often not complete their task)
• Lost trust (many visitors will simply leave the site – never to return)

Finding and fixing false affordances should be a high-priority job of every web site owner, especially those who own eCommerce sites – as false affordances  cost lost visitors, conversion and sales.

Poor Design and Hidden Perceived Affordance:

As with false affordance, poorly designed techniqes can hurt perceived affordance and can cause major performance issues for web site owners as well.  This is referred to as Hidden Affordance.  In the case of poor design, visual clues that a link or function is present are not displayed as visually separate, distinguished and illuminated.

Example of poor perceived affordance:

The example above demonstrates a site that provides web site visitors with a display of products available for purchase.  However, the function associated with “Checkout Now” – in this case a link to an online order form – is poorly displayed because it has minimal visual clues as to it’s function, and thus has low perceived affordance.

Among the perceived affordance problems with the “Checkout Now” button are:

• No button shape around the text
• Yellow text color is not a strong contrast against the white page
• No underline when mouse rolls over text
• Text in button visually close to “Back to results text”
• Missing a background color to call attention to location
• Upper left location not typically associated with ‘continue’ action

Improve Perceived Affordance with Testing:

So how do you improve your web site objects perceived affordance – with testing and re-testing.  There are four primary types of testing that can be used to analyze and optimize perceived affordance.  They are:

1. Expert Usability Review – Also called a “heuristic review.” This review uses expert analysis of interaction devices such as buttons, links and related functions against industry standards and best practices.  The best form of an expert usability review is to receive several, since each expert might focus on unique aspects that grouped together form a better picture of what needs to be improved and why.
2. Usability Testing – Using 1-on-1 moderated testing, a web site owner can quickly find problems with task flows for critical tasks.  These often involve issues with perceived affordance.  Because usability testing only needs about 7 or so participants, and because it uses real web site visitors, and can be done very quickly and for low cost, usability testing is a great way to find issues with perceived affordance.  It is the only method a web site owner can use to determine the “why” of an actual web site visitor’s behavior.
3. A/B Testing – Two different versions of a button, link or related object can be tested on your web site at the same time using a traffic split.  50% of the traffic goes to the version that has the “A” version (the original version of the object usually) and 50% to the new test “B” version.  After enough statistically significant results are captured, a winner can be picked based on interaction rate.  A/B testing is pretty reliable, assuming enough traffic is present.  However, it won’t tell you the “why” of the visitor behavior, and of course it might negatively impact your conversion if the “B” test version is worse than the original version.
4. Multivariate Testing – For sites with large amounts of traffic, multiple versions of objects can all be tested at the same time.  This allows for rapid analysis and iteration of the best possible combination of elements.  The downside to multivariate testing is it needs lots and lots of traffic to establish statistically significant results.  In addition, as with A/B testing the “why” of visitor behavior won’t be know, only which combination of elements performs the best.

Conclusion, Increase Your Usability and Website ROI with Perceived Affordance

Perceived affordance is critical to your web site success, and to your conversion and ROI.  Perceived affordance determines how well your interaction object designs communicate their function and use to your web site visitors.  Poor perceived affordance hurts your web site interaction, conversion and sales and results in lower ROI.  You can increase your ROI by conducting testing and optimization with the interaction objects on your web site.  An excellent way to identify potential issues and optimizations of perceived affordance is with usability testing.  Continual testing and re-testing ensures you are maximizing your potential usability, perceived affordance and thus ROI of your web site.

For more information about maximizing your web site’s perceived affordance and ROI contact me.

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Usability Testing and Online Marketing Campaigns

Usability testing in action

Usability testing is a tool typically thought of for use with improving web sites or web-based applications, but if you are responsible for online marketing here’s important news – usability testing can provide you with a killer online marketing campaign.

What you and your competing marketing managers may not realize is usability testing an online marketing campaign is an easy, fast and cheap way to increase conversion – and increase the ROI of your marketing spend.  Why?  Because usability testing is all about improving tasks, tasks like;

• Understanding the message of an online advertisement
• Easily clicking through to a landing page
• Quickly completing a landing page form
• Efficiently entering data in a buy-flow to purchase a product

Usability and online marketing optimization

So why should you add usability testing as one of your online marketing optimization tools?  According to Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast, interactive marketing will near $55 Billion, represent 21% of all marketing spend, and interactive marketing media will cannibalize traditional media to do it.

