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.
Think about when people may switch channels and iron any wrinkles in the transition. In the baby-swing example, Walmart did a nice job of facilitating the transition to the store for pickup. The email notifying the user that the items were ready for pickup provided step-by-step instructions and
Despite the observed change in shopping behaviors, we do not mean to suggest brick-and-mortar shopping is dead. On the contrary, real-world locations are still an important shopping channel. Their relevance in the retail ecosystem is simply changing. People still want to go to the store for many
A website is like a house with a thousand front doors: visitors can enter anywhere. The homepage is typically the main entry point, so you should definitely check to ensure that you don't commit common mistakes in homepage design. But users arrive at many other pages as well, and even if you've
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
In healthcare, the robot’s role is to take over tedious, time-consuming, and dangerous or dirty jobs for nurses. Very few nurses dream of sanitizing equipment or dispensing medication when they enter nursing school. They want to be working directly with patients, healing the sick and providing
Is the Blockchain Role in Advertising Too Overrated?
In digital and programmatic advertising, fraudsters found the perfect getaway to enormous bot-induced incomes. Click-fraud installs hijacking, and other illegal online activities bring 2500-4100% ROI to fraudsters, which translates to only 56 cents that brands receive from each dollar they have
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Pre Uber we were all plagued with standing on the corner, possibly in the rain, belongings in hand while attempting to wave down one of the few free taxis. (The worse the rain, the fewer the taxis — that’s a law of nature.) An abundance of unknowns adding further anxiety: how much is it going
helping users find physical locations
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
Experience Design: Bridging Brand Intention and Brand Interpretation
Designers extended these elements to create user interactions that aligned with Google brand attributes. The dot animations that reflect the “expressions” of listening, thinking, replying, incomprehension, and confirmation not only serve as a way to indicate system status (remember, this is one
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes of 2008
Users will most likely fail if you deviate from expectations on something as basic as the controls to operate a UI. And, even if they don't fail, they'll expend substantial brainpower trying to operate something that shouldn't require a second thought. Users' cognitive resources are better spent
Tabs, Used Right
If you follow the design guidelines in this article, users will know how to use your tabs without further exploration or error-prone guessing. This again means that they can devote all their time and brainpower to understanding the content and features that you’re making available under these
OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK? The Trouble With Buttons
We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes: OK / Cancel Cancel / OK Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences: Listing OK
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
helping users find physical locations
Genesis Framework and StudioPress Themes Now Available for WP Engine Customers .
At WP Engine, we’re passionate about creating new possibilities for our customers and the broader WordPress open source communities. By offering the themes and framework in our platform, we’re enhancing customers’ ability to build beautiful and powerful websites, while also expanding the
WP Engine Culture Recognized at Greater Austin Business Awards
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
Amazon is well-known for testing new designs to ensure that they don't negatively impact sales, but just because this model works for Amazon doesn't mean it will work for other sites. Few organizations have the overwhelming brand penetration that Amazon enjoys, and even brands that are household
UX Guidelines for Recommended Content
The higher these individualized recommendation areas appeared on the site’s homepage, the more likely it was that users noticed and used them. For example, Amazon included several clearly personalized content areas near the top of the homepage, as well as throughout the long-scrolling page, and
Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability
Many design teams skip competitive testing because of the added expense of testing several sites. (For example, Nielsen Norman Group currently charges $45,000 for most competitive testing and only $22,000 to test a single website. Of course, you can get cheaper tests from Tier-2 or Tier-3
8 predictions for the future of IoT in 2017
Similarly, insurance companies will start to invest more in a move to adapt to the IoT. The IoT is going to generate data that will fundamentally redefine the way they can calculate and mitigate risk. This year will be critical for them as they work to embrace the IoT with early consumer
Cybersecurity in IoT: Achieving Digital Security in an Age of Surveillance
The blockchain was initially conceived by bitcoin developers to facilitate p2p transactions without the use of an intermediary like a bank. It’s been pretty successful so far, and this same concept can be applied to IoT. The creation of unique IoT related tokens can allow individuals to
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
The 6 Biggest Risks Today’s Internet Entrepreneurs Must Battle
Naturally, most people are hardwired to be risk averse. It’s a survival mechanism that’s ingrained in our DNA to prevent us from walking into dangerous situations without some degree of safety or preparation. It’s why our ancient ancestors wouldn’t walk around the woods without a weapon and
helping users find physical locations
Business Loan? Budding Entrepreneurs Raise Their Chances
While getting a business loan application approved by a banker, angel investor, or a private equity (PE) fund has always been a tall order. It has become even more complicated in the last two decades in the aftermath of global economic crises. There has been the subprime crisis (2008), the Eurozone
How to Save Money Filing Patents
For example, in Size Appeal of Novalar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., SBA No. SIZ-4977 (2008), the SBA Size Determination Board determined that an “affiliation” with an individual minority stockholder (a venture capital firm) transformed the otherwise small medical device startup company into a large
Helping Users Find Physical Locations | Video Usability
Video Usability
When you embed content that is hosted by another site or service, aim to control what, if anything, the site feeds to users at the end of your video content. Make sure that users are not presented with inappropriate videos or with a list of your competitors’ videos at the end of your video.
Website Forms Usability: Top 10 Recommendations
The usability of web forms is by no means a new topic. It has been covered in general usability references (including several NN/g books of both general usability guidelines, eyetracking usability research, and mobile usability). Many of the 114 UX guidelines for e-commerce shopping carts are
Maximize Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen
Eliminating the search box and replacing it with a magnifying-glass icon has become almost standard on mobile. It doesn’t work as well on the desktop: the space is simply too large and users don’t have the patience to hunt for a small search icon. If you consider using it on the desktop, keep
