ia play

This article is part of a series about search log analysis which includes what people are searching for, bounce rates, and the geographical element.

Some users attention is worth more to you than others. For the most of us, we are not in the raw attention business. We want traffic, we want referrals, we want pageviews but all as a means to an end. E-commerce sites want those users to buy something. Charities want them to donate or campaign or take up a service. Bloggers want them to read their ideas (for all sorts of further reasons).  Lots of sites want you to look at/click on their adverts. The BBC? That one’s a bit trickier. But in general you get the idea.

But that fact sometimes seems to get a bit lost.

Lots of people have got the idea that Google is important. Some are still struggling with it or missing it entirely but mostly people in the industry have got that Google matters. For some reason.

And lots of people are looking at their analytics and recognising that there is gold dust in there.  But as with so many things a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’ve been in lots of conversations and seen lots of reports that jump straight from “metric A is low” to “we must, at all costs, improve metric A”.  If you ask why then they tell you about the importance of Google. With search logs these conversations mostly seem to revolve around poor bounce rates and low referrals for particular terms.

Google brings you that all important attention. But some attention is more important. Some attention represents a good business opportunity and some is a dead-end. Where the cost is minimal then sure, why not maximise attention. But if there is cost involved (and there nearly always is) then you need to be making business decisions about what you are trying to achieve.

I’m trying to think about this in 4 stages:

1. Attention is only a step. Do you know what you are trying to achieve? If not, put down the metrics and go back to the strategy whiteboard
2. Look for strong opportunities. Don’t try and succeed with everyone. What can the metrics tell you about these users and how likely they are to help you meet you goals? Not masses  admittedly but more thoughts on this below…
3. Your users are on a mission. Don’t try and persuade them to help you until you’ve helped them. This is classic seducible moment stuff. You might be unhappy with the bounce rate for a particular page but sticking promotions for other content above the content the user came looking for is only going to increase your bounce rate.
4. Identify the hook. Given what you know about the users from the metrics (again you don’t have a lot to go on here) you need to think about what actually has a chance of holding their attention. If they are searching for homework help then they are unlikely to be captivated by content about creating a will. All things are possible but this one is unlikely.

So thinking about strong opportunities, I’ve been re-examining our search referral logs.

If the referring keyword explicitly refers to an RNIB service (Soccer Sight, See it Right, Talking Books) then we know we should be meeting these users needs. These are the obvious wins. If the metrics are bad then we probably need to sort this asap.

If the keywords explicitly relate to issues around sight loss then those users represent a good opportunity. We know they care or have some level of motivation to investigate the same issues that the RNIB is trying to promote.

But alot of referring terms are neither RNIB or sight loss specific. Fundraising ideas, excel shortcuts, flash, triathalons could all be from users with no interest in the RNIB’s cause.  They might but we don’t have any evidence. Each of these terms offers a different strength of opportunity.

Fundraising ideas: we can be reasonably sure that the users want ideas about how to fundraise. We can guess that these are people who are inclined to raise money for charities. Seemingly a good opportunity. But why are they searching Google for fundraising ideas. Probably because they have a cause they are trying to raise money for. That probably isn’t us.  So these users may be an opportunity but they’re unlikely to be a quick win.

Excel shortcuts: for some reason these users want information about excel shortcuts and it may have nothing to do with sight loss. Could be RSI or just improved efficiency. They might want other shortcuts and they might have empathy with the difficulties keyboard only users experience. Possible opportunity.

Flash: Very hard to decode this one. It is unlikely to be Flash developers (physicists don’t usually search for physics). The bounce rate is high and fast, so we know they didn’t want the content they ended up with. So we’d have to work out what they wanted and then provide that and then engage them further. Doesn’t seem such a great opportunity.

Triathalons: probably just users thinking about taking part in a triathlon, rather than the money raising potential of a triathlon. But they will probably need or be able to choose to raise money as part of their sporting endeavour. And they may well not have a strong charitable allegiance already. Good opportunity.

And what about Helen Keller? This represents a huge amount of attention for us but does it help us meet any goals? We think (but don’t know) that this traffic is teachers and schoolchildren, probably primary age. They will be thinking about sight loss and the impact on individuals so it should represent a good opportunity. But they are also thinking about cutting and pasting and getting homework done. Kids can be great fundraisers. We want to start life-long relationships. This could be a great opportunity but also a huge challenge. We don’t understand this space enough. And the logs won’t answer these questions, they can only take you so far.  We’ll have to talk to real people.

