Archive for the 'The Basics' Category

Put Buyers First? What a Concept – New York Times:

Customer Experience is fast become a consistent agenda item in boards across the corporate world, it’s making it’s way into financial reports to the stock market, annual reports and this is further supported by newspapers such as the New York Times featuring pieces on customer experience.

This is a great article about just that written from the journalists experience with Amazon over christmas. Some highlights though from further into the article:-

Jeff Bezos, in response to a question about how he liked to spend his time answered by waxing lyrical about customers:-

“They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” he said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”

Critically, whilst looking into the stock performance of Amazon with it’s various rises and falls, our NYT journalists was given all sorts of financial and operational reasons why Amazon may now be back on it’s game from a financial market valuation perspective. The NYT journalist however continues with his own thoughts:-

But I couldn’t help wondering if maybe there wasn’t something else at play here, something Wall Street never seems to take very seriously. Maybe, just maybe, taking care of customers is something worth doing when you are trying to create a lasting company. Maybe, in fact, it’s the best way to build a real business — even if it comes at the expense of short-term results.

I couldn’t agree more….

Technorati Tags: customer experience, getting started, platform for growth

Jess James Garrett’s article (from 2005) explaining what AJAX is and what it isn’t is a guide starter for any of you out there who would still like to know why this approach has become such a buzz-word. It is of course, like many tools, immensely useful if used in the right way. What frustrates me often is when people say “I want it to be done with AJAX” or “make it AJAXy” as if AJAX were in and of itself something concrete.

Continue reading ‘Adaptive Path (JJG) – AJAX a new approach to web applications’

So many terms that nearly mean the same thing… this time it’s the Cycle of the User’s Experience…

Continue reading ‘Jess McMullin’s View of the User’s Experience Cycle’

A basic introduction to recruiting usability test participants from a real on-the-ground perspective. Remember that if you are not strapped for budget then using a market-research agency to recruit your participants will probably give you a lot more control, I think the point of this article is that… there are other ways of doing it if you’re on a budget.
Continue reading ‘Site Point – How To Recruit Usability Test Participants’