Selain content, satu hal yang saya rasa perlu diperhatikan adalah
'ease-of-use'.
Ada newsletter yang ngebahas ttg ease-of-use ini. Contohnya saya lampirkan
di akhir e-mail ini.
Mudah-mudahan bermanfaat.
Wassalam,
-Yayan-
|====================================================================
| The Creative Good Update - Vol. 1, Issue 4 - Dec. '98
| By Mark Hurst, President of Creative Good
|
| <http://www.creativegood.com>
|
| Exploring the fact that on the Web, ease-of-use brings
| more customers, higher revenues, and better branding.
|====================================================================
|
|(c) 1998 Creative Good, Inc. and Mark Hurst. All rights reserved.
|
|
|In This Month's Issue:
|----------------------
|
|- It Ain't Just Navigation
|- Customers Win
|- Travelocity Redesigns for Ease-of-use
|- Make the Experience Count (Forbes Online Gets It)
|- Subscription/Contact Info
|
|
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
| It Ain't Just Navigation
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|People often ask me what ease-of-use really means: "That just
|means fixing the navigation of our site, right?"
|
|Ouch. Ease-of-use is much, much more than navigation. Ease-of-use
|is the degree to which a customer has a quick, easy, *good*
|experience on a website. Ease-of-use encompasses all aspects of
|the user experience. Yet many sites still think in terms of
|toolbars and color schemes.
|
|Some sites, for example, are focused so far away from ease-of-use
|that they forget about one of the most basic aspects of the user
|experience: replying to customers' e-mail. Infobeat reported a
|study last month by research firm Jupiter:
|
|> Forty-two percent of the top-ranked Web sites either took longer
|> than five days to reply to customer e-mail inquiries, never
|> replied, or were not accessible by e-mail, according to a report
|> issued today by Jupiter Communications. The Jupiter report
|> illustrates that Web sites are ignoring the opportunity to
|> communicate with existing and potential customers, discouraging
|> brand loyalty...
|
|Conclusion: Don't sell ease-of-use short. The user experience
|doesn't end with a painstakingly Photoshopped toolbar.
|
|
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Customers Win
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|Ease-of-use, and the user experience, are more important on the Web
|than in any other past medium. In an interactive medium offering so
|many choices, so easily accessed, you MUST serve the customer.
|
|NUA, an Irish consulting firm that writes several excellent
|Net-oriented newsletters, recently had some choice words about
|customers. (Do they sound familiar?)
|
|Here's how NUA put it:
|
|> Consumers are more sophisticated and given the profile of the
|> average Netizen, they are in a position to demand and pay for
|> increasingly higher standards of service and product. Hitherto,
|> companies were in a position to dictate prices and standards to
|> consumers, on the Internet however, that power has been annexed
|> and is firmly in the hands of the consumer.
|>
|> Companies are now making the first steps towards re-evaluating
|> strategies to focus on the consumer as opposed the product. A
|> recent Andersen Consulting survey of global companies found that
|> "Customer Relationship Management" is becoming pivotal in
|> corporate strategies. Right now, 18 percent of businesses maintain
|> strategies which revolve firmly around the needs of the customer,
|> by 2002, they expect that figure to be 50 percent.
|
|Conclusion: Either make the user experience a top priority NOW, or
|you'll be forced to do it LATER. Your choice.
|
|Visit NUA: <http://www.nua.ie>
|
|
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Travelocity Redesigns for Ease-of-use
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|Infobeat's Internet Daily recently reported that Travelocity had
|launched a new design. What was the focus? Terry Jones, CIO of The
|Sabre Group, put it this way:
|
|> "Our research has shown that consumers are most interested in
|> simplicity and speed when booking online."
|
|Simplicity and speed. In other words, the Travelocity redesign was
|all about making it FAST and EASY for customers to use.
|
|More importantly, the redesign was NOT primarily about price,
|selection, or that bugbear of an e-buzzword, *branding*. Forget all
|the hoo-ha about branding in other companies' press releases:
|Travelocity focused primarily on ease-of-use and the customer.
|
|("Branding" may be the most overused buzzword in the Web biz today.
|Companies launch websites with million-dollar graphics that take a
|year to load, then call it a "branding experience." Please.)
|
|Fortunately, certain corners of the press are getting the message
|that the online brand is only as good as its ease-of-use. You'll
|find two examples below.
|
|
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Make the Experience Count (Forbes Online Gets It)
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|The problem with so many websites is that they're designed with the
|wrong mindset. Some designers, coming to the Web from a career in
|print design, think only in terms of flashy graphics -- and create
|slow, bloated, graphical sites as a result. Other designers come
|from the CD-ROM world, with its spinning logos and futuristic
|interfaces, and create even slower sites. Corporate executives test
|out their new boondoggle websites over a super-fast T1 connection
|and are so impressed by the flashy interfaces that they gladly pay
|the million-dollar tab. Meanwhile, the site tells the customer to go
|away.
|
|Clearly there's a better way: make the website say YES to the
|customer. Focus on the customer. Focus on ease-of-use. Forget the
|old worlds of print and CD-ROM; this is the new world. Is the site
|easy to use, or not? Period!
|
|If you need any example of what I'm talking about, look no further
|than Forbes Online. I have met the team there: they know the score.
|Penelope Patsuris wrote the following in a recent article:
|
|> The Web isn't about image. Rather, it's about a user's
|> experience, and when it comes to navigating online, it often isn't
|> easy.
|
|The Web is all, and only, about serving the customer -- as Patsuris
|attests here:
|
|> Consumers are soon going to begin wondering: "Why click around,
|> when I can demand the information I want?" Ultimately, this is
|> going to change the web's entire dynamic, making advertisers begin
|> thinking in terms of meeting consumers' needs...
|
|You can find the whole article here at Forbes Online:
|
|<http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/98/oct/1016/side2.htm>
|
|Next month: a review of the recent Business Week article about
|online branding.
|
|
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Subscription/Contact Info
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|ABOUT MARK HURST
|Mark Hurst is the founder and president of Creative Good, the Web's
|first ease-of-use agency. An authority on Web ease-of-use, Hurst
|speaks and writes widely about improving the online user experience.
|Hurst also co-authored the groundbreaking report, "In Search of
|E-Commerce," which evaluates the buying experience on seven
|e-commerce sites. To read a free excerpt, or buy the report, visit
|<http://www.goodreports.com>.
|
|Contact Mark Hurst: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
|ABOUT CREATIVE GOOD
|Creative Good, the Web's first ease-of-use agency, creates better
|experiences for customers online. We make our clients money by
|making their websites easier to use. Clients include Charles Schwab,
|American Express, Sabre Interactive, CyberShop, N2K, and others.
|Services include ease-of-use analyses, Web design or redesign,
|usability testing, and strategic consulting.
|
|Contact Creative Good:
|Phone: 914.631.7570
|E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|Web: <http://www.creativegood.com>
|
|SUBSCRIBING
|To subscribe to the Creative Good Ease-of-use Update, send an e-mail
|to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The newsletter is free,
|so tell your friends (who have slow, complex websites).
|
|UNSUBSCRIBING
|To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|Alternatively, you can unsubscribe by replying to this e-mail with
|the word "unsubscribe" in the Subject line.
|
|
|"Every online brokerage should be EASY TO USE."
|- Ad in Business Week, touting an online brokerage's ease-of-use.
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
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