6 cons of remote usability testing

Remote usability testing is a way used to understand how people across geographies interact and behave with the interface you have made, remotely. This testing is moderated by a person who is interacting with the participant using internet sharing tools and a telephone connection. The participant is provided with a set of tasks to complete on screen before the actual start of the session.

During this process, it is advisable to involve one or more silent moderators as the moderator may not be able to record all participant actions and expressions happening during the session. The following are the cons of remote usability testing:

·         Security – Security is a big concern for financial based websites as they deal with sensitive information. Remote testing of these websites may lead to several security issues such as sharing secret information, saving of credentials in unauthorized systems, etc. So, it’s better to perform usability testing in a lab and get non-disclosure form signed by participants.

·         Need for special equipment – Remote testing needs some special equipment such as VoIP phones, System with configuration that is compatible with WebEx recorder, web conferencing, etc.

·         Lack of participant feeling/expression tracking – Moderators can’t see the participant’s expressions or body language during remote usability testing, which refrain them from extracting useful insights from participant facial behavior.

·         Need for usability lab – A lab is a must for any type of testing. Remote usability testing definitely needs a lab, as the lab provides an environment such as hardware, software, equipment required for the testing. The lab is useful to monitor the participants clearly and document your observations.

·         Lack of informal conversations with participants – Remote usability testing helps you to track participant’s behavior only through formal conversations. Ideally participant’s behavior can be tracked more clearly through informal conversations, as these informal conversations break the barrier between the moderator and the participants, and make participants feel more comfortable with the testing process.

·         Need for strong internet connection – Remote usability testing actually requires a strong internet connection from participant end, as this type of testing depends on functioning of WebEx recorder. If there is internet failure, then scheduled testing will be elapsed, which involved rescheduling all usability testing processes

5 Ways to Overcome Social Media challenges When Targeting Global Audience

The days we debate on need of content strategy are gone. Now it’s the trend of implementing content strategy for social media, as most of them access content on the go. When considering social media, global audience and market are a part of it.

Social Media Strategy

 Let’s have a look at how to address social media content when targeting global market/audience:

·         Localization – Localization is an important element when the content addresses global audience. Always provide native translations of blog/tweet, but don’t mix languages on the same blog. Additionally take care of variations in spelling across several regions. Understand the localization capabilities on each social platform.

·         Time Zone – When considering global audience, time zone is one of the critical factors for a website. Always accommodate their communications at appropriate time to achieve wider sales reach and improved ROI. Also find the best times of day and days of the week globally for engaging in social media activity.

·         Cultural differences – Most websites use lot of images, blogs, and pictures to replace content. When selecting images, pictures, website theme and color scheme, consider doing a research on what certain colors mean in different countries

·         Audience Segment - Segment your social media audience based on your target country and language. Use social networks’ localization features wherever possible, to save you from maintaining a social media account for every language.

·         Effort Prioritization – Prioritization of effort is important when dealing with social media. Effort Prioritization includes selection of most impactful social media network, analyzing social media network and resource bandwidth. Once you are comfortable and successful in handling one social media network, move on to next impactful social media network.

5 Reasons Why B2B Marketers use Social Media More Than B2C Marketers?

Social media is a fad in the current trend.  93% of B2B marketers use social media to market their business. It acts as a two-way glass for most of B2B companies. Yes, more the transparency in business the more you build credibility and trust factor of your brand, which in turn leads to a successful business. Many B2B marketers are doing well in business and contributing a lot to the community but it is not widely known to others. When it is known, that is where you drive traffic to your website.

                                             

Business-Business Companies

                                                                                                                     

The reasons why B2B companies use social media more for marketing than B2C companies are as follows:

·         Know audience better – B2B companies use social media to easily develop and distribute content as well as engage with users. Social media is used to reach out and grow relationships with both customers and prospects on a more personal level.

·         Long-lasting customer relationship – B2B buyers spend larger amount of money and a longer amount of time in the buying process, so marketers foster long-lasting business relationship with customer through social media marketing.

·         Social Listening – Social media is used to capture customer feedback, resolve their issues and improve business processes or products in the future. It helps to monitor competitors and provide valuable insights to improve business objectives. It acts as a collaboration platform to meet client and business partner expectations.

·         New business partnerships – Social media paves way for huge markets. There are millions of people starting from CEO to fresher of a company who are using social media such as Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. Companies can connect to at least small percentage of those people, to increase their business opportunity and reach. Many times probability of getting new ventures or projects is also possible. It acts as a tool to share your business with the world.

·         Improved search rankings – Search engine rankings play a vital role in business digital strategy of a B2B Marketer. Nearly 60% of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings from their social efforts as compared to 50% of B2C marketers. Social media boosts search engine ranking of a website. eMarketer Survey says “Social media's influence on driving business via the web is expected to surpass search engine optimization (SEO) in 2013”.

Six Ways to Use Gamification to Improve Employee Engagement in an Enterprise

Gamification is one of the hottest topics in the current UX trends. It is a great way to build a community around a product, platform or service. It helps to retain more users by allowing them to compete and enhance their experience. Gamifying influences the users’ behavior positively.

Gamify your Enterprise

Enterprises are the places which are in need of positive user behavior. A recent study says 85% of HR executives state the greatest challenge they face in managing the workforce is their inability to recruit and retain employees. To overcome such challenges, follow the below gamification ways to improve employee retention in an organization:

·         Attract – Provide an effective prize such as featuring of winners on the home page of the employee portal, at the end of attractive knowledge based contests. This will attract more employees to contribute to the knowledge space.

·         Engage – Host contests or exhibition that are open only to specific groups within the organization, on the employee portal. This creates a healthy platform for innovation and engages all participants.

