June 2000 Archives
Friday, June 30, 2000
Edge.org: If you haven't heard of David Gelernter or read his "Second Coming" essay, you have a treat awaiting you. Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, recently released an essay that slams the technology industry for continuing to create products that ignore the user. He also describes the indifference on the part of the victimized users:
...we accept bad computer products with a shrug; we work around them, make the best of them and (like fatalistic sixteenth-century French peasants) barely even notice their defects -- instead of demanding that they be fixed and changed.
Gelernter's rant against today's digital technology is absolutely correct, and it's nice to see someone speak the truth (instead of the usual buzzwords). My own idea of "bit literacy" is very much in line with Gelernter's rant. The second half of Gelernter's essay offers a solution that he calls "lifestreams" -- an interesting concept but not as strong as the preceding parts of the essay.
At any rate, read the essay. It's well worth your time, and it's about time that someone exposed the real motivations of the technology industry. (This is a positive thing: understanding its problems gives the tech industry the chance to really improve!)
Other links: You can also get the essay and Edge.org's responses on one long page here, and read Gelernter's bio here. Gelernter also spoke at the Rising Tide Summit conference this week; a description of his talk (I was there; it was excellent) is here.
For fun: If all this ranting and raving is a bit too heavy, lighten things up by playing Sumo, an extremely well-designed Shockwave game. Turn the volume up. (Thanks to dw for the pointer.)
One final deep thought for today: A couple of friends and I were discussing the merits of a lack of ease-of-use in one particular interface: the milkshake. Ease-of-use means that it's all melted and thin; difficulty-of-use means a nice, cold, thick milkshake (preferably vanilla). So see, there are exceptions to every rule... (Thanks to sh.)
For the Americans on the list, have a good 4th!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Thursday, June 29, 2000
New York Times: Max Frankel, one of my favorite columnists, wrote this article about an important part of the customer experience: the privacy policy. Customers may not be clamoring for it today, but get ready: soon enough, privacy will become an important issue in the national discourse. (Yes, DoubleClick and other companies have gotten press on the issue, but that's small compared to what will be a huge issue in a year or two.)
As described by Frankel, the basics of writing a good privacy policy are in line with everything we know about the customer experience already: keep it clear, keep it simple, and most importantly, give customers something of actual value in exchange for asking for their private information. Don't treat customers as "eyeballs" to be "monetized" as they "click through" the policy page.
For example, the New York Times' own privacy policy does a good job of simply and clearly describing how it will use readers' information. Also, notice that the Times promises not to give out users' individual information -- an appropriate policy (in most situations), in my opinion:
The New York Times on the Web shares the information it gathers, in aggregate form, with advertisers and other partners. We do not release personal information about you as an individual to third parties.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
Boston Globe: An interesting summary of a recent Forrester report containing the rankings of 40 top interactive agencies.
What's particularly interesting is that the article gives an insight into why so many sites have poor customer experiences: the developing agency isn't designing with the customer in mind. On the other hand, just as often, the agency wants to do a good job, but the client demands to compromise the customer experience in order to launch the site sooner.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tuesday, June 27, 2000
CNET: An MIT research project, "Project Oxygen," aims to make computers ubiquitous through (among other things) the liberal use of speech-based user interfaces. Key quote: "The project envisions a largely invisible computer network permeating homes, offices, cars and every other place where people live, work and play."
On the surface, an invisible interface sounds great -- and I hope that Project Oxygen succeeds. I'd be happy to help out, too. But realistically, the complexity of software these interlocking systems would require is mind-boggling. What's worse: bugs in the PC software on the screen, or bugs in the computer that you can't see?
Given the choice, I'm guessing most users would choose simplicity and stability (albeit on an old-fashioned PC screen) over an ambient, "invisible" interface that still contains bugs and compatibility problems. If Project Oxygen can deliver a simple, stable, and invisible interface, it will be a huge success.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Monday, June 26, 2000
The New Economy: Here are two recent looks at the strange, buzzword-ridden "new economy" we hear so much about.
- Salon.com reports on the way some (doomed) dotcoms determine their "brand": by playing modified versions of college drinking games and looking for the deep truths inside.
- Dave Barry delivers again with this description of the New Economy, defining it as "an economy in which you can't figure out what anybody actually does."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Friday, June 23, 2000
UPA: A brief usability case study. Test results on a university website showed that a third of test users were successful on the site; however, looking at why they succeeded showed much different data. Thanks to webword for the pointer. (By the way, if anyone's interested, I'm speaking at the UPA's annual conference in August.)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Thursday, June 22, 2000
Creative Good analyst Zimran Ahmed (zimran@creativegood.com) writes this review of a recent Industry Standard article.
Industry Standard: This article describes how Motorola plans to lead an industry alliance to form a new wireless e-commerce company. This company, as yet unnamed, would embed minuscule scanners into mobile devices, and place billions of sophisticated bar codes on ads in print publications. The participating companies hope that customers will use the mobile devices to scan bar codes of products they want and purchase them instantly.
While it's unclear whether this plan will succeed, it does take into account
several of the major barriers to shopping via cell phone:
- It eliminates all of the tedious text entry -- the scanner does all
of that for you.
- The response should be immediate -- a simple swipe and you're done.
