I LIKE using Google but I hate Microsoft's Live Search, even though they both fulfil the same function of searching for websites, but I am not sure why I prefer one more than the other.
All internet users have ideas about what makes a good website, but going beyond an intuitive response is more of a challenge. Like advertising or language, people can read it, but not fully understand how it works.
According to Sarah Ronald, man
aging director of behavioural research agency Bunnyfoot, not all people responsible for building websites for business know how these things work either, which should give company owners cause for concern. If a product's design is better and easier to use than another, then that product is likely to sell more. The same applies to websites also.
But technology exists to determine how effective a website is. Using a system of measuring tracking eye movement has opened up a relatively new field of "useability".
Ronald launched Bunnyfoot in Edinburgh two years ago. While the company was founded in England by Robert Stevens and Jon Dodd, a dotcom entrepreneur and a computational neuroscience specialist, 29-year-old Ronald took the managing director role when she joined them.
Previous to this, she had been working for the likes of Standard Life and Prudential, establishing "user design centres". She approached Standard Life while a student at Heriot-Watt University studying computer/human interaction. She wanted to trial some of her ideas for her thesis. Then the pensions giant hired her.
Useability applies to display advertising and packaging as well as websites. The problem with advertising has always been that the advertising executives knew half of their campaign was effective, they just didn't know which half. Useability promises to figure out what works and why.
But first organisations need to understand that their websites need to improve – and how they can improve them.
"You have got people in jobs in big companies who have been given the e-commerce director role," says Ronald. "Some of them haven't come from an online background or maybe they haven't been given the right training.
"They are sitting on these gold nuggets of information – thousands of customers doing different journeys, going to different pages, hanging out on different pages, dropping off different pages – there's loads of info there they don't actually use.
"We come in and make sense of that and say there are some barriers here and there. It is really simple stuff: test users and fix it."
If the hardware and software used in eye-tracking appear a bit spooky, it is backed up by more familiar methods of market research and focus groups.
"While eye-tracking is hugely powerful, you have to pair it with some qualitative analysis to make sense of it," admits Ronald. "Otherwise, you don't know if someone has been looking at something for a long time because they like it or because they do not understand it."
There is something typical about Bunnyfoot's Edinburgh offices: abstract art, overstuffed sofas, hip, young, dressed-down people. So far, so new media. Until you see the heavy-duty CCTV and realise you are in a human laboratory.
Downstairs, there is a viewing room, for the brand or website owners to watch people using their websites and discussing it. This is how focus groups work.
Focus groups tend to rely on people describing their reactions to what they see, but this can be flawed. "You never really sit and give a product that much attention," says Ronald.
Bunnyfoot adds eye-tracking, which is measurable, to the focus-group research; if your eye lingers on something, it tends to indicate interest.
And while eye-tracking is its main tool, Bunnyfoot also has tools that measure other physical clues. According to the research, the happier you are the more you wiggle your bottom. You sweat more. Your pupils dilate. These clues are more reliable than what people say they think. "Eye- tracking is now becoming a staple research technique because it takes focus groups and individual subjective opinion to that next level. It is what people do, it is not what people think they do," says Ronald.
A lot of Bunnyfoot's clients are in financial services, such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Moneysupermarket, but it also counts retailers such as Schuh and Net-a-porter. Recently it did a deal with consumer goods conglomerate Procter & Gamble.
Until quite recently, Bunnyfoot has worked directly with clients rather than digital agencies, which are wary of adding extra costs to the process of designing websites, but this is also changing as agencies see the need to bring in hard facts to why websites work.
Ronald adds: "What we do is really specialist. Some agencies say they do it, but they don't. It is difficult to do objective testing on something you have developed.
"The way we work with agencies can massively benefit them. It stops the client from changing their minds; they know what they are producing is really good."
The full article contains 840 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
