Here’s what has changed in this new version:

Added support for forms as well, so submissions don’t trigger exit event.
Added support for detection of page refresh through F5 key and ctrl+r.

See the full demo posted in our creations area.

Download Plugin
Version 1.1 - onUserExit js files + dependencies
Download the complete demo here.

The full project can also be found on the jQuery website in the plugins directory under onUserExit.

Please feel free to submit suggestions for changes to this plugin!

If you have ever heard User First speak you know that we consistently use the term “User Experience Management” when we talk about being more user centric. It’s not a word we created nor is it just a buzz buzzword around our office. User Experience Management is a way of thinking that encompasses everything we do. You might be asking “but what is it”? We welcome you to read our multi-phase approach and understand our process.

1). Analytical DNA

Information is vital in today’s online market. Website analytics can help support paid pay click initiative, monitor site performance, or optimize email campaigns. We know that whatever you use data for it should first be trusted information and second be able to tell a story. With every single project we first dive into the data ecosystem and help clients realize the value of their online customer intelligence. These insights provide visibility into your customer touch-point on your website to improve website performance.

2). Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

One of the smartest ways to make design improvements is by letting the customer be at the helm of the design. Landing page optimization is all about finding the right combination of elements that enhance the user experience. We get a good grasp on testing the right elements and start fine tuning top landing pages. By discovering how customers interact with your website we are able then to conclude questions that will guide an online intercept survey or a usability test.

3). Hearing it from them

We believe that the stories people tell about what they do and how they do it contain information vital to designing good interfaces. Whether doing usability test leveraging eye-tracking or simply asking the receptionist to download a PDF, getting feedback lets us create visual designs and websites that solve user’s problems.

4). Building Stories

Any design and development improvement that we make is based on the findings and insights from customer’s feedback and behavioral patterns. But before one design is drafted or is wireframe created we use storyboards to layout and organize users activities and to stimulate different thinking. These steps ensure that we generate the most usable and engaging website.

5). Passion

Our desk might be a bit of a mess and we might argue at time about using flash, but we are passionate about creating effective and memorable user experiences.

If you had any questions about user experience management or had any experiences getting your team to become more user centric please let me know. You can also find us on twitter at UserFirst

I hope you’ll excuse me, because I’m going to take a strong departure from the traditional bite size blog post and really take time to tell the whole story in it’s embellished entirety.

Like many of you driven entrepreneurs out there, I too had a fire in my belly;  that type of fire that keeps you up late at night with the excitement of a future you yourself can create.  The sheer exhilaration I’ve experienced while ideas have sprung up from my inspirations puts one in a state of sheer bliss as the future seems to be opening up to you.   It’s an amazing feeling and I think one of the possibilities of these dreams, the hope embodied in them, is the biggest reason why we all strive to create something new and original… hey and making a buck doing something that you really believe in, well that’s just the icing on the cake!

So even though I am a developer, an engineer of the web, I too understand where the idea people in Marketing are coming from.  They live in an environment where coming up with the newest, catchiest way of getting your attention is part of their job.  Innovation is an expected byproduct of their efforts, so I can see why many of them, are so fixated on following the current trends and working so hard to one them and be the next big sensation.   Although I  have to say…  I don’t envy that kind of pressure.

So now comes the rough and tumble part of the story… but with an ear to my colleagues’ plight.  These marketers must try something new, to make the sale, to impress the client, to impress their boss, or to impress their colleagues.  So in the heat of the moment, while brainstorming with the client on a project a seemingly genius idea creeps into their heads.  “You know we could do THIS!”  And the crowd roars with agreement!  “What a splendid idea!”  The meeting ends with hands being enthusiastically shook as everyone leaps out of the conference room to make it happen.

Now the dream, the idea you’ve just put you and your company on the hook for is now held before the fiery eyes of the dreamer’s true nemesis… the developer (dun dun dun!  Hey, what can I say, I like a little dramatic flare).  “So we told the client we could do this.  How long will that take”.  Which for those of you on the broadcasting end of this conversation is when you see the developers face contort ever so slightly as his eyes glaze over in deep thought.  “uuuuuuuuhhhhhhh, wait, so you want to do what exactly?”  Being the standard response, since hell, before you start spinning your wheels a mile a minute, you might as well clarify what the heck their asking you to build.

So the conversation continues and usually ends one of two ways:

1) Developer type A - Mr. Smarty Pants, who of course quickly replies, “We don’t do that kind of thing here.  It’s just not doable.  [insert high level technology reason that may or may not be relevant]“.  Traditionally I’ve found these developers  to be EXTREMELY well versed in the basics of whatever language they use and can rattle off 100 specifications about the platform they use, but rarely are they comfortable stepping outside of that box of convention.  Eventually, if you as the marketer are resilient enough, you’ll find an example or some blog post online that confirms that something like the idea you had has been done… and he’s back on the hook.

