Worth a look: Jared Spool on usability and branding

 – posted June 1st, 2007 by Laurence Veale     Comments (2)

Photo of Jared Spool

How poor usability can negatively affect your brand

Using Cisco as an example, Jared starts off by illustrating the hoops customers have to jump through just to buy a Cisco-branded t-shirt. The registration process is so laborious that I’d guarantee that there’s a huge drop-off in their online sales process. Screenshots of the sequence of events are below…

Step 1: Starting to shop (screenshot)

Step 2: Login dialog (screenshot)

Step 3: Login Error (screenshot)

Step 4: Fill out the registration form with duplicate fields

Step 4 continued: Will I bother filling out all these fields when I don't know what they mean? Unlikely.

I’d love to see their conversion rate of initial shoppers through to full check-out in a Cisco web analytics report. My guess is that it hovers at somewhere at less than 10% (and I’m being very generous with that figure).

Basics of branding

Using some really great examples, Jared takes the audience through:

  • Affinity branding
  • Dispositional branding
  • Recency
  • Experience branding

Measuring the user experience at NetFlix

Screenshot of Netflix

Jared highlighted some interesting metrics from Netflix (a video rental service).

  • 85% of people who signed up to NetFlix did so because it came highly recommended from a friend.
  • 93% of Netflix subscribers have tried to convince people to sign up to the service

Netflix use the above statistics as two key performance indicators for their business. If the above numbers start to dip it gives them a good view of what revenue will be 6 weeks later. Of course, these numbers are based mainly on one thing: the user experience

In looking at a previous incarnation of the Ford website, Jared concludes that the user experience plays a far more important role than branding elements like logos etc.

Experience trumps branding elements everytime

Screenshot of Craigs List

Craigslist, devoid of any “branding elements”, has extremely high brand engagement, as does MySpace (and Bebo on this side of the pond). The experience dominates

When your experience is going well, then any brand you come into contact with will strengthen. Conversely, if you’re having a tough time, ironically when buying a Cisco-branded t-shirt, then your affinity to that brand will diminish.

Some advertising can diminish your brand via a poor experience

Screenshot of NY Times advertisedment which loads before the article you want to read

Just think of your own experience in reading a newspaper article only for a pop-in/pop-over or splash page advertisement to disrupt your reading and force you to close it before you continue.

Was the advertiser’s brand enforced or diminished by this experience? And what about the publisher, how do view them for allowing this kind of advertising? Is their brand also affected one way or the other?

Enough of writing about what Jared talked about. Go see for yourself…

Watch Jared speak on usability and branding

At iQ we focus on the user experience

Evaluating and designing the user experience (”usability“) is at the core of our business. Only when you focus on the user (aligned with business goals, of course) will you start to see measurable benefits from your website. Interested? Let’s talk…

Categories Design, Spotted, Usability

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