Does your site measure up? 4 DIY usability criteria you can use to check

Building on the thinking we’ve been doing recently about analytics and effectiveness, I’ve been reading up about web usability and the ways we can measure it.

You can, of course, pay usability professionals a small fortune. Or you can do it yourself... with incredibly useful results. And as we’re all in favour of achieving your aims as cost effectively as possible, we’re unsurprisingly keenest on the second option.

So with thanks to this helpful piece from usability.gov (http://usability.gov/methods/analyze_current/goals.html), here are 4 main headings that you can use to set your own usability criteria.

1. Time – for example, the time it takes to get to a particular page or carry out a particular task (register, buy something, download a document) on the site. What are the key tasks that you want users to carry out on your site? Decide on an acceptable timescale for each and test it out – a good way of doing this is to visit other sites and see what you find acceptable there.
2. Accuracy – best measured via lack of accuracy, such as errors, misunderstandings and unproductive actions. For example, you can measure the number of errors in using an application, the number of misunderstandings of information provided or the number of unproductive navigation choices. Decide on some key tasks, see how accurately users perform them and select your goals. As above, looking at other sites can help you decide what you think is an acceptable level of accuracy.
3. Overall success – kind of obvious, this one, because if the user can’t do what they want to, there’s clearly a big problem. But you can break this down into the specifics of how people achieve their goals – for example, if they use the ‘Help’ button, how long they take to find what they need and return to the task. Or if they use ‘Search’, how long it takes them to find what they need. Once again, looking at other sites can help you establish what is acceptable.
4. Satisfaction – both overall satisfaction and specific satisfaction regarding particular parts of your site (navigation, search, language etc). Best done using a scale – with 1 as ‘not at all satisfied’ and 10 as ‘completely satisfied’.

So before you commit to blowing your budget on a usability company, why not have a go at doing it yourself?

Finally, remember this one? An excellent downloadable guide which includes advice about how to conduct your own usability studies. Have a read of: http://www.publiczone.co.uk/whats-happening/user-research-handbook/ We’ve recommended it before but it’s worth mentioning again, because it’s full of great, free of charge advice.

3 ways to achieve a successful tone of voice online

More about effectiveness, this time looking at how you can achieve a tone of voice that works for you online.

Tone of voice is something that is often explored in digital and other communication strategies. 'Approachable', 'caring', 'authoritative', 'professional' – these are some of the words adopted by not for profit organisations I’ve worked with. It's fairly easy to choose your tone of voice - but not so easy to achieve..

I just read this excellent blog from Sticky Content (http://www.stickycontent.co.uk/blog/77/the-3-key-elements-of-a-successful-digital-tone-of-voice-) and what they have to say is so good, really worth reading.

The way they see it is this (and it's not nearly as complicated as it might be): there are 3 main considerations when you're trying to achieve a successful online tone of voice:

1. Messaging: what you choose to say and how you decide to present it. This is another of those cases where you need to make sure you start by thinking about your audience and what they need from you. I love the example of a utility site with the FAQ ‘What do I do if I smell gas?’ Some brand people might suggest you begin by saying ‘Your safety is important to us’ but that is likely to be irrelevant – if not downright irritating - information for the user (who should be able to assume this anyway). Getting straight to the point: ‘Call this emergency number at once’ does a better job of responding to the customer’s immediate need – and doing this will convince them that you care about their safety. Two birds with one stone - clever, eh?
2. Information design: how you lay out the information on the page. It is not uncommon in our sector for organisations to aim to come across as caring and professional at the same time. Not easy to achieve? Perhaps not if you were just using words – but using images (for example, of people working together) and structuring your site and pages clearly (so that information is really easy to find) will help to communicate both messages for you.
3. Style: the decisions you make about what language you use. Things like whether you write ‘We are committed to...’ or ‘Sue Fidler Associates is committed to...’; and whether it is ok to use abbreviations. I couldn’t agree more with Sticky Content when they say that this, which is closest to what we usually think of as tone of voice, is actually the least important of these 3 points.

So, to sum up. If you:

• Keep your audience and their needs in mind
• Write accordingly
• Structure your content as clearly as possible

(which is how we should all always prepare any online content, anyway) you will succeed in coming across as authoritative and professional - and also as caring and approachable. Because that’s exactly what you’ll be.

Want to read more?

• Effective online content: http://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing-formula/
• Writing effective web copy (includes tips on information design): http://www.suefidler.com/resources/
• Online writing style guides: http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/09/16/online-style-guides/

9 analytics tools for working out how effectively you are using social media

We’re keen on joined-up thinking at Sue Fidler Associates, so this blog brings together the last few weeks’ blogs. We wrote about how important it is to use analytics to check you are achieving your aims. And - also with a view to making sure you are as effective as possible - we wrote about some of the big no-nos in social media.

So this week we are bringing you 9 social media analytics tools recommended by us and/or people we know. Using them will help:

1. Clarify what you are achieving through your use of social media; and
2. Work out whether they are being effective for you.

Here they are:

• Bit-ly (shorten, share, track & analyse your links) - www.Bit.ly
• Clicky (like Google Analytics but with social networking reporting and slightly easier interface) - getclicky.com
• Facebook marketing statistics (demographics, global spread, news etc) - www.checkfacebook.com
• Klout (identifies influencers on topics across social networks) - www.klout.com
• Retweetrank (find any twitter user’s re-tweet rank) - www.retweetrank.com
• Twitalyzer (serious analytics for social business - free benchmarks and paid plans) - twitalyzer.com
• Twitter Analyzer (Twitter statistics & analytics) - twitteranalyzer.com
• Twopular (aggregating popular trends on Twitter - twopular.com
• Xinu returns (SEO site statistics tool) - www.xinureturns.com

Please let us know how these work for you. And if you use others that you would recommend, we’d love to hear about them...

Happy analysing!

Want to read more?

Social Media Tools online - http://www.suefidler.com/207.asp

10 social media mistakes not for profit organisations often make... so that you can avoid them

It’s always encouraging when you come across somebody who thinks like you, isn’t it?

So given our recent work on our raison d’etre at Sue Fidler Associates – and the realisation that 2 of our main common aims are demystifying and educating - how brilliant and timely to come across the following incredibly useful blog: 10 Common Mistakes Made by Nonprofits on Social Media (http://nonprofitorgs.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/10-common-mistakes-made-by-nonprofits-on-social-media/).

In brief, they are:

1. Using a landscape logo for your social media avatar
2. Posting more than one Facebook status update a day
3. Not following a 1:1 ratio on Twitter
4. Not applying for YouTube’s Nonprofit Program
5. Not creating Flickr slideshows to tell your story
6. Not adding social networking icons to your homepage
7. Ignoring LinkedIn Company pages
8. Not claiming your Places pages on Facebook etc
9. Posting only boring, marketing content
10. Not blogging

Phew, we’re getting that one right, at least (no. 10)! I just wish I’d written that blog...

As a naturally verbose person, I’m particularly taken by the challenge to get our message across more effectively by making good use of images. And how many times have you come across organisations that forgot about using a square avatar?

Off I go to check that we’ve definitely implemented all of them ourselves... What about you?