Introducing new features to users can be tricky at times. Change can be overwhelming to some and unwelcomed by many, but if you follow certain guidelines when introducing new functionality, your innovation can be met with open arms and considered a success.

Crafting the right message about your new feature is as important as crafting the feature itself. It needs to pique users’ interests enough for them to take action, while simultaneously educating them on what the feature does.

So how do you go about introducing new functionality in a way your users will respond positively to? Here are four guidelines you should follow to help ensure a successful feature launch:

1. Don’t get too creative. Creativity is a wonderful thing that breeds innovation and unique solutions to everyday problems. However, overly creative design solutions used on conventional user interfaces and gestures can alienate users. The phrase “don’t reinvent the wheel” applies here. If your creative solution is born out of boredom rather than necessity, then it probably isn’t the right answer and you may find yourself with dissatisfied and confused users on your hands. Many of our studies have shown that many new and unconventional functionalities result in a low satisfaction rating of the product and negatively affect customers’ perception of a brand.

2. Keep it out in the open. When it comes to introducing new features, you don’t want to bury the lead. Anything that may change the way your user interacts with your product should be clearly communicated to them from the get-go. For example, you might first introduce your users to a new feature either before or on the launch date, explaining what it does and how to use it. A link to a tutorial video can be helpful here. Additional alerts when a user signs in are of upmost importance: a notification badge highlighting a new feature provides high visibility where it matters, and for an added bonus you could walk them through the new feature set with a guided tutorial, just remember to give them an opt-out on that tutorial, just in case.

3. Explain why it adds value. Because there will be hesitation with any new functionality, it is important to communicate the benefits for the user. It is not enough to just announce a new feature and tell them what it does. What will they get out of it? How will it add value to the product? Often times, if a user understands how a new feature or functionality will help them, they’re more willing to alter their usual habits in order to try it out.

4. Guide the user. Utilize a seamless process to guide users to the new functionalities. Don’t expect them to find it on their own, and don’t expect them to figure out how to use them. We already mentioned walkthrough tutorials, but it’s worth mentioning again. More subtle forms of offering assistance, like a “tip of the day” feature can make helpful information available to the user without it being too imposing.

What it all comes down to is communication. Keeping your users in the loop every step of the way will gain their trust in your product and improve their perception of your brand. This will also get them on board with new features as they’re introduced. See how not communicating to users clearly when introducing a new feature backfired on a very popular mobile app: Instagram Users Are Already Angry Over New Facebook-Style Feed

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The organization of the content on your website and how it connects together – known as the Information Architecture (IA) – is an important part of a usable website. If the IA of a site is done well, users’ will rarely have problems finding what they need. How do you structure your site’s content in a way users will understand? One popular way is through a technique called card sorting.

Card Sorting is a tried and true technique for improving the IA of a site because it actually involves the users in the process, allowing them to communicate their organizational expectations and preferences.

We have conducted numerous card sorting exercises for clients across multiple industries to help inform structural redesign of their website content, navigation paths, menu structures, work flows, and product lists. Here are some of the most important things we’ve learned from our studies:

Keep It Simple
Users want logical and simple categories. For websites with extensive navigation menu items or product lists, utilize a multi-level categorization to avoid user confusion and frustration. Multi-level organization of content promotes an easier and quicker access to your content. This can be achieved by using larger and meaningful main categories and smaller and logical subcategories. Too many choices at the top-level can cause cognitive overload, while not enough can bury much needed information.

Card Sorting Resolves Internal Conflicts
If members of your team can’t seem to agree on the Information Architecture of your site, let card sorting come to the rescue. One of our clients had two teams who couldn’t agree on restructuring their website content. The card sorting exercises we ran helped resolve this conflict in the best way possible – the users told them exactly what they wanted.

Avoid Internal Language
Avoid using insider language or jargon that users don’t understand. A usable site should be easy for a user to learn and remember how to use, and if they don’t fully understand the language that’s being used, those goals will be more difficult to meet. The best way to find out whether you are using internal language for your labels, is to test them with actual users. Users are not shy in expressing “I have no idea what that means.” That’s when you know you are using internal language that’s not clear to your users. You can test unclear labels by including them in a follow-up survey study.

If your website is performing poorly, there may be any number of reasons for this, but poor Information Architecture might certainly be a main culprit because bad IA means users can’t find the content they’re after. Online card sorting is a preferred tool for helping to improve IA because it is reliable, inexpensive, easy to execute, and involves a large number of your site’s target users.

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Advocates of user research are familiar with real benefits of testing an interface with the target audience: customer satisfaction, engagement and loyalty, which generally result in higher conversion rates and increased revenue. Including user research late into the design process can create certain challenges. In many cases, the changes are too costly to implement or it’s too late to implement them before launch. However, it is possible to include user research into an Agile framework harmoniously.

The ROI of User Research
The user research of a product needs to be factored in at early stages of the design process in order to achieve the maximum levels of return on investment. As the saying goes: Bad UX = money lost; Good UX = money gained. Indeed, maximum savings are gained from making changes earlier in the design life cycle.

The rule of thumb in many user-research-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for user research is $1 : $10-$100. In other words, once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design. (Gilb, 1988)

What is Agile Development?
If you work in the tech industry, you’ve probably heard of Agile, and maybe you’ve even practiced it. For those who haven’t, Agile is a set of product development practices that favor responding to change rather than following a plan. The Agile framework operates in sprints that usually last one to two weeks at a time, allowing for several design iterations and changes. The agile process embraces change as a useful part of the process that actually pushes designers and developers in the right direction.

In addition to responding well to change, Agile development values individuals and interactions, customer collaboration, and products that work. There are several agile frameworks including Lean and Scrum.

