February 2011 Blog Posts (13)

Have you ever come into a room where an intense conversation commanded the air? Imagine it ending with these phrases:

A.B.: "I'll never believe in that person again."

L.M.: "The facts are clear, it's all over. Nobody can deny it."

What just happened? Were you witness to the end / take-over / bankruptcy of your organization? The untimely demise of a project? YOUR project? (Of course, we always take the worst case,…

Published in Econsultancy February 23, 2011

No matter how many times I am involved in user testing sessions, I never stop learning about people's browsing habits and the different aspects of a company’s proposition that affect how people respond to a given website.

Recently we have carried out two days of user testing for a high street retailer, and although these aren’t groundbreaking, what follows are nine key online shopping insights that all nine…

By Dr. Susan Weinschenk, published in Internet Retailer, February 2011

What makes a consumer decide to browse and buy on one web site and click off another's home page? Psychological cues play a big role. These are the same cues that drive basic human behaviors that helped us survive as our species evolved: the urge to eat, reproduce, fight, run, and be social. By understanding how the human mind reacts to visual and verbal images Internet marketers can increase conversion…

I'm a big believer in using research to guide and shape information architecture decisions. However, considering the broad relevance of this field, research is quite fragmented, and it can be a challenge to find the good stuff. Given that context, I was really excited to find an article covering the role of research in design practices, written by Peter Morville, a well-respected thought leader in the…

“Know Thy User, For They Are Not You” – Dodge/Mandel 2000



An aged, clever, maxim yet so often neglected. Whether it be budget constraint, timing, or both, there’s always the inevitable opposition which sways away the very ingredients that deliver high-yielding, performance-packed, user experiences. Engineering user-centered interfaces begins with, quite simply, the User. And albeit a very obvious notion, it’s frequently reported to be a peripheral, less leveraged, driver in many…

I'm not talking first class vs coach, but taking an electronic product and making the price dependent on the quality of your user experience.

There was a fantastic article in the Business Section of yesterday's International Herald Tribute (p15, Jenna Wortham), which…

In December I got a call from our client, ICICIdirect.com, India’s leading trading and investing platform, thanking us for helping them with their website design. ICICIdirect.com is now live. They have implemented 95% of our design and have been getting very good reviews from their users.

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Stay warm!

You don't need to read many newspapers or listen to many State of the Union speeches to predict the future of economic growth.

Even back in October of 2009, the Los Angeles Times could easily say in a Consumers Section headline: "U.S. firms look to sell wares in emerging markets. As sales wither at home, manufacturers see China, India and Brazil as a customer base of new…

A group that measures the public's satisfaction with the federal government found that while public satisfaction with the services provided by federal agencies has "plunged," Americans remain satisfied with government websites.

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73% of  companies are planning an investment in mobile channels in 2011, with almost half planning to move into mobile commerce. 

Econsultancy's Customer Engagement Report, which we produced in association with cScape, has some interesting findings on companies' use of mobile. 

It seems that,…

Web users prefer a mobile optimised site for shopping and browsing, but expect the same brand experience they would find online or through other channels, according to a new study. 

The mCommerce Benchmark study by eDigital Research finds that satisfaction levels with retailers' site on mobile are improving, with M&S the top-rated mobile site. 

It contains some useful insight into what users expect from …

Bloomberg Businessweek - Meet the Microworkers

When Julia Lee first heard of Tongal, she thought it was a scam. Tongal pays people—anyone with a good idea, really—to create online videos for companies such as Mattel.

To read more, click on the above image, or copy/paste the following:

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