I have a bank account that rebates all ATM fees so I don’t care about which bank I visit to withdraw cash.  I’ve never paid attention to the amount of the fees, but if I did, I would consider paying more for a better user experience.  About 6 months ago, I had my first experience with the redesigned Bank of America ATM’s.  What an improvement!  Bank of America, or more likely the firm they hired, certainly thought through the user experience and did some testing prior to deployment.  As a result, if I have a choice, I will always use the Bank of America ATM solely based on superior usability.  Bank of America made these improvements in response to an update by Wells Fargo so hopefully they will continue to compete on user experience.

Of course there are other examples.  For regional travel, nothing beats http://southwest.com.  I thought their most recent updates were a step backwards, but Southwest still holds a major usability advantage that captures my business over other airlines.  In the airline business, the most frustrating brands are those that refuse to acknowledge the problem.

As more companies realize the advantages of superior user experience, usability will become a competitive matter, improving for all of us.  This trend is already accelerating in mobile applications because limited interface options dictate superior core task functionality as a requirement, even for bad designers.

Do you have any differentiating user experiences to share?

In an effort to figure out how some of these atrocities are making it on to the internet, I’ve created a two question anonymous survey to try to get an idea of the level of testing that is currently considered acceptable.  Please complete or forward to the appropriate people:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/G8VB28K

1. Yelp – http://yelp.com
Yelp is a free service that allows anyone to write an unbiased review of your business that is available to the public at any time.  Do I have your attention yet?  To stay up to speed on your Yelp page, use the site’s search function to find your own company and click the large red button that says, “Claim This Business.”

2. Local Search
- http://google.com/local
- http://bing.com/local
- http://local.yahoo.com/
Local search is the most likely way that internet searchers will find a small brick and mortar business.  All of the major search engines have expanded the capabilities of local search to include directions and reviews, another source of information about your company that you’ll want to closely monitor.  All the search engines have similar functionality to Yelp that allows you to claim and enhance your business listing.

3. Analytics – http://google.com/analytics
What good are all these new sources of business if you can’t measure the results?  Google Analytics is free and easy to install on almost any website.  In addition to always asking your new customers how they found out about you, it’s important to have solid numbers about how people find you online.  If you need help, installing analytics is a minor project that can usually be completed in a couple hours.

What other internet services do you consider essential for local businesses?

In December, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt said “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy

That’s a bold statement for the CEO of any major company, especially Google, which has a history of criticism for their privacy practices.  Google was also recently criticized for their handling of a privacy problem with the widely used Google Toolbar.

By now, everyone knows about the famous Facebook Beacon incident.  In December, Facebook made another attempt to make user information more public with their new privacy settings.  Facebook tried to spin the news as a win for users.  However, the changes were really designed to give Facebook evidence that users consented to sharing their information with the world even if users didn’t pay attention and selected Facebook’s “share with everyone” setting, the default if the user had not previously adjusted their privacy settings.

Many other major internet companies are employing similar strategies as they all struggle with the balance between keeping users happy and running profitable businesses. I respect that balance.  However, I have a problem with companies knowingly taking advantage of people who don’t read or understand their terms or bundle tracking software with other products in a misleading way.

I’m all for personal responsibility, but the fact is, most internet users don’t understand online privacy. The average person doesn’t know very much about what information is tracked, how companies use it, or how to control information collection on their computer through browser settings, add-ons, and software.

What’s next? Are we approaching the limit of tolerance for these practices?  Will there be legal action?  Will consumers stop using some of these major services?  What do you think?

Mobile web and email is a throwback to the early days of the internet.  Users have a small screen and limited functionality, so usability is extremely important.  The solution is to test your emails on a number of different devices and incorporate features like a “view mobile version of this email” link in your header.

Here is a more comprehensive list of mobile email considerations from September:
http://theemailwars.com/2009/09/29/mobile-should-you-care/

Call me if you need help making your email mobile friendly.  Otherwise, happy holidays!

Here’s three tips for making the most of your entry pages:

- Make people feel comfortable about being in the right place.
Every page on your website should have consistent branding and be clear about what your company does.  You’d be surprised how many sites miss that second part.

- Provide navigational orientation that indicates where users are on your site.
Is it easy for the user to know how deep they are in your site structure and move up to a category level or homepage?  You can easily handle this by using a main navigation that clearly indicates the active page and using a crumb trail on more complex sites.

- Properly target your search terms and make sure your landing pages have all relevant information.
Nothing frustrates users more than irrelevant search results.  Make sure your site isn’t contributing to the problem by paying close attention to the search terms that drive traffic to your site and adjusting content accordingly.

Blasting out emails to the whole world is what spammers do. I don’t understand how advocates of “water cannon marketing” are still successful.  Would your customers appreciate being “blasted?”

If you haven’t yet done so, please become a responsible emailer operating an opt-in list with targeted emails for each of your segments.  If you don’t know your customer segments and have a focused marketing approach for each, that’s a fundamental business problem, not a minor email issue.  Contact me or someone to help you right now!

- Never break standard browser functions:
My friends at AT&T thought it would be a good idea to move the cursor from one field to the next after I entered the proper number of characters for the field I was editing.  For example, on phone number, once you type 3 digits in the area code field, the site automatically moves you to the number prefix box.  I’m sure someone at AT&T thought it was a good idea that would make things easier, but after using the internet for 14 years and expecting to use the tab key or mouse, it was more frustrating than helpful.  I find it hard to believe that this was user tested before deployment and there’s no excuse for that when you have the website budget of AT&T.

- Make your website work with all common browsers:
http://www.mykplan.com: These guys aren’t kidding about the compatible browser list in the left column.  This website has a lot of issues, but the biggest offender is that the site only works with Internet Explorer.  I use a Mac, so none of my browsers worked.  I could access the necessary forms, but was unable to enter any information.  Having a website that only worked with certain browsers stopped being OK at least five years ago.

- Avoid drop-down menus:
This will be the most controversial issue on this post, but after suffering through multiple drop-downs, mostly to enter my state, I agree with Jakob Nielsen on this one: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/annoyances.html

- Don’t ignore your error messages.

Following web standards and properly testing functionality before launching any website or addition is cheap and easy.  If you need help, contact me.

What other common problems do you encounter with online forms?

Responding was free, beyond the few minutes involved.  How much time is worth a 93% discount on something that interests you?

Delivering strong value for engagement is a basic fundamental of marketing.  When applied to email, delivering value creates loyal subscribers and increases the likelihood that previous non-responders will get involved next time.

All the big players have huge audiences and some have proven they can keep traffic coming back for more.  The only problem is that none of them make money.  As an internet user who never views an ad courtesy of Adblock Plus on Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865), I wonder if we’re witnessing the emergence of another “bubble” in the form of hyped but unprofitable internet applications.

I really wonder about Twitter. You can follow 100 people and never look at a single update from any of them.  Some people are in the business of gaining followers just to have more than the next guy even though nobody cares about their tweets.

Would you be willing to pay for the benefits of social media?  If so, how much?  I would bet that most people use social media because it’s fun and free, and would disappear in a paid arrangement.