I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a keynote be so insightful and revealing about a major internet website as I did when I attended Joe Megibow’s Keynote at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington DC. Joe is from Hotels.com and the audience was certainly treated to some great insight into listening to the voice of a customer as well as testing and being fanatical about “getting it right”.

Hotels.com is quickly approaching its 1 millionth user review. Through reviews and feedback they have learned to both listen and learn to provide what their customer really want, not what what they think their customers need.

Two years ago, Hotels.com was at a crossroads, they were known as the “low cost, cheap operator”, but they wanted to be more. At the beginning of 2008 they launched a re-branding which included re-branding their website. A few weeks ago, they relaunched their search engine which is faster and easier for customer to use.

Hotels.com does a lot of analytics through Ominiture. They are fanatical, analytics drives almost everything on their site. However, over the last year they wanted to listen to their customers a little more, but they really had no context. Their good sales were masking the problems that were really happening on the site, so they needed to find another way. They combined “voice of the customer” with analytics in a usable way.

They installed OpinionLab, they got a lot of feedback. What’s even more important, every OpinionLab entry is tied to TeaLeaf. They also installed over 700 phone numbers so that they can measure all of the channels that sales and feedback comes from. All of this transforms Hotels.com.

Executives at Hotels.com get feedback everyday, and they use it, they read it. They click on what happens in different issues watch it in TeaLeaf and send their own feedback to the different teams within Hotels.com. Everybody has buy in to fix things on Hotels.com. They’ve acted on 200 site conversion issues over the last 6 months. The thing to remember is that mistakes are common, everyone has them. But not everyone realizes they have them and on top of that not everyone acts upon their mistakes to correct them.

They had issues with logins. They thought they only had 2 ways to login, but through the customer feedback and watching the sessions being replayed in TeaLeaf, they were able to see that they actually had a third way to login that they never realized they had. This third way was what was creating a big problem. Because of this they added a “book without registering” option. Immediately half of all the customers chose this option!

Hotels.com realized by installing the “book without registering” option, they were making it hard for their customers to book. Not only that, customers were not getting any kind of value out of registering with their site. There was a disconnect between how the marketers were thinking about customer conversion. They really needed to give customer a reason to register, a reason to care about their accounts. They introduced - book 10 nights, get 1 night free - “the loyalty program that doesn’t require too much loyalty”.

The loyalty program exposed issues they didn’t realize that they had. A customer had an issue with logging in. Joe called her and talked to in detail about what happened. He actually turned her into a fan of Hotels.com. But from the conversation Joe also gained valuable insight, apparently something was happening with the loyalty program after booking many nights and getting a bunch of free nights. A certain field was getting wiped out. They looked into this and found thousands of profiles with the same issue and as time was going on, it was getting worse. They fixed the issue within a week.

Customers do not repeatedly make this stuff up. They were getting random reports of issues of their Terms of Service. It was not allowing users to accept it no matter what they tried. It was about 1 person a day, but they were having trouble recreating the problem. When they started looking deeper, they found 40-50 people a day were having this problem, and it had to do with IE. It took a few months of investigating but they fixed it, and now that issues gone and 40-50 more people are converting and booking.

Minor updates can create major issues! One of their updates created issues with the SSL and how cookies were handle. People browse in different ways, a lot of people use the back button. Apparently a lot more than they realized, combine that with the fact they use 4 different servers to service up Hotels.com, when customer were backing out of the SSL are to regular HTML pages, the update was dropping their cookies, and then they had a 1 in 4 chance of getting back to where their were before, if they didn’t hit the right server, their information was dropped. This was very frustrating to their customers, they listened, they used TeaLeaf and corrected it.

Hotels.com is fanatical about getting this stuff right. Everyone inside Hotels.com is dedicated to it. Internally they have people just wanting to create mashups, tools and applications to help them make it easier to listen to the customer and fix things that aren’t working right. They built an in-house iPhone application for monitoring the Voice of the Customer since most of their staff was on the iPhone. Over the past months, they’ve seen a substantial increase in conversion because of their efforts. They’ve created a ton of good will and they are winning the cultural shift within Hotels.com internally of doing good by the customer.

