Mona Patel has over a decade of experience in the evaluation and design of web sites, and for the past six years has been helping usability consultancy Human Factors International (HFI) develop and implement new technologies for testing and improving a wide variety of organisations’ sites. The discipline required to improve sites is somewhere between engineering and psychology, according to Patel, which is why HFI employs several practitioners who have degrees in cognitive psychology.

One of the firm’s primary aims is to help customers get to the bottom of any issue they might be having with their web presence. For example, the consultancy could help a firm figure out why its site is attracting thousands of visitors to the checkout stage but only 10 per cent convert.

HFI’s customers include a host of well-known retail companies, as well as banks, manufacturers, telecoms firms and government bodies. One of the company’s biggest successes in the area of web site usability involved office supplies specialist Staples.

The two firms spent hundreds of hours evaluating users’ work environments, decision-support needs and tendencies when browsing and buying office products and small business services through the web. The research resulted in a host of web site enhancements, including more intuitive searching capabilities, personalised shopping lists for frequently purchased items and comparison charts. The result was a 67 per cent increase in repeat customers, said Patel, and a 42 per cent reduction in drop-off rates.

“After research we turn the principles into the design,” said Patel. “We also have strategic guidelines to offer executives guidance on how to build usability programmes into their firms: it’s not about doing projects but creating a programme, so usability is built into the development process.”

Patel pointed out that many people wrongly believe usability is something that should be done once a site has been designed. She argued that it is actually better to understand how people think before designing a site.

“If a client has a problem with the checkout, for example, or wants to improve the way users navigate round the site to increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, we need to understand the stakeholder vision for the site and what the hurdles are in getting there,” said Patel. “Getting stakeholder insight is important because it helps us design a methodology for that site.”

The next step taken by HFI is to conduct an expert review of the site, which usually results in a redesign. A vital part of this involves one-to-one interviews with end users, the idea being to get to the core of how they think. This includes asking whether they have visited rival sites, and what their expectations are.

“The design is almost an extension of the data-gathering activity,” she added. “End user research makes sure that what we’re doing is going to meet their needs, and ironing out the kinks beforehand gives us a greater chance of success.”

Unlike market research surveys, which seek to identify the percentage of people that think a certain way, the one-to-one interviews that HFI carries out involve only a few individuals. This is because, according to Patel, it only requires one person to flag up a particular problem for that problem to be deemed worthy of further investigation.

A new technique to evaluate usability being pioneered by HFI is known as Petscan, with Pet standing for persuasion, emotion and trust. Applications such as checkout processes are designed for efficiency and so regular usability techniques are usually enough, Patel explained.

“But when trying to identify what makes people convert, it requires a different approach. We look at persuasion, emotion and trust ­ the flow of an experience versus the flow of getting a task done,” she added. Important questions the Pet technique aims to answer include:

• Is the content making sense to the user?

• Do they know where to click?

• Does the site’s design help to entice a user to click?

The same kind of research was first used with bricks and mortar store design, said Patel, to help determine the best lighting to use and what type of background music to play, for example. Applying this same logic from the physical world to the web is what differentiates Pet from other usability techniques ­ understanding what experience people have of web sites and how it plays into their conscience.

A good example of how HFI uses such techniques to improve conversions on a customer site is the work the company did for a professional chemists’ organisation.
Patel said the customer had noticed that the number of new members signing up had dropped off after its site was redesigned. HFI research highlighted how some of the images on the site showing young professionals with chemistry apparatus in the background were discouraging younger visitors and alienating older members, because they felt they did not identify with the images displayed by the site.