Successful online through usability optimization

Apple, Tesla and Amazon are leading the way. The American global corporations focus their products and services unconditionally on customer benefits and are extremely successful as a result. And on this side of the Atlantic, too, an increasing shift toward user-centric thinking can be observed in companies. "Practice just shows abundantly clearly that it pays off," says Benjamin Uebel. In 2011, the psychologist founded the Berlin-based digital agency Userlutionswhich specializes in testing and optimizing websites. With more than 250,000 test sessions with the web-based software RapidUsertests.com, the company has long since become the market leader for Usability TestingThe agency boss knows where the shoe pinches his customers: "Competitive pressure is high for all companies that operate in the digital market. Especially in e-commerce, the competitive pressure really hurts." The strong competitive pressure drives even companies originally rooted in the digital economy, such as e-commerce or software companies, to his agency. The greater the competitive pressure, the greater the awareness of how important it is to respond to user needs. The awareness is there, but there is often a lack of know-how on how user research, user-friendly interfaces and testing can best be implemented. In addition, usability costs time and money. "Testing costs a lot of time and most classic developers don't care about it," says Uebel. "Many don't think in terms of user needs, but in terms of features." Add to that the attitude that you know your product and your customers and don't need to test. A momentous mistake. Because the conversion rate of an online store, for example, which averages three percent, can quickly rise to four percent after optimizations to the user experience. A healthy 33 percent increase in sales quickly makes up for the investment.

Test to be the best

Although many companies are aware of the importance of this topic, they often lack foresight. They often end up with Benjamin Uebel and his team of 23 psychologists, cognitive scientists, interaction designers and user researchers. They support their customers with user research, interaction design and use various test procedures and methods to identify the "teething troubles" of the product. Online-based rapid user tests, in which real users test the website, are currently particularly popular. "The advantage here is clear: The view from the outside reveals practical problems," explains Uebel. "The company receives feedback directly from the target group." In this way, they can approach the optimal user experience step by step via testing.

Identify customer needs with plastic prototypes

But how do you decipher the customer benefits as precisely as possible, or precisely those parameters that are decisive in ensuring that the respective target group is "captured" by the site or the app? "We work very successfully here with so-called personas, which bundle user groups pictorially in a concrete person," says Uebel. "For example, a hardware store that wants to improve its website could have Hans, the janitor, as a plastic prototype in mind." And literally so. The prototype becomes tangible for everyone via posters, cardboard displays or even speed dating, in which employees slip into the role of the persona.A product is thus no longer geared to subjective opinions, but to the now more comprehensible requirements of the target group. The point is to develop empathy for one's target group. Without a persona, this is very difficult, especially since every employee imagines the target group slightly differently. Here, a vivid prototype helps answer key questions: What helps the user? How does he feel addressed? What is important to janitor Hans, for example, when he orders his tools online? What moves him? What distinguishes him and in which world does he move? These questions are important in order to align a product specifically with customer benefits.

Use existing knowledge

Companies have a lot of knowledge about their own target group. Especially in the support and sales departments, which have direct customer contact. So if you want to orient your product development to user-oriented thinking with the help of a persona, you first collect all the knowledge about "the" customer, validate this in a second step, before the persona "comes to life" as a poster, cardboard display or in speed dating. "Validating and statistically validating the collected knowledge about the target group is of course a question of know-how," Uebel knows. Companies are also happy to hand this over. But the expert finds even the simple solution, which is not scientifically validated via studies, acceptable. After all, the more clearly companies align their products with customer benefits and the more intensive the user experience, the better their market position will be - especially in an increasingly competitive environment.