One of the main disadvantages of online shopping compared to in-store shopping is the lack of guidance. Walking into any retail location, customers may be greeted with a smiling face asking, “May I help you find what you’re looking for?” Online shoppers, on the other hand, are often forced to find their own way, and secretly wish for that smiling face to help them.

When PlanetAmex.com, an exclusive business-class travel booking service, needed to improve their sales from their paid search landing pages, they knew the standard experience redesign process wouldn’t be enough. They needed to be sure that a new landing page design would deliver...read more By Chris Goward

In web marketing, there is a push towards ever more granular data. One manifestation of this is the trend towards personalization. Whether it’s behavioral ad re-targeting, or dynamic content-serving based on past purchases or other data, marketers are better able to act on customer information than ever before. Another trend has been the development of personas and marketing segmentation based on the general preferences of user types defined demographic data such as age, sex, economic grou

Most websites are designed with the intent, or the assumption, that people who visit those sites will do something, that they will take some sort of action. Indeed, website goals are rarely achieved unless users of the site do take action. Nonprofit organizations, for example, often depend on website visitors taking the action of donating.

Some years ago, while checking in at the airport in Stockholm on my way to the U.S., I asked the woman at the counter if it would be possible to get an upgrade to business class. Her response: “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. You would have to pay extra for that.” Checking in for the return flight, I tried the same thing again, but this time the answer was: “Of course, sir! How would you like to pay for that?”

UX is integral to conversion rate optimization. After all, you cannot expect visitors to convert into leads or customers if your website does not provide good experiences. So it comes as no surprise that UX figures prominently in the upcoming Conversion Conference West 2012, March 5th to 6th in San Francisco.

As technology has advanced, the importance of how humans interact with systems, machines, and each other, have also advanced into a fusion of disciplines, coalescing under the banner of "user experience." And though "experience" is a vast and abstract notion that is highly contingent on the user, successful experiences in either service or product design are ultimately based upon solid design principles.

Technology and innovative design have made many products and services more predictable and efficient, the two lower levels of Different's 7 Essentials of Customer Experience. Convenience, the next essential of customer experience, is a critical factor in determining how customers make decisions about what to buy, what services to use, where to go, and with whom to engage.

Kids are curious and eager to explore. They tend to touch everything they see on the screen and notice things adults sometimes miss. For example, they don't experience banner blindness; for them, a banner is an exciting opportunity to learn what will happen if they touch the screen. Most interaction problems for young users occur when they are forced to navigate away from what they want to do because they unintentionally trigger an action they did not...read more By Avi Itzkovitch

In developing the JW Player, we perform routine tests across the various browsers and devices to help determine the current state of online video. Our State of HTML5 Video Report is a compilation of our research and latest test results, focused on HTML5 Video playback. We are excited to share our findings with other developers/users in the industry as we explore just what HTML5 can and cannot support.

As a UX practitioner, I had long been fascinated with exploring how games could effect positive change in people and achieve things that would otherwise be difficult through conventional design. It was clear to me that the UX community could benefit from expanding its toolkit of competencies to include game design, and by gaining greater exposure to the innovative work being done in video games. So at...read more By John Ferrara

As smartphones continue to cement their position as the digital hub of the consumer universe, and people engage with digital experiences across an increasingly diverse range of devices, the term "user experience" encompasses an ever-growing array of interfaces and contexts. We read recipes on iPads in the kitchen, dance with a virtual Michael Jackson in front of the TV, swipe an Oyster card in the London Underground, co-create a business document using Google Docs, and comment on friends’

Dedicated wireframing tools are in abundance, so you might be surprised that my weapon of choice for sketching wireframes is Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint makes it possible for stakeholders and non-techies to participate in the design process. When exchanging PowerPoint slides over email, you can be fairly certain everyone will be able to view and edit them. The software’s widespread availability and low barrier to entry make it an excellent communication tool, able...read more By Andre

An increasing number of companies are appointing a single executive to lead customer experience efforts for a business unit or the entire company. Whether firms calls these executives chief customer officer (CCO) or give them some other label, these executives are driving change at organizations as diverse as CEMEX, Fidelity, General Motors, Maersk Line, and The Washington Post. And as diverse as the companies are that they work for, these leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds. To better

Over the past few years, we’ve heard from a lot of business and hiring managers that they find it hard to find qualified UX professionals and UX-minded businesspeople to fill vacant jobs in their organizations. We’ve also heard from UX pros who say that, in a world where anyone can claim to be able to “do UX,” it’s hard to stand out from throngs of job seekers on high-volume sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com.