Digital Strategy with Firecat Studio

Segmenting for Success and other WordCamp 2020 goodness

If you missed WordCamp San Antonio 2020 - you missed a great couple days of interaction, but you did not miss all that great content!

Firecat CEO Susan Price spoke in the Marketing track on Segmenting for Success. You can watch the entire WordCamp San Antonio 2020 by going through the WordCamp San Antonio 2020 website. You'll need to log in and agree to terms. Here's a screenshot for finding Susan's track - it's the third one down in the Marketing Segment.

Check out all the other content! Get better at marketing, at WordPress, at business. 

Let's #BetheRecovery - it's a great time to "sharpen the saw" or improve our own business tactics and processes.

Worlds Colliding: Sketchnoting and WordCamp

I love the synergy. Michael Clayton made this lovely #Sketchnote of my WordCamp San Antonio #WCSATX talk! If you missed it, I believe the videos will be posted soon, but in the meantime, this is a distillation. Sort of humbling that it took me 45 minutes to say!

 

#sketchnotes from @FirecatSue on "Usability Techniques To Enhance UX" during #wcsatx

A photo posted by Michael Clayton (@profclayton) on Jan 24, 2015 at 3:04pm PST

 

WordCamp San Antonio 2015: Usability Techniques for UX

Here are the slides from Firecat CEO Susan Price's presentation at WordCamp San Antonio 2015 — I'm showing several usability techniques and tools. If you know of new tools and techniques, please let us know; we love that stuff.

Susan provides presentations, training and consultations on Integrated Digital Strategy, Usability and User-Centered Design, Search Engine Optimization, Effective Social Media Marketing, and other digital business topics. 

If you live in San Antonio, join Firecat and other professionals responsible for digital marketing for business at our free Firecat First Friday sessions. 

When Clients Don't Need to See Your UX Deliverables

If you're looking to integrate usability in your digital design process, here's an article from 2011 that is well worth reading. 

I enjoy analyzing user behavior, coming up with marketing strategies, and other creative endeavors. I enjoy it more than my clients enjoy it — but sometimes I fall into the trap of showing clients too much of these activities, instead of doing them (my core competency and passion) and pulling out the important takeaways in a quick summary for the client. Or better yet — just expressing the learnings in the final product.

Jeff Gothelf's Getting Out of the Deliverables Business article on Smashing Magazine makes this case, and in the process, describes "Lean UX" — an analog to Lean/Agile development technology. Check it out.

At Firecat, we're still working out the best mix of deliverables and activities, which the client needs to see and approve, and of course, these vary by project. Some things I've learned while trying to make Lean UX work:

• There's no substitute for prototypes and documentation when using distributed teams, overseas contractors, and so forth. But the client doesn't always need to see them.
• Clients used to a traditional design agency relationship are used to a waterfall approach, but can become fans if you involve them in fun, collaborative sessions.
• It's even more vital to have a budget for emerging ideas and different scope. 
• User testing is so valuable. When clients can't afford it, do as much of it as you can, guerrilla style.

Which deliverables do you share with clients, and why?

Knowbility Kickstarter for Web Accessibility

Firecat is a supporter of Knowbility, a leading provider for web accessibility training, and a great, worthy nonprofit. 

Knowbility is running a Kickstarter campaign — and Firecat is in. Are you? Join in before October 31 to help Knowbility create online accessibility training that will help make the web what it was intended to be - accessible to all.

Web Site Project Getting Off Track? We're here!

Firecat Studio's highest value to many of our clients comes at the beginning of a big project, when we're thinking through the strategy, getting clear on the goals, and creating clear, measurable requirements and success metrics.

It's the part of the project we love best, and where our experience with a huge variety of businesses and industries comes into play for the biggest ROI. We have wonderful, cutting-edge tools and methods to set a digital project on the right course; ask any of our clients — this is our secret sauce.

