“What is the value of UX Research, and how do I apply the research effectively so that I can create, improve and maintain my website or digital product to the best standard possible?”

If you aim to create a good user experience for your website or digital product, it makes sense to know who your users are, what they need, and if those needs are being met. You also need to find out if your users can easily and effortlessly achieve the purpose of their visit. This requires research.

I say ‘user experience’ rather than ‘customer experience’ because the people that arrive at your website may or may not be your customers. Understanding your users isn’t always as obvious as you think, even if you are the business owner! Some businesses suffer with their ‘assumptions’ about their users more so than others.

UX Research is not limited to the goal of a great website or digital product. It can also be about understanding your users and customers so that you can make informed business decisions and therefore good business decisions.

There is much industry debate about what is UX, and as such there is a proliferation of information on the Internet, which is full of jargon and difficult to understand. In the coming months we aim to provide some clarity around the subject of UX for you and your business.

We would argue that the practice of paying for advertising on various websites around the internet is thought about in the wrong way. Yes, sure if you run a shop selling product that the tracking and justification of online advertising has become far easier in past years. Sites like Facebook and Google provide all manner of data on who is clicking and what, if anything, they went on to buy from you as a result. You don’t even have to run your own site, Amazon will give you commission on things you sell by way of introduction taking the hassle out of selling altogether although we suspect it will seldom be more than pocket money. I digress.

For the rest of us running service based businesses actually tracking your online effectiveness is far more of a black art. In any form of consultancy for instance, customers are far more likely to be spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds in their first collaboration with you and that sort of purchase isn’t the type to be bought facelessly by credit card or PayPal so we need some form of justification. That justification is ‘Brand Building’.

Brand Building isn’t just for big conglomerates

There are many aspects to building your brand (Brand has never just been about a nice logo and consistent communications) but in the case of consultancy we’re talking about exposure. The more we see communications from a specific organisation, whether traditional advertising, emails, banner adverts, direct mail or good old fashioned networking, the more we become familiar with that brand. That familiarity with your brand is the key.

In my humble opinion there is no better advertising than personal networking (sites like Twitter certainly help you) but there are only so many hours in the day and try as we might, sooner or later we all reach a point where networking drops off in favour of paid work. This can create a cycle of networking followed by delivery until sales drop off and we start networking again. Supplementing this cycle with advertising in the right places can increase your efficiency in finding new business.

Finding the ‘right’ places

Advertising your consultancy on Facebook (even if it’s methods of advertising are the talk of the town) will probably not generate too much brand awareness, regardless of how many people are exposed to your advert. What you are looking for are industry specific websites, sometimes tiny in readership and statistics which may not look like value for money, but consider the quality of the people using them. Linked in may be a good place to start but have you missed a news site or personal blog that is popular amongst your target audience?

In industries as specific as refrigerated shipping or fruit export for instance there are only a handful of sites reporting on the news that really matters. If you are in such a sector it’s these sites that are the most valuable to you.

So the next time you are thinking of buying advertising online think about the smaller sites, discussion boards and blogs that you and your colleagues use as part of your day and don’t be blinded by the amazing statistics and reporting of the big boys. If your product or service is not aimed at the masses then neither should your advertising be.

So, with such competition, you’d think they’d put more effort into the single differentiator: Quality of Service wouldn’t you? Well, some do – others most definitely do not.

For years we’ve used the excellent people at Daily.co.uk. Sure they’re a few pence more expensive than the big box-shifters, but their control panel offers full DNS control and their phone and email support has been excellent anytime I’ve had to call upon it. If you’re in the market for a new domain name, I’d recommend checking them out.

If, on the other hand, you’re already got your domain and are holding it the awful Register.com – you might as well give up now. For the last five weeks I’ve been trying to migrate some domains away from them on the instruction of their owner.

With that in mind, I hope you enjoy a copy of Martin’s Monday Morning Rant In response to the latest act of service stupidity from them:

==============================

Just what on earth is going on over at Register.com? How hard is it to transfer some domains away??

My client [client name] is the legal owner of these domains. We have been trying for over ONE MONTH to migrate them away from Register.com, and yet you seem to be holding onto them for what, I can only assume, is an underhanded way of extracting more money from him. Can please can you help me to decide something?

Your Prices are significantly higher than other ISPs, this is why we are moving. But I can’t quite decide which is worse. Your pricing structure, or your method of doing business? Perhaps you’d like to let me know which you’re most proud of?