- Perhaps most importantly, it keeps the right tasks at the right scale. All of the marketing work, which requires rich graphics, explanatory text, and large pictures, is kept on the pages of the catalog (or wherever the product is featured) -- a medium well-suited to the task. The wireless platform just exchanges the necessary information, a task that it is well-suited to.
Too many mobile commerce plans seem to think that you can cram a catalog onto a tiny text-only phone and persuade people to buy through it. But Motorola's effort seems to be focused on providing the appropriate service on the appropriate scale and so might deliver a good wireless customer experience.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Wednesday, June 21, 2000
Conversion Rate Calculator: Many e-commerce companies have no idea how to measure their success, mistakenly measuring their "hits" and "eyeballs" as if their websites were actually TV shows.
But the conversion rate is the single best measurement an e-commerce site can make. Our new conversion rate calculator helps you calculate your site's conversion rate, and shows how a small rise in the conversion rate can generate a large rise in revenue.
Dotcom Survival Guide: Our new free report is now available -- and it shows how to increase the conversion rate by improving the customer experience. The Dotcom Survival Guide, featured in the New York Times last week, contains over 30 case studies, strategies, and other articles that (we hope) will help any dotcom raise its revenues.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tuesday, June 20, 2000
Dave Barry: This is one of the most insightful descriptions of "smart appliances" that I've seen. Humor columnist Dave Barry explains that the technology industry is misguided in its attempts to bring customers new appliances with more, more, and yet more features:
We can't use the appliance features we have NOW. I have a feature-packed telephone with 43 buttons, at least 20 of which I am afraid to touch... [and] when I want to watch TV, I'm confronted with a total of 120 buttons, identified by such helpful labels as PIP, MTS, DBS, F2, JUMP and BLANK.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Monday, June 19, 2000
PC World: We've all heard the promises of broadband Net access, with "immersive interfaces" and "compelling experiences" coming down the pike Any Day Now. Well, surprise -- PC World reports that the humble dial-up modem, plodding along at 56k or less, is still by far the most popular way for home users to access the Web.
Yes, to a select few Americans, and even fewer users outside the U.S., broadband will be soon available. And so will HDTV, the latest bone-crushing SUV, and other high-end products that might look attractive but in reality are somewhat silly. For the rest of us mortals, the Web should still be accessible through a regular old phone line, on a regular old computer screen, with a good customer experience (still highly irregular, in this industry) .
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Friday, June 16, 2000
Ad Age: You know the market is getting tight when dotcoms start spending less on advertising. This article reports that theglobe.com, whose stock price was recently 92% off its 52-week high, has scaled its ad spending way back... to $5.6 million in a single quarter.
Advertising, essential as it is, still is not the primary driver of dotcom success. Advertising only brings visitors. If those visitors have a bad experience on the site, the quarterly $5.6 million you may be spending goes away very quickly.
On the other hand, a good experience brings customers, who (for generating revenue and free word-of-mouth "advertising") are much more valuable than visitors. So for any dotcom with $5.6 million burning a hole in its pocket: yes, invest in the essential advertising -- but invest at least as much in creating and continually improving the customer experience on the site.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Thursday, June 15, 2000
Scott McCloud, author of the groundbreaking "Understanding Comics," writes his first monthly column (as a comic, of course) and discusses the limitations that Web technology places on online comics. An interesting read, since doing good customer experience work requires that one accept the limitations of the technology at hand. (Thanks to peterme for the pointer.)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Wednesday, June 14, 2000
Telecommunications Magazine: The most cogent review I've read yet on the state of the wireless industry inside and outside the U.S. As Creative Good is finding in our wireless work, the customer experience is at least as important in wireless as it is on a PC using the Web. Furthermore, the U.S. wireless customer experience is greatly (and adversely) affected by the state of the U.S. wireless industry.
The article puts it well:
Today's wireless debate in the United States is wrangling over competing protocols and acronyms, while players elsewhere are shaping the global wireless market.
ZDNet: Another contrarian viewpoint on wireless, this one talking about the dubious promises of "m-commerce." (Thanks to dack.com for the pointer.)
P.S. It's time for all of us to start looking at the customer experience of wireless devices. The usability of shopping carts inside the Web browser won't be such a big issue in a year or two!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tuesday, June 13, 2000
New Media Magazine: An interesting look at the pitfalls of conducting focus groups. In a session with one moderator and many customers, "groupthink" tends to skew the results. A one-on-one conversation with a customer, on the other hand, tends to bring more accurate results.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Monday, June 12, 2000
New York Times: The title of Bob Tedeschi's latest column says it expertly:
Easier-to-Use Sites Would Help E-Tailers Close More Sales
Let's hope that more e-tailers pay attention to that thought. The article also features quotes from Martha Stewart, who comments on the difficult of systems integration, and Phil Terry, Creative Good's own CEO. If you're interested in downloading the report mentioned in the article, it's here.
A related article by Karen Frenkel, in the New York Times on June 7th, also talks about conversion rate -- in this case on portal sites. Near the end I have a couple of quotes.
Back from vacation: Thanks for your patience.. I had a good vacation and am happy to be back writing Goodexperience.com :) -Mark
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Get e-mail updates of goodexperience.com: e-mail update@goodexperience.com
Copyright 1999-2003, Good Experience, Inc.