Next: the geographical element

One of the blogs I follow faithfully is The Simple Dollar. In  The Variables of a Purchase: Is Price the Ultimate Bottom Line? Trent says

I place a significant extra value on buying local produce and dairy products versus buying items that are shipped in. I place a slight premium on the ethics of the business, but I often find that companies with questionable practices often have many competitors and it’s trivial to simply use more ethical businesses. I have something of a minimal standard for customer service and shopping experience – if a company doesn’t meet that standard, I just don’t give them my business, regardless of price, but above that level, I view all competitors roughly equally.

So  Trent has a ‘minimal standard’ for shopping experience but there are other factors that he places higher value on.

I came back to this thought when reading yet another perplexed UX blogger, wondering why the field isn’t sufficiently respected or valued.  As usual, I thought of iPlayer.

The user experience team that worked on iPlayer had many anxieties about the product that launched.  The UCD process hadn’t been followed as faithfully as it could have been. Everyone felt the UX could be better (although we didn’t necessarily agree about what was wrong).

And yet, iPlayer has been a massive success for the BBC. And appears to have turned the guy in charge into The Man Who Saved the BBC and gave him the opportunity to say in print “I only do things for the user”. Those users were delighted to get their favourite shows for free,  so appear to have put up with the clunky bits of the UX.

(Now Five On Demand. That’s a different matter. The UX sucked, I was only mildly interested in the product and they were expecting me to pay. No thank you.)

With free services, I definitely put up with some rather undesirable user experiences. Google apps are a mess when used on my EEE and the keyboard shortcuts are patchy but I stay faithful. I use Swapshop all the time and that’s a shocker.

But is it different when I’m paying?

I like the user experience of Waitrose way more than Morrisons. But I go to Morrisons. Mostly because it is near my house and a bit because they stock the things I buy regularly.

We also buy meat direct from farmers and I can assure that the user experience of that process is absolutely awful. But we persist. We like the pigs.

When travelling I buy the cheapest, direct flight and then complain about the customer experience when I get home. I can’t stand American Airlines but when my parents lived in North Carolina I flew with them many times a year. I still get mad when I talk about their flight attendants but they were the only airline that flew direct from London.

Some services I do care about how good the UX is.  Others it isn’t the deciding factor.

It isn’t enough for UXers to say “UX matters”. Because sometimes it doesn’t matter enough to stop someone making money. You have to have a developer otherwise you won’t have a site. But it is possible to launch a successful website without a UX designer and even without a particularly good UX.

Not always, but sometimes.

So when does UX matter? And how do you know if this is one of those times?

Reading BBC News this weekend, my attention was drawn by a positive story Meningitis cases ‘at record low’. I was struck by the positive reporting and wondered whether that reaction was fair. Looking at the index of stories below it was noticeable that the positive tone was unusual:

.

Just look at the language: “blunder, suffers, plea, assault, deadly, carnage, weakest, attacks, weak, shut”.

Now the bottom right corner sounds more positive:

• Cow genome ‘to transform farming’
• Cheryl Cole to record solo songs
• Facebook users say yes to changes

But really the positivity depends on where you stand on genetic research, manufactured pop and the ethics of social networking businesses.

I’m never quite sure I’ve ‘got’ what Bruce Sterling is getting at…but there’s always something in his non-fiction writing that I feel the need to capture, come back to, mull over. I never read his sci-fi, I picked up one of his novels in the charity box at work and flicked through it. The prose didn’t seem like something I wanted to spend my time with. I’m not sure if that was hasty.

Still, his article in interactions magazine has the usual hints at possible wisdom. Or maybe just comforting statements of the obvious, although he almost certainly doesn’t intend them to be comforting!

“Below the professional level of for-profit publishing, the subculture of science fiction fans exploited early, DIY duplication technologies: Gestetners, hectograph. There were letter-writing campaigns, amateur press associations, local writers groups, regional science fiction conventions galore. One might even argue that contemporary Web culture looks and behaves much like 1930s science fiction fandom, only digitized and globalized.”