In the meantime I’m giving you a very simple instruction. PLEASE RELEASE THE DOMAINS LISTED BELOW FOR TRANSFER. If you like I will ask Roger to confirm this message on the off-chance that during any of the last twelve times we’ve communicated you’ve not quite understood our objectives yet. Alternatively I can try getting the message across to you by Morse code, Semaphore or perhaps carrier pigeon? Or if you’d like I can see if I can hire a barber shop quartette to sing a rendition of “Please release me, let me go” down at your offices?

So, for the final time, please could you pass this email onto your team of domain release monkeys, and ask them to fire up their typewriters in the hope that today might be the day they hit the right combination of keys and we can finally extricate ourselves from what is probably the poorest example of customer service I think i’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Thank you

Firstly, the terminology.

The term ‘Viral’ has been around since the mid-nineties in this context and is used to describe a piece of Media that has been extensively shared. Unlike traditional advertising viral media is passed from person to person, in the early days by email and more commonly today via services such as FaceBook or Twitter.

‘Media’ can mean anything from a video to a webpage.

The process.

Viral marketing is the process of “obtaining added value from your marketing spend”. It attempts to get your network sharing with their network, who then in turn share with their network, and so if successful, your media reaches people far and wide.

There is actually some interesting maths behind this by the name of Metcalf’s Law but rather than further befuddle you the graph to the right shows in simple terms how your exposure can grow exponentially compared to a consistent marketing spend (this could equally be labelled ‘Effort’). The point where value exceeds the spend is termed the critical mass.

People share traditional media too!

Yes, this is true and circulations of magazines and newspaper readership have driven advertising rates for years. The difference is that you will never know who is reading your content further than that of the demographics supplied to you by the publication.

The power of Social Media is that it allows your organisation to interact with this readership and tailor content to suit. Effectively entering you and your organisation into a dialogue with both customers, potential customers and those on the periphery. This dialogue can take so many forms both positive and negative but done right you will have the opportunity to discuss and answer any issues that arise.

What do I share?!

Well we talked about media being anything and everything and that’s true but in order to be successful at this type of marketing your content needs to be worthy (we’ll get to this) and have ability (it’s very difficult to share the taste of your wonderful baking on the internet).

The most common types of share fall into surprisingly few categories:

• Written word (e.g. blog posts, open letters, feedback and reviews etc)
• Video / audio (e.g. music videos, family footage, events and tutorials)
• Images (e.g. photos, info graphics, maps, artworks, reportage)
• Interactive media (games, quizzes, apps…)

The reasons we share are a little more emotional:

• It’s funny (The most shared type of content is that that makes us laugh. Think about a person you know who gets the punch line wrong. The inability to remember and tell a joke seldom kills our desire to share it. We want to share the giggles we have and cheer people up when they need it. )
• That’s amazing (Did you see that…! If we see something that amazes us we are programmed to share this with others.)
• That is just what I was thinking (We often use other people’s opinions to help shape and strengthen our own. It is only natural to present these to those around us.)
• It’s underground / specialist (The immediacy and accessibility of sharing means it is ideal for content that isn’t available on other channels. Less mainstream folk tend to stay together as we all need to belong to some extent.)
• OMG! Embarrassing! (Whether to confess your own faux pas or expose others, our brains love a bit of cringe-worthy pleasure.)
• What a drama (whether it is a breaking news story or an East Enders story line. Anything that is dramatic will be shared.)
• Flirtatious (Like dirty jokes provocative content goes a very long way but we tend to share more discreetly and with a smaller more trusted group)
• Any deeply emotional content.

Reading through the above list it is hard to ignore that we as humans are emotionally driven and that Social Bookmarking and sharing in general can easily be compared to the way in which we hold conversations or tell stories.

Those stories we hear that fall into the categories above are far more likely to be shared on by our listeners. They involve us, speak to us, move us and we have a need to share that.

Where do I share it?

As with any relationship before you can share things you have to have someone to share it with. If you have made efforts to build some form of network on line then you will be off to a good start already but if you are totally new where do you start? Well, asking your friends never does any harm.

FaceBook and new boy on the block Google+ are where many get started and probably where your friends will send you. Link up with those real life friends and start sharing things that spark some emotion.

What about colleagues or ex-colleagues? LinkedIn is pretty much ‘FaceBook for professionals’ and is fast becoming an essential business tool. Although seen as way to stay in touch with colleagues it has quickly adopted Facebook’s approach to advertising and sharing.

Look for groups or circles of people that may be interested in what you have to offer and don’t be scared to join groups with what may seem to be your competition. Your competition is already ahead of you and you can probably learn or glean quite a bit from the content they are sharing.

