How to Engage Your Users: Professional Services Bios

Most of us have experienced health clinic websites that allow you to view the photos and bios of physicians – allowing you to select a doctor based on whichever criteria is most important to you (e.g., specialty, years of experience). What puzzles is me is why all companies who offer professional services don’t do the … Continue reading “How to Engage Your Users: Professional Services Bios”

What to Learn from Disney’s Relationship Marketing Mistakes

I am a huge fan of product finder tools — interactive experiences that ask prospects to assess their current situation or prioritize the features or benefits that are most important to them. Product finders are a smart way to simplify complex products and services, provide superior customer experience on your website and allow your company to … Continue reading “What to Learn from Disney’s Relationship Marketing Mistakes”

How to Engage Your Users: Location-Aware Experiences

Whenever I talked about location-aware technology to clients, Olive Garden was always my go-to website to demo how this feature works. Today, I was disappointed to find that this feature no longer has a prominent call-out on its home page, and is now buried on the “Find a Restaurant” page. Boo. Before I go too … Continue reading “How to Engage Your Users: Location-Aware Experiences”

How to Create More Engaging Forms

In the world of lead generation, forms are a necessary evil. But there is no need for them to be dreary. It’s time to put some fun into your forms. Yes, fun! Volkswagen could have easily listed every one of their vehicle models in a drop-down menu. But they didn’t. Instead they displayed every model … Continue reading “How to Create More Engaging Forms”

5 Ways to Improve Car Manufacturer Website Usability

For all their advancement in car safety, technology, design, and ability to make humorous commercials, car manufacturers have completely stalled when it comes to creating user-centered websites. Buying a Car Online: Not Fun Buying a brand new car was not as much fun as I thought it would be. In fact, it was decidedly un-fun. … Continue reading “5 Ways to Improve Car Manufacturer Website Usability”

10 Ways to Amp Up Your Content

When you think of “web content” do you immediately think of paragraphs of text? I’m guilty of this, too. Content in the form of text is a great way to provide information, but it’s not always the most user-friendly or approachable. It has one major drawback — you actually have to read it to understand it. … Continue reading “10 Ways to Amp Up Your Content”

Happy Birthday to June UX: One Year Old!

My little company, June UX, is turning one! Never has a year gone by so fast. Here is a recap of how it began, what I did, who I met and what I plan to do next. Why I Did It Being independent has been exactly what I dreamt it would be: a healthy balance … Continue reading “Happy Birthday to June UX: One Year Old!”

Confusing, Incomplete Content Creates the Most Usability Issues

If you haven’t witnessed a usability study before, you may have wondered what types of issues test participants find, and how many issues they typically uncover. 5 issues? 50 issues? 500 issues? Gulp. Of the 100+ issues I uncover in a typical usability study, more than one-third are content-related. Types of Usability Issues I conducted my … Continue reading “Confusing, Incomplete Content Creates the Most Usability Issues”

Cutting Out User Research Costs You Money

User research (that is, talking one-on-one with your target audience) ensures that your website requirements are aligned with your customers’ needs. In the long-run, user research saves time, reduces revisions and second-guessing, uncovers lost revenue opportunities and identifies wasted resources. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing things because your competitors do them. … Continue reading “Cutting Out User Research Costs You Money”

6 Ways I Would Improve the Usability of Etsy

UPDATE: I launched a shop on Etsy about 2 weeks after this post was published. A lot has changed on Etsy since this post was first written in 2012. I first discovered Etsy in 2006 and was immediately addicted despite my poor success rate of finding anything I actually wanted to buy. Here was my typical … Continue reading “6 Ways I Would Improve the Usability of Etsy”