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For The Future Indicative, Ep 7 Part 2
Transcript
ALEX EFFGEN
Welcome to the Future Indicative: a podcast on the trends, technologies, personalities, and narratives of business. My name is Alex Effgen, and today’s topic is UI/UX.
ALICIA CLAPPER
“I wrote down exact definitions and then I was like, Well, they’re kind of loose. It’s funny because it also could mean something different depending on what industry you’re in or what organization you work for. They could think that your deliverables are gray boxes, and then they could also think that your deliverable is a full website.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That was Alicia Clapper, a Director of UX/Product Design. She’s an artist who puts her visual mind towards relieving the pain points produced by D2C, the primary method for selling a product on a company’s website: direct to the consumer.
She does this by examining the UI, or user interface, and how it impacts the UX, or user experience. And given how pervasive the former is on the latter in our digital society, it’s important to define them and decide where they sit in a proper business of any kind, whether or not you’re buying.
Once upon a time we went into stores to buy things that we brought home. Even when the Sears catalogue came in the mail anticipating the holiday season (we’re talking 20th century), kids then–who are adults now–would circle what they wanted and dog ear the pages.
Sears stopped mailing their catalogue in 1993, just in time for the internet to pick up where it left off. And we’ve been trying to buy things online ever since.
Not that it’s been easy. Websites almost seem to be in the business of complicating customer service. For the better part of the last 15 years, Alicia Clapper has tried to understand the consumer’s journey in the D2C world.
ALICIA CLAPPER
“Very simply, UI is the look and feel of a website: its buttons, colors, icons, layout. The nuts and bolts of it.
And then UX is the consumer journey. So how are people interacting with the UI. What are they feeling as they’re interacting with it? And the hope is that it’s easy and efficient and the consumer’s satisfied along this journey.
Though in business terms it connects what people need with what the business is trying to achieve. So as a consumer, I need a new couch. And as a business, I’m selling couches to make money.
That’s very general, and there’s a lot in between there. And I’d say it matters because if you have a good business idea, and people can’t understand it on the website, then it’s going to fail.”
ALEX EFFGEN
And that’s why I came to her to figure out the problems of UX, the solution of UI, and vice versa. When done right a good user interface creates transparent business intentions, and should steward a good user experience. For instance:
ALICIA CLAPPER
“Say you are about to offer free shipping, and you’ve never offered free shipping. And you are like, I’m going to put this on the website. I need my UX designer to find a place on the website that it should go.
And so, an example of bad UX would be, Hey, I’m going to put it at the top banner above the navigation. That way everyone will see it through any page on the site.
And you think the impressions alone, people will get that. And it’ll be a good value proposition to buy a product. But it’s pretty far from the Add to Cart button. It’s pretty far from that place where I’m going to be as a user on site—where I make the decision to buy this.
And if I put the free shipping pretty far away, and I don’t see it the whole time, that’s not something that is a value to me to make a purchase, cuz I didn’t see it, even though it’s on every page.
So good UX would be to move that free shipping messaging closer to the Add to Cart button on the product page itself. Again in the cart or mini cart, and then probably again even in checkout, to make sure that at that point where I’m about to give up my money, the risk is alleviated by seeing this free shipping—and even better free returns—but the free shipping takes away some of that risk of what I’m about to give up in order to get this product.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Alicia’s example presumes the company has a UX designer. It might even presume the company has a developer to modify the online store.
To be online and in business you need a strategy. Strategy requires organization, and I happen to have a framework right here. You spell the word business with the letter S three times. But I would argue it takes four of them for a business to be strategic:
SPECIALIZE: What is this?
SELL: Who needs this?
SECURE: What can disrupt this?
SCALE: How do we expand this?
If we want the UI to create a positive UX then where do we start? At the beginning and with everyone involved.
ALICIA CLAPPER
“It might seem silly to an extent, consumer-first needs need to be adopted cross functionally.
It’s not just something that’s important to me. It should be something that’s important to the growth team, and acquisition, and marketing, and ops, fulfillment, customer service. You know, if we just keep that as our guiding light, we’ll build those long-term customers. We’ll build that loyalty. We’ll build that repeat customer that will give us long-term gains, as opposed to those quick wins of trying to dupe somebody with a bad experience. Or like a clickbait type experience.