2) Developer type B - The “I wonder” Guy, who’s probably come across some site that he’s seen that did something similar to what you’re speaking of and thinks, well let’s try to figure it out!  … I’m that guy and I tend to get myself in deep quite often…  thankfully I’ve been throw in the deep end hundreds of times ever since I started my career as C++ developer back in 1996.  Here’s the code, now figure it out and make it better!  That’s what I’m good at.  A child of the ever changing landscape that is the internetz.

So whether you’ve got Type A or Type B working with you at your workplace, essentially the result, for us developers is the same.  We are now on the hook and here’s the process that goes through our heads:

1) Can our development support this?  Sometimes the IT business decisions made, that seemed like a great idea at the time, have pained you into a corner.  If you haven’t heard the term, these are call “legacy systems” and the reason their called that is because your business has built it’s infrastructure off the best particular choice at the time and committed to working that way.  Over the years… ha… even months in this industry, the technology changes and new and better ways of creating websites come along.  But here you are with the system from 2-3 years ago wondering… “well cripes, even if it’s possible to do, can WE do it?”

2) So if the idea passes this hurdle, the next thought that crosses our mind is, with the current workload I have now, can I figure it out before the deadline?  And thankfully, my recent history with agency work, we were asked for our input on how long we thought creation of website elements would take… I wish I could say that happened everyone.  The fun part about this step is that usually we’re being put under the gun, right on the spot, to come up with a number.  And considering that it’s quite obvious that we at the company have never built anything like this before, well coming up with a number is really 1 part intuition and experience, and 1 part understanding standard project timeline expectations.  The formula shall never be revealed, so don’t bother asking  ;-).

3) Lastly, and most importantly………. Is there enough coffee in the kitchen to keep me awake long enough to pull this off!?!?!?

So as you can see, there’s a reason why some in your development department have grown that tell-tale throbbing vein in their forehead.  In the end, if you sell it, we’ve got to at least TRY to build it.  I’ll save the ramifications of trying to push the square peg through the round hole story for another post.  But by now, as a marketer, you should really understand why your developers really want to be involved in the client kick-off / selling process.  It’s better to head off any overblown client expectations before you have to give them the bad news and have to dash all those beautiful dreams you shared, and throw them to the wind.

Recently a friend ask me what my thoughts were on using onsite behavioral targeting and if I would recommend it to my clients. I told them, to be honest I have only tracked and monitored the results for a massive eCommerce website. Not having enough knowledge about onsite behavioral targeting I couldn’t make any recommendations to my clients because I know what works for one website might not work for another. The question got me thinking and reading more about what behavioral targeting was. I found that there were credited articles for it and against. I thought I would share my research findings and hopefully the material will help you make the decision.

First let’s define onsite behavioral targeting: it is simply personalizing the experience for your visitor by serving ads that are most relevant to them. The theory is that by presenting each individual user with a personalized optimal experience, it will increase their likelihood of taking the desired action. Most platforms are built with data compiled from clickstream data and IP information or cookies.

There is a saying in the ad community which is “start where your audience is”. Onsite behavioral targeting can greatly benefit an organization’s online marketing program and Forrester Research reported this emerging category as the #1 area for planned investment. The ability to reach at an individual user-level with the right messaging with minimal human interaction is one the highest reward but other features of the platform are:

• Improved acquisition spend
• When visitors are engaging with your site, their actions and behaviors are captured and incorporated into the persona profiles
• Real time data mining, reporting and analysis
• The automation of optimization
• Relevant content will always be king

A recent study from researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports that most internet users don’t want tailored advertisements. When Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages— between 73% and 86%—say they would not want such advertising. Other than Private Privacy issues here are some other factors to consider:

• Some organizations have not fully created and implemented their persona’s online
• Most effective for organizations that have sufficient size / scale to provide a return on the required investment
• Implementing a behavioral targeting program can be difficult (may need extra resources)
• Requires human intervention to update creative, offers, and modify business rules

So after reading about onsite behavioral targeting would I recommend it to my clients? The jury is still out on this one. I only say that because I can’t stop thinking about Jakob Nielsen report on banner blindness. It states that if users are looking for a snippet of information on a page or are engrossed in content, they won’t be distracted by the ads on the side. I sort of agree but does your website use  behavioral targeting tactics for ad banners? If so please let me know what your experiences have been!