The money you invest in online marketing must not only equal traditional marketing results, it has to beat it – because your competitors are busy doing the exact same thing.

Reasons to add usability testing

There are several reasons why adding usability testing to your online marketing optimization mix is highly productive:

First:  Usability testing is fast and easy

Usability testing doesn’t need thousands of statistically significant responses or multiple focus groups.  To usability test a task like going through an online marketing flow, you don’t need a lot of time, effort or input.  It’s fast and easy to quickly create a test and learn from it.  This can come in handy when you are trying to make decisions about important elements in your future online marketing campaign – well before launch.

For example, while your online marketing campaign is still in development you could quickly use usability testing to determine how easy or difficult it is for your prospects to click through to a landing page, understand the message on the page, complete a form, and/or successfully navigate the order or sales path.  By watching just 7 usability participants try to complete your online marketing path, you’ll know instantly where there are problems in your task flow – and will probably have a pretty good idea of what to do to improve it.

Second:  Usability testing is cheap and very low risk

Setting up a usability test, asking 7 participants to go through the test, observing their behavior and debriefing them at the end can all be done in less than a week for minimal cost – especially if you use remote moderated testing.

If you compare asking 7 participants to try to complete an online marketing flow, versus conducting an A/B test where perhaps hundreds or thousands of real potential customers are going through the flow, usability is far cheaper because you’re not losing orders or sales due to a potentially bad “B” version.  And usability testing is cheaper because you don’t have to test live production versions of a campaign, you can test pre-launch versions and not risk the potential costs involved in creating a bad live campaign.

Third:  Usability testing uses your real target prospects

Testing with the actual people you are targeting means you get feedback directly from the people you want to engage.  Want to know what your actual prospects think as they interact with your online marketing campaign?  You can with usability testing.  By finding test participants who exactly match your typical online marketing prospect, you’ll be testing your campaign with the actual people who could be interacting with it.

By evaluating how easy or difficult it is for your online marketing prospects to interact with your online marketing flow, you’ll have credible feedback to help you improve the experience.   This takes the guesswork out of trying to determine the “why” of user actions, something click-stream, A/B or log file analysis simply cannot provide.

What to usability test?

Usability test a landing page to optimize conversion

So what elements in your online marketing campaign should you usability test?  The possibilities are endless, but there are probably 3 or 4 critical elements of any campaign that would be simple, cheap and effective to test.  And the information you receive from the test can improve your online marketing campaign right away.  They are:

1. Call to Action Function – Conducting a usability test of an online advertisement with a call to action button is a quick way to determine if your call to action graphic is doing what it’s supposed to.  Does the test participant see the graphic in context with other ads or content?  Does the button look like a button and stimulate response?  What does the participant expect to see after they click the button?  Usability testing will provide all those answers, and more.
2. Landing Page Content and Information Architecture – Once your prospect is on your landing page, does the content meet their expectations?  What about the information provided, is it clear and easily understood?  Does the participant know where to go, and what to do next?
3. Order or Buy Flow Form Function – Assuming you have a form on your landing page, is it easy to use?  Does the participant make any mistakes, or have confusion when entering data?  How long does it take to enter the data?  Are there too many fields, or not enough, from the participants viewpoint?
4. Next Steps – After completing the form, does the participant know what will happen next?  What are the participant’s expectations?  Does the participant receive their expected feedback?  Are they satisfied with the experience?

Conclusion – Add usability testing to your online marketing and make it Killer!

Adding usability testing to your online marketing efforts can help you take your ho-hum online marketing campaign to killer marketing campaign status.  Usability testing does this because it’s all about tasks, not opinions, it is cheap and very low risk and it uses your real target prospects to identify where there are problems in your flow.

With the increasing use of online marketing in the overall media mix it becomes even more important to make sure your online marketing efforts are optimized for success, and usability testing is a tool you can use to accomplish that.

For more information on how to add usability testing to your online marketing mix just contact me, I’ll be glad to help you increase your conversion.

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My seven controversial usability predictions for 2010

Flickr New Year Baby Photo via Skokie Public Library Creative Commons License

I have seven somewhat controversial usability predictions for the 2010 I think you might be surprised to read.  These predictions are based on my understanding of the state of the usability field based on blog posts, articles, tweets and all the other news and information I’ve picked up throughout the year.   Whether you agree or disagree with these predictions, I think you’ll agree that in the past year we’ve seen plenty of change, and will continue to see increasing changes in our field in 2010.