But you don't have to wait for a redesign or new project before getting our help. Anytime you want some fresh ideas, a translator between you and your agency or development team, or just a second opinion on your uneasy feeling that your website, email or social media program could be paying off more and moving your business faster, take us up on our free 15 minute consultation to explore what working with Firecat can do for you.

 

Easy Checks: Making Accessibility More Accessible

There are simple things web designers, developers and content specialists can do to make content and web technology accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. 

Why Is Web Accessibility Important?

If you're wondering why web accessibility should be on your radar, consider these reasons.

Reach. People who are blind, deaf or mobility impaired do use the Internet — in such large numbers that it doesn't make business sense to ignore them or shut them out. Shawn Henry opened my eyes to this many years ago; most of us are or will BE "disabled" at some time in our lives; it's a broader market than you probably think. Consider folks who need bigger text on pages (especially those over 40). People trying to hit a button or link on a mobile devices with one hand. Arm, wrist or hand in a cast, trying to use a mouse or keyboard shortcuts. I'm at work and my headphones are in the car, and I need to know what this video is saying without sharing with everyone in my office.

Legal protection. Federal and state codes require compliance with Section 508 or other accessibility guidelines, and the courts have awarded large settlements in suits brought against corporations and other service providers. 

SEO benefit. Making your web presence friendly to the blind and deaf includes these users you may care about: the Googlebot, the Bing Site Indexer and the Yahoo Web Crawler, to name a few.

Clean code saves time and money. Following the W3C's web standards for coding means your code is better structured, more workable, and more portable between platforms and devices.

It's the right thing to do. Even if the above weren't true — c'mon! 

Learning Web Accessibility

Web accessibility isn't brain surgery — but it can be complex, and a bit murky at times. I highly recommend any of the seminars, contests or other events from Knowbility. Some of the WCAG accessibility guidelines are clear cut, and some aren't. Some fixes are easy to implement, and some are a judgment call or require major reworking.

Enter Easy Checks

The W3C recently released Easy Checks — meant to be used by designers and developers to quickly check for "low-hanging fruit" accessibility issues they can address relatively easily, or at least get started evaluating the accessibility of sites and functionality they've created.

Web users with a variety of accessibility aids. Image courtesy Knowbility.org.

Sharron Rush, Firecat Friend and select partner, is the executive director of Knowbility — she led the W3C accessibility team through the creation of Easy Checks. Listen to Whitney Quisenbery's discussion with Sharron about the Easy Checks offering.

Navigation Design: "Make Everything Two Clicks Away"

At Firecat Studio, we do a lot of Website Redesigns. When a client approaches us for a redesign, they often say, "Our site looks outdated." And when we look at it together, they're right - we see a site using outmoded styles, maybe a Flash element, a width or orientation to the screen that says "Nobody considered mobile design when this was last touched."

We Want A Makeover

They say things like:

• This is using our OLD logo. We want a NEW logo.
• I hate these colors. We need fresher colors.
• I'd like to see some different choices of fonts.
• We want a slideshow like our competitors have. I want it to MOVE!

These are perfectly reasonable requests, but frankly, they leave me a bit cold. I don't get nearly as excited about a site's skin and makeup as I do about it's general health and bone structure. 

Information Architecture

So a visit with Firecat can be more like seeing an architect, and less like going to a salon. Lately, I've had a couple of clients coming in asking much deeper, more perspective questions. In the past couple of weeks, I've heard:

• How should we categorize the information?
• What should our "navigation tabs" be so that people can find their way?

Music to my ears! I get all geeked out and excited about the organization of information. About optimizing navigation and labeling to get people where they want to go.

It's pretty common, actually, for clients to ask us to put "everything no more than a click away." That isn't easy, and it isn't always the best solution. I understand why they ask for it though.

Putting content into a straightforward, clearly labeled navigation scheme seems really easy until you try it, and then watch someone ELSE use your scheme. Some of my most valuable experience has been spending time behind one-way glass in a usability lab, watching people struggle with an information architecture or navigation I was SURE was a winner. What makes sense to me doesn't necessarily make sense to a user. 