You can find us on Twitter and reply there as well: UserFirst

Has conversational marketing or Web 2.0 changed the way you do business? We know Scott’s answer, but what do you think 3.0 will be like?

Lately, we have had people requesting information on eye-tracking for their latest website redesign. At first glance I thought it was great that companies were getting customers involved.  Then I started thinking about what brought on the redesign project, and as analyst I wondered if these companies have set strategic goals that will not only measure the cost of doing the redesign but successful measure user’s satisfaction (example KPI: decrease cost per new customer by 5%).

I have seen and heard of many website redesigns that unfortunately were trying to “Keep up with the Joneses”, embarking on a website redesign only to keep up with the competitors. I think this happens more often than not. If five out of your six competitors have made their website look better, fresher, and more au courant then I am pretty sure a request for a redesign will be coming soon. This “me too” syndrome can simply  come from being over exposed to the website and feel like the website design is dated and tired. I recently read Jakob Nielsen’s post on Fresh vs. Familiar Redesign (a must read in my opinion), he mentions that the number of “exposure hours” usually starts the redesign off on the wrong foot.

When embarking a redesign project  people often forgot about the two most important things:

1). How will this help the user’s key usability attributes (learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction)
Users usually spend no more than 2-3 minutes on a website and at best spend five hours a year looking at a website. When visiting websites or using applications, they don’t spend their time analyzing or admiring the design. They focus their attention on the task.  Changing the design purely to “stay fresh” vs design that enhances usability results in expensive changes that, after all is said and done, don’t really help the business.

2). How will the company’s KPI’s (key performance indicators) be redefined for success
The analytics team and the design team may still  work in silos, but to justify a redesign these teams should open their doors to discuss the purpose of a redesign and clearly define how it will help increase business goals. Understanding the current state of your website’s web traffic data and feedback from users will help you monitor the success of a new site architecture, navigation, and/or design.

When it comes to redesign, being au courant isn’t always better. Major overhauls often generate a lot of resistance and can even upset your most fervent users. That’s why some major brands on the web, such as Amazon, don’t redesign their websites anymore. In contrast, they make incremental improvements that create designs that really pay off for the organization (most changes can be implemented quickly by your team and cost less). In the short-term the design gets done, but the team ends up doing it all over again months down the road.

Where Experiences Come First

Sure, people make a snap judgment about a website based on its look and feel, but keep your KPI’s in mind. If your user satisfaction ratio is up then establishing a new site design might not be worth the cost. However, if a major redesign is on the horizon suggest usability or eye-tracking testing on wireframes or prototypes. These tests can help reduce the need for  risky major re-launches. Simply focus on the areas that need improvement.
User First loves hearing about your experiences. Please let us know if you are planning a website redesign or have gone through one recently!

Other insightful posts that I found on website redesign:
Seth Godin Blog: Things to ask before you redo your website
Grokdotcom Blog: Website Redesign Roundup
User Interface Engineering Blog: Thinking in the Right Terms- 7 Components for a Successful Website Redesign

Please join us on our weekly journey of battling, complementing, and understanding how even though these departments are at odds can work together and great useful websites that are also beautiful.

See the full demo posted in our creations area.

Download Plugin
Version 1.0 - underCover js file.

Download the complete demo here.

The full project can also be found on the jQuery website in the plugins directory under underCover.

Please feel free to submit suggestions for changes to this plugin!

I’m sure many of you have read about the javascript function onbeforeunload() or in jQuery $(window).unload() which triggers when a user leaves a page. Well the trouble is if the user clicks on the navigation within your website to go to a separate page from where you are currently (i.e. the user lands on the Home and then navigates to About), this triggers the event, which in this case you don’t want.

The way this is achieved is that upon the page completing load, I actually add click methods to all internal links within the page that execute a function called “userMovingWithinSite()”, which sets a boolean variable called “movingWithinSite” to true. So now, when the user clicks a navigation link or any link on the website WITHIN the website and the onbeforeunload event triggers, I can check to see if the user is actually leaving the site, or just navigating within it. If they are indeed leaving, then we execute your function!

See the full demo posted in our creations area.

Download Plugin
Version 1.0 - onUserExit js files + dependencies

Download the complete demo here.

The full project can also be found on the jQuery website in the plugins directory under onUserExit.

Please feel free to submit suggestions for changes to this plugin!

See the full demo posted in our creations area.

Download Plugin
Version 1.0 - uRoute js files + dependencies

Download the complete demo here.

The full project can also be found on the jQuery website in the plugins directory under uRoute.

Please feel free to submit suggestions for changes to this plugin!