The Internet may be virtual, but customers live in physical space and often need to visit companies in the real world. Given this, geography determines business success in a very simple way: Customers can either identify and find your location or they cannot.
Websites play a major role in helping customers find their way to company locations, including branches, stores, offices, dealers, and other outlets such as ATMs, package drop-off points, or facilities that accept return goods for e-commerce sites. Whenever customers need to transact business at a physical location, a company's website should help them find the most convenient location that offers the services they need.
We’ve seen this problem before when we wrote about the illusion of completeness. In a prior study we asked 8 users to visit a meal-delivery website and find out what service that company offered. Six of those participants clicked on the Get Started button because it seemed to match their
First, pilot your interview guide on yourself to learn how you would answer the questions in your interview guide. Even asking yourself your own questions might make it clear that some of your questions don’t work. Second, before you run your interviews with lots of users, recruit one user for a
Even though transactional messages are typically sent after the user has placed an order, these messages have substantial business value in improving customer satisfaction. They can increase the likelihood that the user will place another order in the future. Each email is another touchpoint on the
The Blockchain Talent Shortage May Be Nearing Its End
Learning blockchain basics isn’t enough for most companies—they want people who have real, demonstrable experience in solving blockchain problems and/or building new systems. Thankfully, there are more opportunities to earn those credentials in the form of bounties and open problems. For
2 Billion Downloads Later, Apple’s App Store is Still Going Strong
It would be nice if Apple gave us a better breakdown of the kinds of apps it actually delivers (free vs. paid, games vs. utilities, etc.). This kind of transparency is obviously not in Apple’s DNA, so we depend on data from third-party services like AdMob for this information. According to
Blockchain-Based Data Security Taking Over Key Industries
One of the leading innovators in blockchain technology has been ALTR. In June 2018, ALTR made a splash in the healthcare scene with its announcement of multi-million-dollar funding to advance is blockchain cybersecurity initiative. The company’s proprietary Altrchain technology, a blockchain
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Take Uber for example. While the experience is hugely popular and generally pain free, there is room for enhancement — especially for large groups travelling together. Currently, a group must problem-solve in order to figure out how many “ubers” to call and and how many passengers can fit in
helping users find physical locations
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
Aggregated empathy maps can also become ways to summarize other qualitative data like surveys and field studies. For example, an empathy map can be used to communicate a persona, instead of the traditional ‘business card’ approach. As more research is gathered about that persona, you can circle
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Unless you have an unlimited clothes budget, it’s unrealistic (and wasteful) to wear a new outfit for every single occasion, yet social media pressures us into it. Rent a Runway solves this tension elegantly by recycling (expensive) clothes across a large set of women. It’s an example of the
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes of 2008
He was the only user to test this site because he encountered it during a task in which users could choose a site to visit (usually from a search listing). In this case, the user eventually overcame the confusion and proceeded to enter his measurements. If we had tested more users, a small
Designing Effective Infographics
Infographics are an excellent way to communicate complex concepts in an accessible and even entertaining manner. This hybrid medium combines data visualizations with graphics and text to make the information easy to understand. Many established heuristics of user-interface design can be applied to
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same quadrant. Name your clusters with themes that represent each group (for example, “validation from others” or “research”). Repeat themes in each quadrant if
WP Engine Sales and Customer Service Teams Recognized at The Stevie Awards
The Stevie Awards are a set of hundreds of business awards given annually by the American Business Awards organization. They were created in 2002 to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of companies and business people worldwide. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards are given to
helping users find physical locations
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US
Last week, WP Engine employees from all over the U.S. came together at our Austin headquarters for the first biannual All-Hands event of 2019. All Hands is a two-day event in which employees from other offices and teams around the country get the chance to collaborate and strategize with one
A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit
To conclude the Summit, we heard from WP Engine leaders who offered a look into the WP Engine roadmap. This included a look at newly released products, like our Global Edge Security offering in partnership with Cloudflare, as well as a deep-dive into our recent acquisition of StudioPress. To wrap
Troubleshooting Group Ideation: 10 Fixes for More and Better UX Ideas
With looming deadlines, email notifications, and text messages competing for attention, it can be hard to keep everyone in the session focused on ideation. Even when teammates manage to stay on task, their engagement in the session can be diminished by the stress of other priorities waiting at
Preventing User Errors: Avoiding Unconscious Slips
Some tasks really do require users to type very detailed or precise information, but forcing people to provide this information in a very specific format can be at odds with good usability practices: If you are asking users to input numerical information into a form, be flexible, and format that
Iterative Design of User Interfaces
The overall quality of a system is actually a sum of many quality attributes, only one of which is usability. Additionally, a system should of course be socially acceptable and be practically feasible with respect to cost, maintainability, etc. Furthermore, the system should fulfill additional
Past Bitcoin to Making Money from the Blockchain
There are jobs listed from all over the world for every specialty from developer to trader to meme specialist (it’s real – look it up). There are also gig economy opportunities for blockchain and cryptocurrency companies if you don’t want to quit your day job. You can even do gigs and get
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
The Biggest Hacking Risk? Your Employees
One of the easiest vectors for a cyberattack is employee negligence. Easily avoidable mistakes, such as using the same passwords at home and at work, put company data at risk. According to a report from information security company Shred-it, 47 percent of business leaders attribute data breaches to
The Role of IT or an IT Consultant Provider for Business Growth
The continued attacks of malware and unethical hacks online presents extended challenges for all business. Any companies future is in the hands of their honest, hard working IT professionals. IT professionals are depended upon for help and security. A company depends on reports of any suspicious
helping users find physical locations
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
Helping Users Find Physical Locations | The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters
The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters
We don’t go to a page, see useless and irrelevant content, and scroll out of the blind hope that something useful may be hidden 5 screens down. What we find at the top of the page helps us decide to continue scrolling, navigate to another page, try another site, or abandon the task altogether
Zigzag Image–Text Layouts Make Scanning Less Efficient
Decorative images can be beneficial for establishing brand identity on a web page even if users only look at the first few of them, see them in their peripheral vision, or glance at them briefly as they scroll back up the page. However, it’s best to align the images to support efficient scanning
The Fold Manifesto: Why the Page Fold Still Matters
We don’t go to a page, see useless and irrelevant content, and scroll out of the blind hope that something useful may be hidden 5 screens down. What we find at the top of the page helps us decide to continue scrolling, navigate to another page, try another site, or abandon the task altogether
