Insights & Ideas
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Introduction
Great stories can be powerful tools in the world of UX, but only some are natural storytellers. Thankfully, you can learn to create captivating user narratives. This article provides two essential suggestions to improve your storytelling: using the story triangle principle and the story-mountain template.
[Image suggestion: An illustration of a story triangle and story mountain side by side.]
Understanding the Story Triangle
The story triangle illustrates the relationship between the story, the storyteller, and the audience. A successful story is a dialogue, not a monologue. Each audience may interpret the same story differently based on their unique experiences.
[Image suggestion: A simple diagram of the story triangle, with labels for story, storyteller, and audience.]
Example of a User Narrative
Consider a narrative about user Mary, who must decide between taking a bus or a taxi to the central station after a late-night event. We propose a bus-tracking app that could compete with ride-sharing apps and promote public transportation. The audience can make various inferences based on their experiences while listening to the story.
[Image suggestion: A comic strip-style illustration of Mary deciding between a bus and a taxi, with thought bubbles showing different audience members' interpretations.]
Audience Participation and Finding the Right Detail
Audience participation can enrich the storytelling experience, but it can also lead to misunderstandings. It's essential to balance providing too few and too many details in user-experience stories. Adjust the number of facts based on your objectives and the story's purpose. [Image suggestion: A balance scale showing "Too few details" on one side and "Too many details" on the other.]
The Story-Mountain Template
The story-mountain template is a visual representation of a time-tested story structure, helping guide the audience through exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
[Image suggestion: A diagram of the story-mountain template with labels for each stage.]
Applying the Story-Mountain Template in UX
Use the story-mountain template to create user narratives for your internal team. Start by introducing the problem or goal, then raise the main character (e.g., Mary) and provide relevant details about their background. Describe their experience using the product or service, highlighting the benefits or challenges they face. Finally, suggest a resolution or path to improvement.
[Image suggestion: A storyboard of the story-mountain stages applied to the Mary bus-tracking app example.]
Conclusion:
Stories are vital to effective UX design, but it's essential to tell them in a way that resonates with the audience. The story-mountain approach is one way to achieve this. For more storytelling techniques in the UX context, consider taking a training course on storytelling to present UX work.
References:
- Bunting, Joe (2020). Freytag's Pyramid: Definition, Examples, and How to Use This Weird Structure in Your Writing. The Write Practice. Retrieved March 28, 2022.
- Lupton, Ellen (2018). Storytelling is Design. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
- Quesenbery, W., & Brooks, K. (2011). Storytelling for User Experience. Sebastopol: Rosenfeld Media.
As the book "Brandflip" by Marty Neumeier highlights, "A brand is not what you say it is; it's what your customers say it is." User-generated content (UGC) has proven this idea, with the potential to enhance your website's user experience significantly. By incorporating UGC into your strategy, you can leverage social proof and create a more authentic, engaging user experience. In this article, we'll explore how to integrate UGC effectively to improve your website's user experience.
Understanding User-Generated Content
User-generated content comprises any media users submit, such as photos, reviews, videos, testimonials, or social media posts. By incorporating UGC on your website, you allow users to share their experiences with your brand, products, or services. It strengthens the connection between your brand and customers and serves as social proof to enhance your website's credibility and trustworthiness.
Why UGC Matters for User Experience
UGC offers a unique opportunity to create a more engaging and personalized user experience on your website. It allows users to see real-life examples of your products or services in action, giving them a more authentic understanding of your offerings. Moreover, UGC can help cultivate a sense of community and connection among users, fostering an environment where users feel valued and heard.
Types of UGC Strategies for Enhanced UX
- UGC Gallery: Showcase user-submitted photos, videos, or testimonials on your website to create an interactive and visually appealing gallery. This can demonstrate the real-world value of your products or services and encourage users to contribute their content.
- Social Media Integration: Embed social media feeds featuring user-generated content on your website to keep it fresh and dynamic. This can also encourage users to follow your brand on social media platforms and participate in the conversation.
- Reviews and Testimonials: Highlight user reviews and testimonials on your product pages or a dedicated reviews section on your website. This can help establish trust and credibility, encouraging potential customers to purchase.
- UGC Contests and Campaigns: Host contests or campaigns that encourage users to submit content for a chance to win prizes or features on your website. This can create buzz around your brand and drive user engagement.
Implementing a UGC Strategy for Your Website
To successfully implement a UGC strategy, it's essential to provide clear guidelines and encourage users to contribute content. Make it easy for users to submit their content by creating dedicated submission forms, incorporating calls to action, and offering incentives for participation.
Additionally, monitoring and moderating user-generated content to ensure it aligns with your brand values and guidelines is crucial. By doing so, you can maintain a consistent and positive user experience on your website.