At next week’s 2007 Technology and Persons With Disabilities Conference, IBM plans to formally present a new tool for Web browsers that will help people with visual disabilities access multimedia content on the Web.

"Just because someone is blind, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be enjoying YouTube or MySpace or anything else like that," said Frances West, director of the Worldwide Accessibility Center for IBM.

This could be a giant step forward in Web accessibility. You’d think that podcasting, video files, audio files, etc. would be ideal ways for people with visual disabilities to access content - and they are. The problem users have isn’t with the multimedia files themselves; it’s how those files are embedded in Web sites.

As today’s article in ZdnetIndia notes:

When streaming audio or video requires users to click a Play button using their mouse, there is usually no keystroke alternative, and the controls are randomly placed on the screen; If they can’t press Play, they can’t experience the multimedia.
In cases where the audio or video streams automatically once a page loads, the Web page’s audio often interferes with a user’s audio aids.

IBM’s tool will provide predefined shortcut keys that help users control how and when multimedia files play.

Although IBM promotes the tool as something being done for the good of society, they’re also keeping an eye on the huge population of aging baby boomers who have recently donned reading glasses and hearing aids.

And, as someone who holds her breath during every annual eye exam (Will the doctor utter the dreaded bifocal word this time?), I’m happy they’re making the effort.

Larisa Thomason

The United Nations recently commissioned a Web accessibility study that validated the anecdotal evidence people with disabilities have offered for years. Most Web sites have accessibility problems. In fact, many sites don’t even fulfill the most basic accessibility requirement: ALT text on images.

The UN study audited the accessibility of 100 leading Web sites from 20 countries. (Request an executive summary of the report.) The results were startling to many – but not to people with visual or physical problems. For years, they’ve been frustrated by inaccessible sites.

Their aggravation is understandable once you look at some of the results.

• ALT text descriptions:93% did not provide adequate text descriptions for graphical content, causing problems for visually impaired people.
• Poor contrast: 78% used foreground and background colour combinations with poor contrast, making it difficult for people with mild visual conditions such as colour blindness to read information.
• Improper (or no) header tags: 89% failed to use the correct technique for conveying document structure through the use of headings, making page navigation awkward for many visually impaired people.
• Inadequate link text: 97% used link text that did not clearly indicate the destination of the link, causing confusion for people with learning difficulties.

Ok. So some of the other findings - like using JavaScript for important functionalities - may be harder to bring into compliance. But ALT text descriptions? Header tags? Descriptive link text? Readability?

What were the designers thinking when they put these sites together? This is basic design that affects every user and costs sites money in lost sales and customer goodwill. If people can’t access your information and use your shopping cart, they sure won’t buy your products.

And, as AOL found out, they may just sue you for good measure. In 1999, the National Federation of the Blind sued AOL because, among other problems, the company’s software was incompatible with screen reader technology. The NFB withdrew the suit after AOL agreed to make changes. In October 2006, the NFB sued Target, citing several issues including the fact that the site requires the use of a mouse to make purchases.

On December 3, 2006, the UN observed an “International Day of Disabled Persons,” and described the importance of accessible technology, noting that:

Persons with disabilities are at a considerable disadvantage by not being able to access information technologies. For instance, as education becomes increasingly dependent on information technologies, not being able to access the Internet for example limits the learning potential of persons with disabilities.

Whether or not the United Nations effort actually has any benefit remains to be seen. But at least it may help focus attention on the problem - and enlighten recalcitrant designers about just how easy it is to meet basic accessibility requirements.

Rabbi Small’s solution is to so inure the boy to noise and distraction that he can continue the service unflustered - no matter what’s happening around him:

“I rambled around the sanctuary, sneezing, coughing, rattling candy wrappers, stamping my feet as Sandy spoke. I also broke paper bags, sneaked up on the boy and yelled in his ear, though it embarrassed me to be caught throwing Silly Putty at a bar mitzvah boy while he spoke earnestly about God.”

I recall this scene whenever I conduct usability tests. Rabbi Small tried hard to create real-world conditions for the boy. It’s a good idea. You’ll get better data from your usability testers if you provide some common distractions during the test.

Think about it: how often at home or in the office do you have the luxury of peace and quiet while you work? The office environment is filled with water cooler chatter, ringing phones, and that annoying co-worker who blares polka music on her CD player. Home isn’t much better - particularly if you have pets or children. Just try to be productive with a child hanging on your leg or a cat reclining on your keyboard.