Get involved in discussions and help people out where you can. Pass on other people’s content, as you will never create enough on your own.

Be wise about what you share and where you share it. Be aware of your audience demographics and share the right content in appropriate places. You may have a wide range but different approaches will pique the interest of different groups.

Woah, hold it what about…?

This section of “Where” could be a collection of articles in its own right. Every site has it’s own niche and we don’t profess to know them all or even which one is right for you but we probably know a man who does. Today it’s less about what you know already and more about your ability to find out and sometimes we all need a bit of help.

Help them help you.

If you already have a site with products or content make it easy to let your ‘listeners’ become your speakers. Apple was famous for its ‘evangelists’ – users who were never paid or officially anything to do with Apple, they were just enthusiastic users who wanted to share their experiences of the ‘great product’.

Simple sharing buttons can be integrated into your site to allow a simple one-click approach. You may even wish to offer incentives for joining your groups or sharing your content.

Once your groups start to share your content you can keep an eye on where it is being shared and who with. This will help you to find new networks and connections.

Let us help you.

Of course all this might seem like way too much effort. Despite understanding the basic concepts there’s something just not clicking with you and your approach. That’s where we, and many others like us, come in. If you are struggling to create your content, or your network needs a kick start maybe it is time to ask for some advice or look at your approach through a different set of eyes.

Well, let me start with some praise for our much maligned national DIY chain (one of the few still standing of course!) I hereby declare my love for the gargantuan orange retail outlet. Many happy afternoons have been had trawling up and down its many aisles, finding things that needed fixing (often things that I didn’t know existed, or only needed repair after I’d tried to fix them in the first place), or waiting at the cutting saw with a giant slab of MDF in one hand, and some aspiring dimensions in the other. They’ve helped me build bathrooms and even an entire kitchen, and so I consider myself a very good patron. But all that might soon be about to change, and over an amount so trivial that I genuinely wonder who makes these decisions. Let me explain…

Last Sunday (aka “DIY Day”) I went to B&Q and spent about 30 minutes collecting all manner of small items that I required. Carefully placing them in my basket (like kids do when they go picking strawberries) then skipped off happily to the tills. The young checkout assistant was able and polite, and even though his ability to process the items could have been a bit more ‘enthusiastic’, I really didn’t have any cause for complain. The price came in at a shade over £35 (good value too) and I was preparing to pay, and then it all went horribly wrong.

“Can I have a bag please” I asked. “We have to charge 5p for bags now” said the assistant (looking a bit sheepish as if they knew it was a bloody stupid idea).

Now call me Mr Old-Fashioned, but I’m one of the many millions of people who happen to think that if you spend some of your hard-earned at a particular store by purchasing a considerable number of items, then it’s not entirely unreasonable for that store to offer you a method in which to transport the items back to your home. I often find it amusing when, after racking up my items on a conveyor belt in the local supermarket, the till-operator asks “would you like a bag with that”. So far i’ve only ever answered “Yes please” though I am tempted to say, “No thanks, I’ll just juggle them all the way home” and see if they get the humour (unlikely).

Anyway, after a few seconds of stunned silence, I asked if the assistant was serious? Apparently they were, it was a new policy to “encourage customers to help the environment”. I pointed out that the only effect it was going to have on me was to encourage me to shop elsewhere, and with that I apologised to the assistant (as it’s not his fault after all) removed my card from the machine, wished them well in restocking the shelves and walked toward the door.

But why? It’s only 5p after all, well for several reasons (if you’re reading this in Chandlers Ford, take note).

Reason 1: Customers do not like surprises. If you’re going to mug charge them an extra fee at the checkout, then you really should let them know in advance. Might I suggest a sign on entry to the store, and perhaps another repeater sign at the tills. Perhaps something like “B&Q are committed to helping the environment and are now charging 5p for each carrier bad to help reduce landfill”. Or perhaps “B&Q are getting right royally stuffed by the recession and we need to squeeze an extra 5p from you to pay for the Bolly at the annual shareholders meeting” – whichever one you prefer, but just point it out in advance.

Reason 2: Offer the customer a choice of bags. It’s easier to take the sting away from a 5p ‘BagTax‘ by offering a ‘bag for life’ for 20p, (or even free of charge on any purchases over a certain amount).