In Conclusion
User-generated content can significantly enhance your website's user experience by providing authentic, engaging, and relatable content that resonates with your audience. By incorporating UGC strategies into your website, you can leverage the power of social proof, foster a sense of community, and ultimately, drive user satisfaction and loyalty.
As marketing professionals, we all appreciate the potential value of website audits in identifying performance and usability issues. However, it's increasingly clear that conventional audits often fail to provide long-lasting solutions. In this post, we'll explore why typical website audits fail to deliver and suggest a more comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes of problems.
The Limitations of Traditional Website Audits
Traditional audits focus on surface-level issues, such as aesthetics, usability, content, performance, and technical aspects. While resolving these issues may offer short-term improvements, they often only serve as a band-aid solution, leaving the underlying problems.
Addressing the Real Problems
Just as a doctor wouldn't treat a cough without addressing the patient's smoking habit, website audits should investigate the underlying reasons for the identified issues. In many cases, the blame is unfairly placed on the digital team responsible for the website's creation, while deeper organisational problems still need to be addressed.
Bridging the Gap Between Business and Web Teams
Instead of merely highlighting issues, a thorough website audit should delve into the organisation's digital readiness and project governance. A proper audit involves asking tough questions about how problems arose and encouraging a company-wide understanding of potential shortcomings.
Finding the Root Cause
If the root cause of an issue isn't immediately apparent, engage with internal teams to uncover their operational constraints. Experienced auditors can often spot recurring patterns and identify problems stemming from poor leadership, under-investment, interdepartmental feuds, or communication breakdowns.
The Future of Holistic Website Audits
Our vision for website audits involves comprehensive, long-term engagements prioritising high-quality assessments and user testing. By digging deeper and addressing the root causes of problems, we can ensure that audits provide lasting value and drive meaningful improvements in website performance.
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The objective of Analytics is to understand how users navigate from one page to another and the duration they spend on each page. Each column's nodes are organized by traffic volume, with the most visited node at the top. The number of users who exited the site or application is noted at the bottom of each column. Links connecting each node to the next viewed node are also present, with the link's width reflecting the number of users who navigated between those nodes. By observing the link's width, popular pathways can be easily identified.
Analytics can provide insights into the content users interact with before making significant actions, alert us about potential issues, and reveal patterns of common navigation routes. However, journey mapping necessitates more information than analytics alone can offer. Analytics cannot tell the unique goals or expectations of each user, nor can it provide the qualitative details such as thoughts and feelings that make journey mapping so insightful. Nevertheless, analytics is essential in understanding typical user journeys.
A Sankey diagram provides a visual representation of the most common routes through a product or application, indicating where most users initiate and the screens (or even features) they move to next. Sankey diagrams visualize the relationship between nodes (pages, screens, or feature use) and the traffic flow between them. The width of the link signifies the volume of traffic between those nodes.
Sankey diagrams appear complex, but they are pretty straightforward. Each column in the Sankey diagram represents a step in the process, with nodes appearing in consecutive columns. Nodes in each column are listed based on the traffic they attract, with the most visited one at the top. Dropoffs (users who exit the site or application) are noted at the bottom of each column. Each node has links leading to the next viewed node, with the link's width indicating the number of users that moved between those nodes. Popular routes can be easily identified by observing the width of the association.
There are four main limitations to analytics-based paths. These diagrams aggregate various traffic data, and while they allow for the examination of individual user sessions, their primary function is to provide large-scale data. They highlight trends rather than individual user movements through the website. They present the most common initial and subsequent steps, aggregating users with different intentions, goals, and information needs. They do not represent actual user journeys because they cannot segment this traffic based on the user's interests.
However, the following tips can facilitate a proper interpretation of analytics-based paths:
Filter the flow data: Flow diagrams can be overwhelming as they present a lot of information. It is advisable to filter down this information into manageable chunks. You can start with a critical page or screen and focus on the traffic flowing through it. It's also worthwhile to filter this information by user categories, for example, mobile vs desktop users or those who completed significant actions.
Review key touchpoints: Pay particular attention to your internal pages where users form their first impressions. If any of these pages have a higher dropout rate, there might be a problem with the content.
Identify hub pages: These nodes act as a navigation, with a lot of traffic coming in and going out. This pattern could be a sign of either high engagement and pleasant exploration or a frustrating user experience.
Start from the end of the flow: Begin from a key objective you wish users to reach, then figure out how users get that goal by working backwards. This approach can tell you whether content supportive of conversion is visible and compelling to power users.
In conclusion, user paths serve as an exploratory tool for understanding how users navigate a site. While they help understand user behaviour, they are not a replacement for qualitative research that seeks to understand users' thoughts, feelings, and expectations as they use a product. User paths provide valuable insights, but they should be combined with qualitative research methods to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the user experience. To learn more about how user-path reports can inform UX work, consider enrolling in a full-day course on Analytics & User Experience. By leveraging analytics and qualitative research, you can better understand your users' journeys and optimize their experience with your website or application.