·         Reward – Add gamification mechanics such as badges, accomplishments to motivate employees to engage more with the platform or a product. This increases both direct employee engagement and retention.

·         Encourage – Allow employees to embed their badges on their websites and social media channels.

·         Recognize – Link employee engagement portal activities with employee appraisal cycle. This will enable managers to recognize the employee activities and thereby rewarding them at right times.

·         Promote as thought leaders – Create leaderboards, competitions and group features. Provide a dedicated space for thought leader’s blogs. This will motivate all employees to reach such thought leadership level.

5 Reasons why taxonomy is important for a website

Site taxonomy is very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Taxonomy can drive your breadcrumb navigation which is one of the important factors for effective SEO.

Taxonomy serves as a roadmap as it describes the present and the future content too. Now let’s take a look at the following reasons why Taxonomy is important for a website:

·         Improve information retrieval (faceted search) – Users always want more precise information during search results. This can be achieved only by faceted search. Faceted search enables users to create their own custom search path rather than forcing them to use specific path. Facets reduce ambiguity in queries, enhance user experience and avoid irrelevant results. It enables users to quickly drill down through thousands of matches.

·         Localization & Content re-use – Localization, translation & content re-use are time consuming tasks. Taxonomy lowers translation costs, maximizes content reuse and thereby enhancing brand value.

·         Increase Upselling and cross-selling opportunities – Taxonomy indirectly improves customer retention by facilitating  better keyword search decisions, which in-turn increases upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

·         Improve navigation –Ensure that all web pages are properly and consistently tagged with keywords and search engine is configured to search only keyword tags, so that if user enters the keywords, all relevant pages gets listed.

·         Content Enrichment – In addition to the findability, the naming of terms and concepts should be given importance. If the user enters different words or synonyms then some relevant pages gets missed. To avoid this, create a controlled vocabulary in the form of a synonym look-up table. The search engine searches for the word or phrase on the table, whose terms are matched with text of the documents.



Reflection of taxonomy in organization structure

By integrating taxonomy, you can achieve a more efficient search experience and improve the organizational structure of your website.

  

11 Reasons why websites should have social media

In the last few years, the numbers of social media websites have expanded greatly as they found social media as an ever-evolving communications tool. Social media is not only great in connecting people but also in reaching out to customers. So what are you waiting for? If you want to take advantage of social media, here are the reasons why you should have social media:

#1: Connecting people – Social media helps connecting people faster, so only many corporate companies provide intranet social networking sites. The most accessed social media website identified by a recent research was twitter, followed by Facebook, LinkedIn and company intranet.

#2: Quick & Responsive communication –Social media offers a good opportunity to provide responsive service to wider audience. Addressing consumer complaints constantly can turn into good testimonials when handled with utmost care.

#3: Promote business – Provide interesting and useful content on the website and involve social media to your website. It will do magic for your website. Users will start sharing your interesting content with their friends and also provide recommendations for your product. These recommendations act as an effective way to promote a business and to expand your reach. 32% of consumers use social media specifically to connect with other consumers or to share positive experiences.

#4: Expertise – Every organization’s dream is to establish themselves as an expert in their field. To become an expert, you can use social media to ask and answer questions related to your field. Several senior officials hang out on this space, to perfectly flaunt their expertise.

#5: Direct Online Marketing – Companies always push sales offers through social networks, but they weren’t successful enough in it. So which works effectively? Yes, email works very well along with social media for direct marketing purposes. Create attention and interest through interaction, participation and education. As a brand provide value and trust through social media that allows a community to interact with the brand. Once trust and value are established, now it’s time to add interested community members to email list, to send commercial messages and offers.

#6: Create positive brand experience -  Social media is a two-way channel. 55% of consumers say they engage with brands through channels like Facebook and other social networks to learn about new products, enter unique promotions and contests. Customers have high expectations when connecting with brands through social media. All brands strive to make their online presence as engaging as they can. One such way of increasing online presence is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To provide effective SEO, perform a thorough research of keywords that are likely to lead users to your website.

Social Success

#7: Build Trust factor – For big brands, building trust with potential customers is a business goal. But big brands often deal with several businesses for the same customers. So it is better to build a solid positive online reputation to stand out of the market competition. 84% of survey respondents said brands needed to prove they are trustworthy before customers start their online interaction, by displaying customer reviews and recommendations on social networks – Source: e-Marketer. Also maintain consistency amongst social and offline messages, as this will not only build trust but also your brand identity.

#8: Best customer experience – If companies actively engage in social media, they can identify customer sentiments and analyze feedback & recommendations to tweak their strategy to improve productivity and thereby revenue.

#9: Fun and engagement factor – Provide value to your company and services by offering content, apps, videos, contests daily in a creative way. Post or push suitable marketing content through social media at right times especially on Thursday and Friday, as Monday to Wednesday customers will be more focused at work. Use call-to-action words such as post, comment, submit, etc. in the post, as those are the direct words which are effective amongst customers.

#10: Social responsibility – Socially responsible brands gain more market as they are letting their customers know that they are giving back to their communities. It is used to promote campaigns and charity for a good cause. For example, ASICS has an exclusive Facebook page containing details about charity events such as Marathon, The soles4souls, etc., to create transparency by letting their customers know that they give back to the society.

#11: Transparency – Transparency is how people discuss about issues associated with your brand online.  65% of companies have their social media links on the home page of their website. These companies have succeeded in building transparency amongst wider audience. The more and more transparency we achieve, the more and more expansion of breadth and depth of engagement with visitors.

In general, social media is a boon for companies who want to improve their brand identity and expand their reach. The more you involve in social media, the more you can achieve as a successful brand.