Marketing Professionals to increase focus on User Experience

Website user experience is becoming a key area of focus for online marketers in an increasingly competitive digital environment, according to research published today.

A survey conducted by E-consultancy and behavioural research consultancy Bunnyfoot found that 72% of UK organisations are planning to increase their usability budget over the next 12 months, a greater percentage than for any other area of digital marketing. The Usability and User Experience Report 2007 found that organisations, on average, are spending 13% of their website design budgets on usability and 9% of their on-going website maintenance budget. More than 700 internet marketers took part in the research, rating Amazon, the BBC and Google as the best websites for user experience. According to the report, the biggest benefits of usability investment are improved perceptions of brand, increased conversion rates and greater customer loyalty and retention.

These were the top six benefits of usability, based on the number of company respondents who said they had been a “major benefit”.

1) Improved perceptions of brand (54%)
2) Increased conversion rates (53%)
3) Greater customer loyalty and retention (46%)
4) Increased customer advocacy (38%)
5) Increased traffic (36%)
6) Improved search rankings (33%)

Jon Dodd, director and co-founder of Bunnyfoot, said: “It’s great that usability is increasingly being recognised for the value it brings to organisations and that it is finally becoming an integrated part of the web development process.”

Rob Stevens, director and co-founder of Bunnyfoot, added: “Usability has really moved on from the early days. We are now seeing a new wave of usability engineering which is delivering even more measurable value.”

Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancy’s Head of Research, said: “The research shows that companies are increasingly aware of the need to make sure they are offering the best possible user experience in an age where people are less likely to tolerate something which is sub-standard. The benefits of usability investment are becoming much more apparent, whether in terms of brand perception or more directly measurable factors such as improved conversion rates.”

The research also found that time pressure to get things done was the biggest barrier in the way of providing the best possible user experience. Some 56% of online marketers said this was one of the three biggest problems. The next biggest problems were lack of internal resource (45%), lack of budget (37%) and company culture / politics (35%).

Other key findings included:
- Only a quarter of company respondents say their organisations are “extremely committed” to providing the best possible online user experience. A further 56% say they are “quite committed”.
- Ownership of user experience within organisations is quite varied (in terms of where responsibility for this lies). For just over a third of organisations, responsibility for the online user experience lies within an in-house website team. Another third of companies have an individual or team dedicated to the online user experience while a fifth deem this to be the responsibility of an in-house marketing department.
- More than a fifth of companies (22%) say that the online experience “isn’t integrated at all” into the overall customer experience.

Associated Link: Usability and User Experience Report 2007

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