1. The cost of conducting usability testing will decrease by a factor of 10.

As I mentioned in my article; 24 web site usability testing tools, I’ve noticed a recent significant increase in the number of low cost or free usability testing tools available.  In 2009, several new, simple but effective tools have risen to prominence.  Considering there are many additional new and easy-to-use tools being developed even as I type this, it seems reasonable to assume usability testing and analysis tools will be available in unprecedented numbers for amazingly low costs.

Anyone still renting a usability lab, going through expensive recruiting firms for participants, or using specialized rooms with one-way mirrors and multiple video cameras is wasting money – lots of money.

For a company that switches to low cost usability tools instead of renting a lab, this will decrease their usability testing costs by much greater than a factor of 10.   For companies already using these low cost tools, the incremental increase in use of the tools means many more usability reports and optimizations, at extremely low costs.

The year 2010 should see many more firms converting to these lower cost usability testing methods, and saving tremendous amounts of money doing so.

2. There will be a dramatic increase in the use of low cost web-based usability testing tools

In 2010, several new, cheap and powerful web-based usability testing tools will be launched.  This will have a positive impact on usability practitioners.  The positives include additional functionality at very low costs, a greater variety of types of tools for specific testing tasks, and anywhere, anytime access to tests and data.  All of which means a lot more people can and will be using these usability testing tools.

In the bad old days, usability testing tools were expensive hardware/software contraptions that were not easily accessible, portable or cheap.  Because of the significant increase in these new low cost web-based tools, usability practitioners now have a much more usable set of tools with which to ply their trade.

There is a downside however, especially for vendors of the more traditional tools: the added competition of the new tools will force the older usability testing companies that have PC hardware/software solutions to change their products – or go out of business.  Increasing low-cost competition means less ability for these older companies to operate in a marginalized capacity.  For 2010, the older vendors will need to re-think their products and pricing – or potentially face exiting the business.

The good news for usability practitioners is 2010 will be a banner year for new and exciting low cost web-based tools.

3. True usability ROI will continue to elude usability practitioners

True ROI, in terms of bottom-line numbers reported in annual reports and quarterly statements, will continue to elude the usability profession.  The sad fact of the matter is most corporations do not realize usability is in fact a profit center.  As I mentioned in my ROI article, it’s not practical, or wise, to quote ROI guarantees for a usability project.  Typically usability improvements decrease overall costs, and increase revenue potential.  Yet from the conversations I’ve had with usability practitioners, the conversation always seems to come back to, “how do I ‘prove’ that adding more usability testing will bring a positive ROI?”

The on-going education of corporations by usability practitioners, Associations such as the UPA and educational institutions is the primary way to continue to make headway in obtaining usability advocates.  Until someone can formally introduce a usability ROI metric that is used in annual reports and thus can be understood by the Wall Street crowd, many corporate executives will continue to believe true usability ROI is a myth.

For 2010, this trend of non-belief of usability ROI will continue to exist.

4. Use of remote moderated usability testing will increase by a factor of 10

As more and more usability practitioners use remote moderated usability testing, and talk about with their practitioner friends, use of this low-cost and effective testing method will explode.

In the past, tools like UserVue or video conferencing rooms were about it for practitioners who wished to conduct remote moderated testing and recording of usability sessions.  But the increasing access to cheap and effective tools like WebEx, GotoMyPC and Webcams coupled with high-bandwidth internet access and conference calling has effectively eliminated the barrier to entry for practitioners.

Saving thousands of dollars in travel costs, and enabling testing of users literally around the world are powerful reasons why remote moderated testing will become the way to get things done in 2010.

In 2010, more and more usability practitioners will take the plunge and use remote moderated testing as their primary way to conduct usability testing.

5. The UK will become a major source of usability expertise

The United Kingdom and the European Union already are doing significant usability work – and have the smarts to prove it.  But have you noticed the amazing number of usability practitioner job openings in the United Kingdom, or the increasing number of usability projects occurring there and in the rest of the European Union in the past year?  I have.  And I’m not alone.  Recognizing the significance of usability in the EU, for the first time ever the Usability Professionals Association International conference will be held outside North America – Munich, Germany to be precise.