Reason 3: Petrochemical engineering (of which i’ll admit to not being an expert, however…) Not supplying customers with plastic bags DOES NOT help the environment. There are two reasons for this. The first is that people generally tend to use the plastic bags more than once, so they carry goods home from the shops and then reuse them anyway (normally as bin bags). If you don’t give them these bags, then it just means they have to buy more bin bags anyway, ergo, no effect on landfill. The second reason is that plastic carrier bags are made from a very narrow part of the petroleum refining process called Naphthalene (Naphtha for short). Sadly Naphtha has some rather pathetic chemical characteristics which make it suitable for practically bugger all uses EXCEPT the manufacture of plastic bags. Thus If Naphtha is not turned into plastic bags then it gets burned off into the atmosphere during refinement, creating lots of lovely warming* Co2 (*allegedly).

So there you have it Mr B&Q. Your current policy needs to be looked at as if through the eyes of the customer, not the shareholder. The good news is that you still got my sale of £35 (breathe a sigh of relief) only thanks to the Customer Service Manager who followed me to the exit apologising and offered a bag “free of charge” saying it was “a stupid policy that had already upset a lot of customers”. So my advice is to either value your customers, or at least be transparent and fair with them from the outset.

Come on, you know you can do it when you B&Q it….

PayPal recently launched a new service called PayPal Micropayments. This is a new type of account that you have to apply for (you can’t just accept micro payments on your standard account – not yet anyway!) So what’s the benefit of Micropayments then? Quite simply, it may offer offer lower transaction processing charges for you. And that’s the crux of the matter “it might” – it all depends on the amount of being charged per sale. Bear with me here, it’s about to get a bit technical…

PayPal’s normal processing fee (for the UK in £) is 3.4% + 20p per transaction. Now that seems relatively reasonable if you’re selling an item for £100, it would mean a total fee of £3.60… (or 3.6%) However, if the value of the item you’re selling is only £1, then your fee is 23.4p (3.4% +20p) which works out at a colossal 23.4% as a transaction fee. PayPal Micropayments charges a higher percentage, but a lower transaction fee (5% +5p). Clearly Paypal is better suited to larger amounts, BUT trying to find what the threshold was, had proved quite difficult – no one seemed to know for sure!

So, I spent a little time creating the attached graph (Please click here to download the original Excel doc). What this shows is the constant line of cost-per-value of Micropayments (the purple line) then above it, running left-right are lines showing the total fees for £, $ and €. Now, where each of these lines crosses the purple line, that is the threshold at which it’s better to switch from Micropayments to PayPal Standard.

So, for those of you who are arriving here from a Google search for “What is the threshold for using PayPal Micropayments”…
Welcome, the numbers you’re looking for are as follows:

• UK (GBP) £9.38

• US/CAD $11.91

• EURO €18.75*

*The Euro one is a slightly different as this figure is based on transaction fees of 3.4% + 0.35. From my research it seems this fee structure is the most common throughout the Eurozone countries, however there are some individual nations that are charged 3.4% + 0.25, so if you’re only selling to one EU nation state, then you’d be wise to check what rate that country is.

Of course, that’s not the only story though. Because PayPals fees are weighted depending on monthly volumes. However the break points are the same. So the first tier (which all these stats are built using) is based on a monthly revenue of between £0.00 – £1500.00 (for USD and EUR just swap the currency denomination, not the figures). The next tier is from 1.5k – 6k, then 6k – 15k, 15-55k and finally 55k+ at which point the percentage fee has reduced down to only 1.4%, meaning that on an individual sale of £100, the total processing fee would only be £1.60.

I’ll look forward to updating this post with a new graph based on 55k pcm sales as soon as I need it!

If this describes your love/hate relationship with the world’s largest payment handler, then you’re not alone. PayPal is the 800lb gorilla in the room, and when your criteria are things like wanting a trusted brand with payment and fraud protection, and one-click payments with millions of merchants, then it’s a pretty small room. And if we’re honest, there’s only really one animal in it anyway. Dammit.

However it’s not all bad. Over the last year PayPal’s been giving us some very clever toys. The most impressive of these is it’s Adaptive Payments API’s which allow merchants to split payments on-the-fly. We use this system with ParkShare, and frankly the site wouldn’t be possible without it. Top of the list of course is the API itself, which allows developers to write apps that interact with the base application itself. This is where Putler comes in.

Theres really no other way to announce it, but Putler is a game-changer. Using the API, Putler brings in all of PayPal’s functionality into a well designed Adobe Air application which is so simple-to-use you’ll never need to login to PayPal ever again. It’s like having Margaret Thatcher’s brain transplanted into Kelly Brooke’s body. It’s perfectly clever.

