New Media Age Letters - 2 August 2007
Your article 'Two-thirds of firms aim to spend more on usability over the next year' (NMA 19.07.07) is obviously encouraging news for usability consultants and hopefully for long-suffering users.

However, many companies selling over the internet still miss the fact that usability and design are only maybe 20% of the story. Saleability is the other 80%.

Common pitfalls are long lists of product features with nothing to describe why they're relevant or what benefit they bring to the buyer, or where a service offering is unclear and the quoted price comes with numerous caveats and exceptions. For digital, complex product offerings really don't help.

Martin Sutton, Managing Director, Generator


See original article below

Two-thirds of firms aim to spend more on usability over next year

Companies are to increase their spend on website user experience, a survey by E-consultancy has found.

With behavioural research consultancy Bunnyfoot, it found that 72% of organisations in the UK were looking to increase their usability budget over the next 12 months.

The figure is slightly lower for companies worldwide, with 67% aiming to invest more on usability, compared to only 2% that will spend less.

Firms are spending 13% of their website design budgets on usability and 9% on site maintenance.

Improved perception of the brand was cited by 54% of companies as the major benefit of usability. This was followed by increased conversion rates (53%), greater customer loyalty and retention (46%), and increased customer advocacy (38%).

Despite these benefits and the aim to increase spending on usability, only a quarter of respondents said their organisations were extremely committed to providing the best possible online user experience; 56% said they were quite committed, while 15% were either indifferent or not committed.

Some 56% of online marketers said time was the chief barrier to providing the best possible user experience, followed by lack of internal resources (45%), lack of budget (37%) and company culture/politics (35%).

Amazon, BBC and Google were rated the best sites for user experience.

Over 700 internet marketers were surveyed for the report in May 2007.

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