The alternative framework to Agile is known as Waterfall, which is a process where time and cost are variables, but the scope of the project never changes. It’s an efficient way of getting a project done, but it doesn’t account for change very well, which can cause significant–and expensive–problems.

User Research Testing in an Agile Framework
Traditionally, when working within a Waterfall framework, user research is factored in close to the end of development. Because development is mostly completed at the point of testing, making any necessary changes found due to testing can be very costly. Additionally, there may not be enough time to incorporate the user research recommendations prior to launch.

“Agile offers many opportunities for overcoming problems with traditional development methods that have long impeded user research.” (Source: Nielsen Norman Group)

When working within an Agile framework, user research can be done from the early stages of the design and on a regular basis, meaning changes are easy to make and much less costly.

To overcome the challenges with conducting traditional user research in an Agile framework, you need to incorporate the following solutions:

• Test small
• Test during every sprint
• Test any fidelity of the product
• Add a feature/functionality to every test
• Try different types of testing
• Observe testing sessions with the entire team
• Streamline the findings and recommendations report

Promoting Excellence with Agile and User Research
When user research is done during every sprint, it creates beneficial changes that improve the overall experience of a product because Agile methods inherently embrace and harness change, giving your product a competitive advantage.

Agile and user research go hand-in-hand because Agile principles call for good design and technical excellence, and User Research enforces excellence early on.

User Research is all about individuals and interactions while customer collaboration is an Agile value. User Research and Agile bring the user, team and business together on a regular basis. Iterative studies throughout the product life cycle can further inform the product’s Experience Design and result in task success and customer satisfaction.

The post User Research & Agile: An Elegant Collaboration appeared first on OneSource Labs.

You may be wondering what is keeping your customers from completing the checkout process. You have all the right content available and have implemented marketing strategies, but your customers keep abandoning their shopping cart. What could be going wrong?

Through our user research studies we have revealed the key reasons why your customers are not converting:

1. Your product pages are overwhelming

Users give up if they cannot find the right product quick enough. They get frustrated having to look through a long list of products they may not be interested in.

Solution: Best practices call for categorizing products logically. Take it to the next level by providing product filters. Intuitive filters help your customers narrow down their options faster.

2. You don’t display tax and shipping estimates in the shopping cart

Users feel the company is holding back information on taxes and shipping if they are not provided in the shopping cart. Many ecommerce sites provide that information towards the end of checkout process.

“22% of carts abandoned happen due to no shipping information available.” (source: CPC Strategy)

Solution: Providing tax and shipping estimates in the shopping cart makes users more comfortable before clicking on the checkout button to place an order.

3. You require login/registration during the checkout process

The first step of checkout, that mandates login or registration, has continuously shown to have the highest drop-off rate. Users generally find it intrusive to have to provide unnecessary personal information in order to place an order. Many users perceive registration as only benefiting the company for their marketing purposes rather than benefiting them as a customer.

Solution: Providing a guest checkout option significantly improves conversion for many ecommerce sites.

See how offering a guest checkout option drastically increased a site’s revenue: The $300 Million Button

The post What is Blocking Your Ecommerce Site from Converting and What to Do about It appeared first on OneSource Labs.

Discoverability & Standardization
Users mainly interact with the interface for primary and necessary actions. Ensure to follow industry standard gestures specific to a platform (i.e., iOS or Android). Secondary actions may be easily dismissed if the related gesture is hard to discover. If users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist.

Consistency
Participants expect the same gestures to produce identical or similar results. Swiping is an industry standard and well-known gesture, but it could translate to multiple outcomes within your app. For example, flip to the next page, change a section, delete content, scroll up/down, turn a function on/off, etc. With all these possible outcomes, users need a sense of predictability within an app.

Be sure to keep gesture results consistent within a single app.

Feedback & Recovery
Touch screen interfaces need to provide responsiveness by displaying immediate feedback upon user’s action. Any delay in feedback may result in abandonment on the user’s part. They need to know immediately if their action resulted in their desired outcome, and if not, find a way to fix it. The app should allow users to recover from their mistakes, especially if they are due to non-standard gestures or lack of immediate feedback. For example, if a user deleted an important piece of content by mistake, the app should to provide a confirmation question.

In conclusion, unpredictable outcomes have a direct effect on users’ confidence, level of engagement, and frequency of revisiting. Ensure your mobile app accommodates for user needs by following best practices.

The post How Touchscreen Gestures Affect User Engagement with Your Mobile App appeared first on OneSource Labs.

The continuous growth in mobile use and the release of multiple screen-sizes demands testing customer interaction and satisfaction of a website across devices.

The desktop and mobile versions of a responsive design were tested in a user research conducted for a major automotive brand. In addition to standard user research issues, we discovered insights related to device use and preference. Here are some key findings:

A Rich Mobile Experience Promotes Brand Perception
Participants were pleasantly surprised to have access to the same content and functionality across devices without being overwhelmed. Furthermore, the seamless shift between devices resulted in improved perception of the brand for many participants.

“61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.” (Source: Latitude)

Some Tasks are better on the Mobile Device
In addition to tasks that are commonly perceived as mobile-friendly (e.g. getting directions, or contacting a retailer), people appreciated the luxury of starting a task on one device and finishing it on another, thus having that information available anywhere and at all times.

Increasingly, people use their mobile device for convenience, not just when they are “on the go.”

Some examples of those types of tasks include:

• Reviewing a list of inventory
• Finding a local retailer
• Saving a wish list to show the sales person
• Getting directions to or calling a local retailer

In conclusion, the shift in responsive design is the natural next step to supporting the purchase process and promoting brand perception. The fluidity of responsive design across devices allows users easy access to do anything at anytime, anywhere.

“57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. 41% have turned to a competitor site after a bad mobile experience.” (Source: Google)

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