That’s the real world, and it’s something rarely reflected in a formal usability test.

It’s like those EPA fuel economy tests where nobody ever speeds, gets stuck idling in traffic, or floors the accelerator with an enthusiasm usually reserved for NASCAR drivers. Your mileage may vary because you don’t always drive as if there’s a DMV inspector in the passenger seat.

In a standard usability test though, the user knows she’s being watched. Nobody wants to look stupid in front of the observer, so the tester is motivated to concentrate on the task, go slowly, and pay attention to details.

That’s almost completely opposite of how most people actually use Web sites. As Steve Krug points out in his excellent usability manual, Don’t Make Me Think, a misconception we have about users is that: “we picture a more rational, attentive user when we’re designing pages.” Furthermore, we optimistically assume that: “users will scan the page, consider all of the available options, and choose the best one.”

After all, that’s what our eager-to-please usability testers do, right? But be honest. Is that how you use a Web site when you’re alone? No normal person has that kind of time.

I’m not suggesting that you should yell at your test subjects or throw Silly Putty at them. But a bit of background noise and a distraction or two does give the test a more realistic ambience. Arrange for your phone to ring; ask a co-worker to interrupt with a question; drop your clipboard. Or try this: cats don’t care that they’re opaque; have one stand in front of the screen at least once during the test.

Nobody uses the Web in a perfect environment, so try not to be so obsessive about creating one when you do usability tests. A more realistic testing environment will help you get better results. And those will help you design a better, more seamless user experience.

My family loves the new GEICO Car Insurance commercials where the hapless caveman defends his species against ignorant assumptions that all cavemen are idiots. Apparently, we aren’t alone. News and commentary about the commercials is all over the Web:

• Wikepedia’s GEICO entry
• YouTube videos
• Caveman’s Crib Web site lets you tour the Caveman’s very upscale house. Usability note: loads slowly!
• An Adweek article discusses the phenomenal success of the ad campaign.

This is great viral marketing, and we’re all envious. But the point of the campaign is something that every Web designer and Web site owner should engrave on their keyboards:

“So easy a caveman can do it!”

Yep. GEICO is making usability their value proposition - at least in this ad campaign. If only every other Web site made the same commitment to ease of use.

Unfortunately, if you start discussing “usability” and “accessibility” with many site owners and designers, their response is less than animated. You can generally count on silence, glassy-eyed stares, and gentle snores of boredom.

Actually, usability is anything but boring. It’s a vital ingredient in customer satisfaction. Review these three scenarios. Chances are, you’ve had similar experiences.

• You’ve spent hours scouring the Web, and finally found the perfect gift for your hard-to-please significant other. Then you can’t complete the transaction because the shopping cart isn’t compatible with your browser.

  Are you bored?

• Or what if you’ve forgotten to mail your credit card payment and it’s due right now? You go to the card Web site to pay online, but can’t read the information because the text displays in 8px type.

  Have you accomplished your task?
  

• How about this situation? You subscribe to a satellite TV service and get a notice that prices are rising. So you sign into your account to see what service you have now and compare costs. But the Web site doesn’t give you access to that information. All you can do is pay your bill and order movies.

Does this site offer what you need?

These situations are a minor irritation for most users, but can be major obstacles to users with physical or cognitive disabilities. People using assistive technologies generally have one way to access information. If the site doesn’t accept that method, the disabled user is just out of luck.

Maybe you think: “Hey, that’s just a few people and I can blow them off.”

But think back to those users who were irritated or frustrated. They have options, and one of them is to click straight over to your competitor’s site and breeze through his shopping cart to buy that special gift.

GEICO has the right idea. “Easy to use” isn’t just goal; it’s a requirement for a successful Web site. Good usability by itself can’t make your site a success. However, poor usability - by itself - can make your site a failure.

There are many Web usability resources that cover everything from basic usability and accessibility principles to legal requirements for site owners. Check them out:

• Dive Into Accessibility online manual.
• US Government Web Usability Guidelines
• Usability hero Jakob Neilsen

Then invite that caveman over and ask him to do a usability test.