I’ve also noted that there have been an incredible number of new job positions opened in 2009 for usability testers, information architects and user experience designers in the UK.  All these new positions mean lots and lots of usability work – and with that work comes knowledge and expertise.

I fully expect to start seeing many more UK and EU based brilliant usability practitioners providing their expertise to a host of small, mid-size and large companies.  I also expect to see many more  usability projects and experiments, with resulting white papers, articles and blog posts demonstrating the expertise and thought-leadership resident there.

In 2010, the UK will dramatically increase the number of usability projects, and thought-leadership this provides.

6. The phrase “user experience design” will become overused and almost meaningless

It’s amazing to see the number of job positions titled “user experience design” in which it’s quite clear what the hiring manager is actually after is a graphics designer that knows css, flash and html, and can create wireframes, prototypes and final production files.  In my humble opinion, and the opinion of others such as Nielsen, this is not a correct usage of the term ‘user experience.’

According to Nielsen/Norman Group’s definition of user experience…

“”User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.”

Here then is the problem; the term ‘user experience design’ is more and more often not being used to reflect someone who creates all aspects of the user perceiving, learning and interacting with a company’s products and services.  Instead, it’s being used to define a designer that only designs web interfaces – without the myriad other research, behavioral and usability knowledge that is needed to truly design a holistic user experience.

And because it’s over-used, and used incorrectly, the term ‘user experience design’ will become more and more generic, confusing and thus meaningless.  Will it continue to be used?  Yes!  But you can expect to hear many more conversations like, “So, you have a job position for user experience designer, I’d like to apply, but I need to know, what will this person actually do?”

For 2010, the term ‘user experience design’ will become abused and thus more meaningless as an actual description of true ‘user experience design.’

7. Without professional certification being required, more and more charlatans will be attracted to usability

Dentists, Pilots and Public Accountants all have to pass training and certification before practicing their occupation.  However, with usability anyone can declare themselves a ‘usability professional’ and set up shop, providing usability services to unsuspecting clients.

Without some form of formal certification, anyone can (and will) provide usability testing services if they believe there’s money to be made – whether they know the difference between a card sort and a heuristic review, or not.  The same access you and I have to free and low-cost usability tools likewise means college students, stay at home moms and dads and even children can create usability services and sell them on the internet, using these same free or low-cost tools.

This isn’t a new topic of discussion, the UPA went down this path of investigating usability certification in 2001.

The only way to ensure a professional is providing usability services is to make usability a profession, via a certification process in which the practitioner has demonstrated the expertise and knowledge necessary to properly practice the art and science of usability.  Without this certification in place, anyone can and will declare themselves a usability vendor, if they believe there’s money in it.

For 2010, more and more fake usability practitioners will set up virtual shops, using the free or low cost usability testing tools now available.

Conclusion: My 7 controversial 2010 usability predictions

So there you are, my rather controversial predictions for usability in 2010.  Do you agree with them?  Do you disagree?  Share your thoughts about my 2010 predictions, or better yet make your own by adding a comment!  Only time will tell if you and I are right!

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The Return On Investment for eCommerce Usability Will Always Beat Online Advertising, Because of the Principle of Amortized Improved Conversion

I don’t understand why online advertising agencies don’t add usability to their service offerings. Armed with a usability component, agencies could help improve the Return On Investment (ROI) for eCommerce companies well beyond any improvement gained by conducting online advertising. Why? Because of what I call the “Principle of Amortized Improved Conversion.”

Here’s how it works:

Let’s assume that you are a business owner and you have $10,000 you want to spend to help increase sales on your eCommerce web site. You can choose to spend the $10,000 for online advertising, which will generate incremental leads and sales. Or, you can choose to spend it on a usability improvement project on your eCommerce order form, which will increase conversion and sales.

Given this choice, which would you do?

If you’re smart, and I know you are because you’re reading this, you’ll pick usability – because you know an equal amount of money spent on usability will always beat the same amount of money spent on online advertising, given a long enough period of time.

This is because the one-time spend, and subsequent one-time incremental lift in leads and sales generated by online advertising is temporary. Turn on the advertising, you increase leads, turn off the advertising, and the number of leads go back down to their prior (normal) state.

With usability, the one-time spend in improving online form conversion creates a permanent increase in conversion. This means the cost of the usability improvement can be amortized over a very long period, which decreases the total cost per sale.