Teams need to treat UX as part of the decision-making infrastructure and not just as delivery.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Consumer-first needs being the guiding light to long-term customers. That sounds familiar…
“...for us, the important thing is just to stay true to our mission and the people who want that mission, who elect to buy into that mission, will do so naturally.”
Oh yeah! Matt Burriesci talked about the importance of sticking to the first principals of the Providence Athenæum in our Nonprofit episode. He was all about being fully committed to the products and services provided by his library. And the Athenæum was not only keeping their long-term members but increasing their visitors. So they must SPECIALIZE in a good user experience.
Alicia, what else promotes good UX?
ALICIA CLAPPER
“Along the same lines of consumer-first thinking—confidence definitely beats persuasion. Customers buy when they feel really certain about their choice, not when they’re being pressured to buy.
Say you clicked on that text message, you went to the website, the promo ends in two hours, and all of a sudden there’s this amount of pressure on you like, Oh, I have to pick. But you’re not feeling completely confident.
As much as a sense of urgency does cause people to buy, that could then lead to a higher return rate. If you weren’t feeling completely confident in your purchase, but you only had two hours left to get the deal, you made a purchase. You got it home and you thought, This doesn’t fit. Or, This is not the color I wanted. Or, I thought it was supposed to be a different fabric. You just didn’t have enough time to get that full picture, and confidence and clarity before you hit add to cart, check out, buy.
And so going back to creating clear, honest messaging. Predictable experiences and patterns across the site. All that definitely outweighs more aggressive sales tactics and approaches. Because users, they’re not buying when they’re excited, they’re buying when they’re no longer scared.
And so what are the things that are going to make people comfortable and certain and clear with what they’ve bought online, and what they’re going to get once it arrives at their home.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Wow. Let me repeat that.
ALICIA CLAPPER
“...they’re not buying when they’re excited, they’re buying when they’re no longer scared.”
ALEX EFFGEN
I once worked for a camera company. You could find the franchise in malls across America. And I would sell cameras when I wasn’t developing film. My manager had great sales numbers, and he was great at pressuring sales. While my approach was more academic. Learn the needs of the customer, match three cameras, explain their strengths and weaknesses, watch them walk if they were not ready to buy.
I’m sure I lost people to online purchases. I know my manager’s numbers were better than mine, and he wanted me to sell like him. But every month the sales report also came with a line item for returns. And his sense of urgency lead to a higher return rate, while my approach brought return customers. But was honesty the best policy?
ALICIA CLAPPER
“You can most clearly see it in the data. You can track all of those things: conversion, adoption, retention, support volume for customer service, even speed to market with new products. You know, that’s an internal efficiency.
There’s a lot of different key performance indicators that you can measure across many different functions within the company. Just surfacing those numbers you can’t deny that.
Products with strong UX do perform better, and easier to evolve long term when those consumer-first decisions are made early in the product lifecycle.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That kind of decision to go consumer first not only needs to be made early, but needs to be embraced by everyone.
ALICIA CLAPPER
“If we are saying that consumer-first mindset should be adopted by everyone that definitely needs to come from the top. People who are shaping priorities and objectives for the quarter or year: product leaders, engineer managers, executives. The cross-functional teams. Basically, anyone making decisions that would affect the long-term adoption of our customer.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Okay, so I have everyone buying in. But how does that help me SELL?
ALICIA CLAPPER
“Internally and externally just reduced friction. Between teams having a common understanding or a common library to pull from reduces friction, makes teams more efficient, therefore leads to higher productivity and potentially higher conversion in the projects that are being launched.
So I think it does streamline things in a way that you can see both internally and customer facing.
And customer facing measured in the data. You can track those conversion numbers, and add to carts, and time spent on site for customers just to see just how easy they are able to find what they’re looking for.
Better UX can increase conversion, but also create those repeat purchases, less returns, less customer service tickets. It spans very cross-functionally when it’s good and when it’s bad.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That’s why it’s called UX, user experience, rather than just CX, or customer experience, because efficiency, clarity, and honesty transcend the buyer and the seller.
Thank you for joining us on Part 1 of the Future Indicative’s episode on UI/UX. In Part 2 we’ll explore how the user experience becomes truly effective when all the functions of a business communicate.
And speaking of communicate, while opinions expressed are solely our own, we’ll gladly transcend this platform to connect with you on your preferred UI for a pleasant UX. You heard it here first! Feel free to share it so someone else can experience it as well.
On behalf of Indicate Marketing, I’m Alex Effgen. And we appreciate your time.