“Digital media is much more frail and contingent than print media. I rather imagine that people will be reading H.P. Lovecraft-likely the ultimate pulp-magazine science fiction writer-long after today’s clumsy, bug-ridden MMORPGs are as dead as the Univac.”

“Experience designers are a tiny group of people with a radically universalized prospectus”

“I scarcely know what to do about this. As Charles Eames said, design is a method of action. Literature is a method of meaning and feeling. Hearteningly, I do know how I feel about this situation. I even have some inkling of what it means”

via interactions magazine.

The lovely Paula, as well as being a clever IA, is a talented crafter. She gave me this perfected pitched gift of one of her map-based Oyster card holders, in purple no less.

You can buy them from her Etsy shop.

Finally got round to reading In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan. Perhaps I’ve been over-exposed to the concepts in the book but, in spite of wholeheartedly agreeing with Pollan, I found the book itself a bit, well, flimsy.

I read it in a day and it seemed to come to a rather abrupt halt. That feeling was exaggerated by the wodge of sources, acknowledgements and index – it seemed there should be at least 5mm more story to go.

His core message is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. Of these only ‘eat food’ needs much clarification as Pollan is encouraging us to avoid processed industrial foods, largely anything your gran or great-gran wouldn’t recognise as food. (must remember to check how long Ribenna has been around).

The book also reminded me to be angry about the current government marketing campaign, urging us to cut down on saturated fat. The BBC coverage reminded us that “grilled chicken breast without skin contains a third less saturated fat than with skin”. I’m sure it does but grilled skinless chicken breast is utterly pointless. I’d rather eat a carrot.

Pollan uses quite a lot of the book to highlight how inconclusive the scientific evidence against the evil fat is. I’d much rather see the government spending our money on encouraging us to grow our own veg, or cook from scratch. I really don’t think we’re all getting obese and dying of heart disease because we’re leaving the skin on a piece of grilled chicken.

We’re hiring a developer, based in the Peterborough office:

Information and Knowledge Systems (IKS) Lead Developer – Ref: 5156.

I’m particularly interested in the bit that says “experience of developing in an MS Commerce server environment” as I’ll be working on our e-commerce redesign shortly.

As with the knowledge officer, non-profit rates apply(!)

The RNIB is recruiting a Knowledge Officer role:
Knowledge Officer – Ref: 5155.

This is part of my team and would include some information architecture work (with me!). Some of the role would be involved in designing system solutions to knowledge sharing problems but the role is also about coming up with people and process solutions.

The systems side might be about intranet and extranets, document management, collaboration tools, people directories.  Probably quite a bit of SharePoint here.

The people and process side might be about communities of practice, knowledge cafes, learning lunches, improved communications, workshop facilitation, maybe  training solutions.

Imagine how you would improve knowledge sharing within customer helpline staff, between a group of home-workers, or across the busy project managers working in different departments. Different combinations of technical and process solutions will be appropriate for each group.

The RNIB calls it KM but you could even consider the combined role to be about cross-channel design. Or enterprise IA.

Non-profit rates, I’m afraid.

I’ve chatted to lots of friends who went to the IA summit and read some  of the threads afterwards.  I’m glad I didn’t go. The whole “we’re all just UX” debate  kind of makes me unhappy.  I’ll try and explain why.

It is all about the sparrows. If you don’t  get the reference then we probably don’t share a canon. And that’s part of the point too.

Sparrows are your archetypal bird. I’m not a sparrow in the IA world (never did much in the way of wireframing)  but I’m maybe a chicken. Not quite the first bird a little kid would think of but still quite clearly a bird.

But in a UX community I am different . Compared to the UX sparrow, I’m a penguin. I’m a bit of a weird bird.

Generally it is a bad sign if your professional community makes you feel like a weird bird.

I remember when I was first working with the UNESCO thesaurus I was amused to see that ‘home-makers’ was a sub-category of women. I just thought that reflected the age of the thesaurus (it has some particularly lovely terminology around disability too).

Now I don’t expect the Daily Mail to demonstrate cutting edge social attitudes, or to be honest , to have particularly great information architecture. So I really shouldn’t have spent quite so long trying to figure out where their recipes section was buried. There is a shortcut on the homepage but I’d come in via a search engine and foolishly thought I could work out the main nav to get me to my destination.

The penny dropped eventually. It is nestled in the ‘Femail’ section,  of course!

Food | Mail Online.