Kieran Cooper recommends that arts organisations should step into the customers shoes to assess the effectiveness of their websites.
Theres an interesting customer service technique doing the rounds at the moment in which people are encouraged to walk around a building trying to look at it through the eyes of a new customer on their first visit. Once you get into the mindset, it becomes very easy to spot things like illogical signage, distracting visual clutter, or poorly-designed areas where queues at the bar get in the way of people trying to get to their seats.
Despite the often obvious revelations that such an exercise can generate, its amazing how few people actually take the time to put themselves in the customers shoes to work out whether the environment could be better designed. Things get done in particular ways out of laziness or habit, but often small changes can make a big difference to how customers feel about a building.
Ease of use
This same principle applies in spades to websites. The science of usability is becoming ever more important as the Internet grows and more and more sites compete for peoples attention, but you often dont have to look very far to find examples of sites that do things badly. Fundamentally, it is essential to remember that customers dont visit websites in order simply to admire how pretty they look they have something they want to do, and they really want the site to make it as easy as possible for them to do this. People come to the websites of arts organisations to do things like find out whats on, book tickets, look up travel directions and so on they dont come simply to see what the website looks like.
The American writer Steve Krug coined the phrase dont make me think to explain his philosophy about making websites work well for their users. When someone looks at a page, he explains, it should be obvious how they can do what they want. If someone has to think about things even for a moment or two then youve lost their attention and increased the likelihood that theyll go elsewhere. So what distinguishes a good site from a poor one? Firstly, a site that delivers what users might want will always be better than one that doesnt. Is information about whats on easily found from the home page? Is it up to date? Is it simple to get directions to the venue or even to find out the box office phone number?
Good navigation is also very important. It should be absolutely clear to a user how to find their way to the information they want from wherever they are in the site, and they shouldnt have to be confused by finding themselves on a page where it isnt clear what to do next. If you have buttons for things like searching or online booking, is it clear what these refer to? Have you used technical language instead of clear English (for example having a button that says submit on an online form instead of one that says send)?
Testing times
If youre starting to suspect that some of this might apply to your website (and you certainly wouldnt be alone if it did), then what can you do about it? If youve already got a site then a few tweaks can make a big difference. The best way of finding out what needs to be changed is to set up some simple user testing. Ask a few friendly people existing customers or people who you know have never used your website before to sit in front of your site and then give them some scenarios to work through. For example, you might ask them to find out whats on tonight and book a ticket, or get them to see if they can subscribe to the newsletter. Watch what they do where they look on the screen, where they click with their mouse and so on and ask them to tell you what theyre thinking as they go through this. You may well find that something as simple as moving a button to the top of the page, or changing text size can make things much easier for users.
If youre about to embark on a revamp of your site, then its even more important to get users involved at an early stage. www.useit.com, the website of usability guru Jakob Nielsen, is a useful place to start and both Steve Krugs book and the recent Arts Council England Practical guide to developing and managing websites (reviewed on p12) have good sections on how you can manage user-testing yourself. You should also ask prospective web developers what experience they have of user testing and make sure you choose someone who can demonstrate an understanding of usability issues. However, you can also make a big difference just by trying to step into the shoes of your customers for a moment (remembering that theyre often unlikely to behave in the same way as someone who works in the arts). Simply asking the box office or reception what questions are most frequently asked on the phone will often throw up unexpected things that could easily be addressed with a few tweaks to the site.
Customer benefit
Im well aware that this is yet another challenge to be faced by an already over-worked organisation I can see people holding their heads already at the thought of yet more things that need to be changed. The trouble is that too many organisations have got into the habit of never looking at themselves from the outside. You can see this reflected in the way they describe themselves in print and it is often carried over on the website. I would argue that spending an hour or two taking a step back and trying to look at your site as if it were the first time youd seen it has the potential to bring huge benefits to customers. If they can find information quicker, it will be much easier for them to engage with what you offer them whether that be opportunities to attend, participate, donate or whatever and that ultimately theyll have a better relationship with you all round.
Kieran Cooper is a Director of the arts management consultancy Catalyst Arts.
t: 01223 562871; e: kieran@catalystarts.com;
w: http://www.catalystarts.com