Putler’s good at multitasking too, and this is where it starts to get really good. Putler can handle more than one PayPal account at the same time. No more logging in and out, then in again to check transactions from different accounts, Putler places them all on the same page so you can see all revenue streams or individual sales from any account. In ParkShare we use two different PayPal accounts. One to process amounts over £10, (well £9.38 to be exact – don’t ask!) then another to handle smaller amounts using a PayPal Micropayments account, of course in ‘PayPal land’ it’s not possible to do both of these things in one account (that would be far too sensible) so you have to switch between the two. Anyone who’s ever tried refunding charges across different accounts will tell you that’s an experience which is clunkier than tap dancing in a pair of concrete clogs – and more likely to result in an injury too.

So if you value your sanity, then head over to Putler.com and take a look, you can even download a free trial complete with dummy data so you can have a play and see how it works. Putler costs between $47 – $97 depending on account level, then $34 per year thereafter, and comes highly recommended.

Which ever way you cut it; any ‘out of the box’ solution is never going to be a substitute for a custom built site. Some of these services however, in the hands of a professional, can provide a good and flexible framework to work within or just add a few additional features like a blog or news stream. Lets face it in these times of austerity measures many organisations let alone individuals have the kind of budgets needed to get that new idea out there from the beginning. South can help you get up and running and test the waters of your target market for a minimal investment using some of the more well known tools available to us all.

But anyone can do that!

Yes, it’s true. We believe that all of us are capable of creating websites, but creating a good website? That’s a totally different question. Getting it installed, working just as you saw it in the demo – well, you may have discovered already, this isn’t so easy. We can help you register, host, install and set-up your site. No, it’s not a free service but we think that for a small fee having someone on hand to help you through the toughest bits is worth the hair on your head!

Don’t take our word for it.

“I work in IT and so am no stranger to servers and technology in general but recently in recovering a clients website from a catastrophic disk failure I turned to South for help. They were invaluable in providing me with a calm and friendly voice to help me work through the installation issues and database migration amongst other things. Don’t be fooled into thinking this stuff is easy – it’s only easy when you know where to look and what to look for!”
Mr M. Shah, IT Director.

The National Health Service is currently going through the fastest and most significant restructuring process in its history. The NHS needs to try and deliver the changes in an intelligent and highly efficient manner, and if not managed efficiently, there is a real risk that key staff could leave the organisation at considerable cost. Also, given the speed of change and uncertainty within the health service at the present time, there is a great deal of concern within the workforce which could result in a negative impact on morale and productivity.

So to avoid having to make redundancies and then re-employ skilled staff at even greater expense, NHS Manchester have selected South˚ as their partner to design and develop a staff management and recruitment portal which will greatly enhance the efforts of the internal HR team by matching skilled staff with alternative internal employment opportunities, at a fraction of the cost of using recruitment consultants.

Initially this project is being developed for a cluster of 5 PCTs within Greater Manchester, but with the anticipated annual savings being in excess of £1 million per PCT, per year! we’re confident that other PCTs will sign up once they’ve seen it.

This project is now in development, and we’ll be looking to launch it at the end of June / early July, so please check back soon.

We have extensive experience in specifying the best solution for your needs, whether than is an open-source solution, or a custom designed one especially built to suit the individual requirements of your company.

But I’d by lying if I didn’t admit to small amount of satisfaction when a client who has previously used one of the popular O/S ‘solutions’ decides it’s far too counter-intuitive and opts for our SouthCMS solution instead. In fact I believe the word “smug” might have been used for moments such as that!

The debate between open-source and bespoke can be applied to every market, yet I think it was best summed up by the tailoring profession who say “A bespoke suit may hurt your wallet when you first buy it, but an off the peg one hurst every time you put it on”. Being a customer of King & Allen I can relate to that! But is software any different?

Well yes, of course, but it boils down to the same choice. Buy something cheap and cheerful and struggle to use it on a daily basis, or pay a bit more, and get something that is a pleasure to use.

Manorhousemagazines.co.uk are a good case in point. Having used one of the largest OS systems available, they found that it simply didn’t fit well with their company – they couldn’t sell products easily, nor keep up-to-date with stock control, and found that due to the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy of open-source systems, they were bombarded by lots of functionality which wasn’t required, and only served to make using the system more complicated.

SouthCMS is built with just the particular modules that you need – no need for hundreds of confusing icons that you’ll never use, just custom built features that you’ll use on a day-to-day basis. For example With SouthCMS you can opt for the ‘Product manager’ module, then you can easily load in products and choose where they’re used throughout the site. Need to update an item? well that’s easy – just update it once, and all the other instances reflect the changes straight away.

It’s small things such as that, which made using SouthCMS a better, more efficient, option for Manor House.