BUX Podcast #79:How to Convince a New Client That UX is For Them

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Greetings Radio Listeners!

Ben once described what we do like this. He says, “It’s like we are leading horses to water – Drink DAMN IT!@” I tend to agree with him. Many business owners struggle with adjusting to a UX designer mental modal and design process. They don’t see things that we do. It’s up to us to clearly explain them

Yet we are all faced with explaining these techniques to clients – and if we don’t we are setting the relationship up for failure.

So, in the interest of helping you get off on the right foot with your next client – Getting that horse to drink. Jenna, Ben and I sat down to gameplan and discuss how these conversations should go.

The Key Points of UX Philosophy

0. Websites are machines

Websites are complex with many moving parts. Not a simple product, to be bought and plugged in. In order to be high performance, they need to be tuned and tweaked.

1. Look at all these analytics!

Before you do ANYTHING, you need to be aware of your website. When business owners see these graphs and charts, they crave them. It’s like the veil is lifted and they instinctively see the site in a whole new way (not all good, but that is beyond the scope here). It’s like they crawled out of the cave or they see the matrix (What is the matrix?)
2. Introducing the iterative cycle!

Making changes is what designer do. A smart approach is to iterate over many baby steps. Here the importance is on continuous, incremental improvements. And, it’s not the amount of change, but the direction of the change.

“Which direction?”, you ask? – Towards your goals.

3. Goals & Flows

A goal is where you want to be in your business – Business goals. A goal is, also, a destination on your website – Website goal. (See how the design process works on these two levels?) The important thing to remember is that goals should be SMART or fashioned in such a way as to promote positive action and improvements. They should be specific, measurable, and achievable.

4. Critical path

Thinking in terms of a website, the critical path is the exact steps( links, pages, and processes) that a visitor goes through to get to the goal. It’s a linear thing and can be measured. It’s critical because it’s really the only meaningful thing to the user as they interact a site.

And, how do we interact?

5. Speak the users language

Language is key. Think of the site as a character in a play. It has to have lines to say – the copy and verbage. But it also has to deliver those lines in character. It uses verbal or non-verbal language. Crafty website! Make it how you want it – but make it consistent. Jenna tells a story of inconsistent language in a sales process that highlights how this can go wrong.

6. Talk to your users

Finally, simply talking to you users is fundamental to the UX process. I like to use a more general – Observe and interact with your users because there are so many methods and tools for doing this.

OTHER NOTES! aka Newman’s Random notes aka Also mentioned

Don Rumsfeld – Known Knowns and Unknown Unknowns

Access to data analytics (graphs and charts) breaks down general goals into actionable, specific goals

Numbers matter

A goal, like a constraint, promote creativity.

The pursuit of the goal is important, as much or more than the achievement

BUX NUGGET– Scaffolding is to bootstrap as the Sale process is to ‘Sales’ – There is a pattern. Follow it until you understand it enough to modify it without destroying it… or something – it’s deep and good – Both Jenna and I were like “Whoa. What did Ben just say? Dang!”

Flows run through different interactions – site, email, phone, etc. A consistent message is key to maintain during the whole and total interaction

Examine and Challenge your assumptions. Science!

Ben says, “You can’t start in High Gear”. What’s low gear? Where do you start? Becoming aware…. Now, you know.

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Any we finish it all up with the BIRTHDAY SONG for Ben~!