Fresh Set of Eyes

It's hard for anyone too familiar with a content set to create great navigation. As a vendor who's relatively new to a client's content, I'm positioned well to represent users - at the beginning of a client relationships. After working with a client over several years, I start thinking of the content like the insiders do, and lose that "fresh set of eyes" magic.

The Scent of Information

Jared Spool of UIE has written, taught and podcasted extensively about the designing for the Scent of Information. The idea is, users will happily follow a navigation trail across several links or clicks as long as they remain confident that they are on the correct trail. Consider this example: You need to update a printer driver. You go to the HP website. You have no problem following a trail with up to 20 clicks, as long as it was a straightforward trail. Such as:

HP > Support > Downloads > Print Drivers > LaserJet > Model 1320n > MacOS X > Download Now

Imagine a user thinking "Yep!" "Right." "LaserJet, there is is." "Bingo!" Bop, bop, bop.

In this example, there's a couple things at work that make the scent straightforward. The user and the company have a shared vocabulary. Every item in this complex hierarchy can be put into a mutually exclusive category - categories don't have to overlap, they're not messy.

But not all content sets are that straightforward. 

Flat Versus Deep Information Architecture

Jakob Nielsen (another go-to User-Centered Design advice source) puts out an Alertbox on Flat versus Deep Information Architecture. Here's a summary:

Like most design questions, there's no single right answer, and going too far to either extreme will backfire. Flat hierarchies tend to work well if you have distinct, recognizable categories, because people don't have to click through as many levels. When users know what they want, simply get out of the way and let them find it.

But there are exceptions to every rule. In some situations, there are simply too many categories to show them all at one level. In other cases, showing specific topics too soon will just confuse your audience, and users will understand your offerings much better if you include some intermediate category pages to establish context.

We offer a handy Website Redesign Checklist to help explore some of these deeper issues, and we'd be happy to send you a copy. 

Search is the Front Door for User Experience

@AbbytheIA is a talented information architect (that's what IA stands for) who shares great info. Her latest slideshare makes an important point: Search is the "Front Door" for most user experience.

Web designers often fall into the trap of designing for themselves, unintentionally. That's why I love doing usability tests. In Firecat usability studies, we start most task scenarios with inviting the user to tell us how they would find a certain web function or service. It's most often Google, sometimes Bing. We always capture what search strings they think of - very, very interesting data. Eye opening.

Many, Many User Experiences Start With Web Search

Frequently we see users who start every task by Googling a web address. Let's say the task is looking up a book on Amazon. Instead of typing Amazon.com into the address bar of the browser, they type "Amazon.com" into Google's search bar, find Amazon as the top result, then click it to get to Amazon's home page. I squirm every single time. If you type "am" in Chrome's address bar, Chrome suggests Amazon right away.

But this strategy works for the user! The extra steps don't matter, because as Jared Spool eloquently stated in his classic Scent of Information presentations (preso proper starts at 2:21), as long as people have the solid feeling of progressing toward the desired goal, they're fine. Happy. Productive.

Game theory helps us understand the happiness/effort spiral. People don't mind clicking or looking or guessing - in fact, they get a little jolt of happiness when they take an action and the "system" responds to them, showing "you guessed right!" It's like a gold star, a validation of competence, knowledge, intelligence. What they mind is frustration, and being made to feel stupid.

Starting with "how will they find us" is the right way to go. Here - AbbytheIA will tell you!

Search is the Front Door to UX from Abby Covert

Need Help Driving Traffic to Your Website?

Firecat Studio designs front doors and experiences for users that bring the right customers, prospects, users to you. We can help with any of these important next steps:

• Optimize web designs to meet that sweet intersection between your goals and the user's goals. 
• Conduct reviews and usability studies that validate web, mobile and social media designs
• Analyze your metrics to measure performance and plan improvements.

Get in touch if you'd like a free 15-minute consultation with a Firecat digital strategist.