Here’s the proof, we’ll look at how online advertising, and usability, impact the sales and cost per sale of a web site over a one year period of time (but first, a few assumptions):

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. This eCommerce web site generates 2,000 leads per month naturally, with no advertising expense.
2. The conversion rate of leads into sales for this site is a nice 10%.
3. We’ll ignore “lights-on” costs associated with the sales on the website, it’s a cost of doing business and will not be included in the Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Sale metrics here.

Here’s what a typical month looks like for your pretend company:

You generate 2,000 leads per month through natural (not paid advertising) methods. Your 10% conversion in your online order form results in 200 sales per month. Well done.

The ROI of Online Advertising

In this scenario, you’ve spent $10,000 to conduct an online advertising campaign for one month. The good news is you’ve hired an excellent agency that provides an amazing campaign, and with your $10,000 you’ve generated 4,000 extra leads. That’s a total of 6,000 leads instead of the normal 2,000 for that month. That’s 3 TIMES (that’s 300% for you math wonks) the normal monthly flow of leads to your site. Very well done!

This provides you with an advertising Cost Per Lead of $2.50 (your $10,000 advertising cost divided by your incremental advertising-generated 4,000 leads).

With your site’s 10% conversion those 6,000 leads become 600 sales instead of the normal 200 sales. Your advertising-generated Cost Per Sale for that month is $25.00 (your $10,000 advertising cost divided by your incremental advertising-generated 400 sales).

Now let’s look at how this impacts your year (you may have to click on the graphic to see the full-size image if your eyes – like mine – are over the age of 40):

Now, let’s mash-up all the monthly metrics into a final yearly total. For the year, you had a total of:

• 28,000 total leads
• $10,000 in online advertising cost
• $0.36 total Cost Per Lead
• 10% conversion
• 2,800 total sales
• $3.57 total cost per sale

The ROI of Usability

With this scenario, we start with the same assumptions. However, in this case you’ve chosen to spend the $10,000 on usability improvements of your eCommerce order form.

The good news is the usability work that took place over the first month resulted in a modest improvement on your site’s order form, resulting in a modest increase in conversion. Your conversion was 10%, but after the new user-friendly order form is launched in the 2nd month your conversion went up to 15%. This 15% conversion is permanent, and continues for as long as the order form (or web site) is active.

This is significant, it means that each and every month you’ll now be adding more sales, but with the same free leads, you were receiving prior to the usability improvements.

Here’s what the yearly total looks like (put your reading glasses on, or just click the graphic to see it larger).

Now, let’s once again mash-up all the monthly metrics into a final yearly total. For the year, you had a total of:

• 24,000 total leads
• $10,000 in usability cost
• $0.00 total Cost Per Lead
• 14.6% conversion
• 3,500 total sales
• $2.86 total cost per sale

The Difference Between Online Advertising & Usability

So here’s what the difference looks like when we compare online advertising vs usability.

The usability improvement to the eCommerce order form resulted in an INCREASE of 25% more sales for the year, and a DECREASE of almost 20% in Cost Per Sale vs the Online Advertising scenario.

If we were to extend this into 2 or 3 years, the differences would become truly staggering, with that one-time usability improvement impressively beating the one-time advertising spend.

For those of you who are visual learners, here’s what these yearly differences look like in graph form:

Conclusion – eCommerce Usability ALWAYS beats Online Advertising in generating more sales, and a reduced cost per sale

I’ve actually been quite conservative with the above scenarios. The reality is I’ve very seldom seen an online advertising campaign generate 3 times the normal number of leads, and I’ve rarely seen usability improvements only increase eCommerce order flows by a paltry 5 percentage point lift.

In reality, usability beats the tar out of online advertising much better than I’ve indicated above.

As was demonstrated in the case above, over time, spending money on eCommerce usability improvements provides a much better return on investment for any business that wants to increase their web site sales, while at the same time decreasing the total cost per sale.

That’s the “Principle of Amortized Improved Conversion” in action.

Smart online advertising and web development agencies will add usability testing to their service offerings.

Smart eCommerce business owners will invest in usability improvements to permanently improve their sales and cost per sale, and thus their ROI of their web sites.

If you’d like more information about adding usability to an agency service offering, or conducting a usability optimization to improve eCommerce just contact me for usability testing information and I’ll be glad to explain how easy it is to get started.

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Usability & Search Engine Optimization Share the Same Problem: How to Define Return On Investment

A recent post by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guru Bruce Clay discussed the difficulty of providing an estimate of SEO Return On Investment (ROI) for CFOs of companies. The issue is most CFO’s demand an ROI estimate for search engine optimization prior to an engagement, but as Bruce point’s out in his article this is actually not possible.

Usability ROI

As with SEO (which I consider a close-cousin to usability by the way) usability shares the exact same ROI problem. Although CFOs want and need ROI, it is not ethical or wise to provide a guaranteed ROI prior to the commencement of a project, simply because there is not enough information, or control, to accurately estimate the usability impact on ROI.

There are 4 reasons why an accurate ROI is not possible:

1. An assessment of the severity of the usability issues facing the web site or application must be conducted. This assessment IS the usability project, including understanding Personas, Critical Tasks, and conducting a Heuristic Evaluation, and much more. Without this information any usability company guaranteeing an ROI is just guessing.

2. The company that requests the usability study may not be able to do all the recommended usability changes. Often, due to business or technical issues not all of the usability recommendations needed to produce the ROI are able to be executed. This means money (or in this case ROI) is left on the table. Without the ability to have all recommendations made, it’s unlikely an expected usability ROI will be accomplished.
3. ROI is compromised if other critical departments that influence the customer experience are not involved. Most often, a usability project is requested by a particular division in a company. However, other divisions that directly impact the experience (thus ROI) are often not involved. Their inability or unwillingness to make changes will impact the anticipated ROI. As an example, think in this case of a Marketing department wanting web site usability improvements to increase sales. If however, the back-end sales systems that are controlled by a different department are not engaged, the full benefit of usability improvements to increase sales, and thus ROI, may not happen.
4. The online environment is constantly changing, and estimates based on historical data cannot forecast future ROI with accuracy. Consider the changes in the economy in the past year, would you be willing to estimate the ROI of improved sales from usability improvements for that same Marketing department I mentioned earlier if you knew their traffic, or the type of visitors to their web site would be severely changed?

For all of these reasons, and more, it’s unethical, and unwise, to provide a guaranteed ROI for usability improvements. The reality is usability improvements can and do significantly improve ROI for companies every day, it’s just that guaranteeing an ROI upfront prior to conducting usability audits is not possible, nor advisable.

So, what do you say to the CFO who’s asking about ROI?

First, provide the CFO with the above reasons why an ROI estimate is not possible prior to the commencement of the usability project. Be prepared, this may not be accepted, after all the CFO and most likely the rest of the company are held to very precise and unyielding goals in terms of numbers.

Next, talk about some examples of ROI that were accomplished from prior engagements. In the past, when I was consulting I would often mention specific examples of ROI gained, but without mentioning the name of the client (unless I had permission to use their name of course). Nothing sells like success, and mentioning other usability success stories can add weight to the argument that the usability project will be successful, but without a guaranteed ROI up-front.

I used to mention that doing nothing was the only guarantee, a guarantee of the same results. This is the same as the sage old advice that doing something over and over again, but expecting different results, is not logical. By conducting the usability project, change, and thus different (better) results are possible.

Finally, understand that CFO’s of a necessity must live by numbers, and ROI numbers are sometimes required prior to project approval. You may find that sometimes it’s necessary to walk away from the project, because ROI is a pass/fail and without it the CFO is unwilling to conduct the project.

If the CFO insists that an ROI is required, it may be tempting to start throwing out a range of ROI estimates that might be possible. Speaking from experience I can tell you this only opens the door for the CFO to start pinning exact numbers down. It’s a no-win situation if you start down this path. If you hope that the CFO won’t remember the ROI at the end of the project, or that unusual circumstances may result in the numbers being set aside, don’t count on it. The odds are whatever number you promised won’t be met, and thus you will not be trusted, and worse, bad word-of-mouth may start spreading at the executive level. Worse, your manager allies in the company may have a negative perception placed on them, causing them to be far less trustful of usability in the future, again generating bad word-of-mouth.

Conclusion: Don’t Estimate Usability ROI.

CFOs will want ROI, and sometimes a usability project will not be approved without it. My recommendation is to not try to guess at ROI. Instead, explain why ROI is almost impossible to guarantee, then use the opportunity to educate the CFO from examples of ROI gained from prior usability engagements.

Do you have favorite techniques for demonstrating the value of usability without a guaranteed ROI? If so, please share them in the comments!

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