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Eight things user-centred design can teach business

User-centred design (UCD) is widely regarded as the best way to design a great user experience (UX), with most UX professionals following the international standard ISO 9241 part 210. 

As project leader for this standard, I realised that some of the principles which underlie UCD can be applied to whole organisations, so I am pleased to be project leader (with Tomas Berns from Sweden) for a new ISO standard which aims to make businesses as a whole more human centred.

To encourage interest in the new standard, we have drafted an executive summary which can be downloaded and freely distributed and would welcome input from Econsultancy readers.

This new standard aims to engage the ‘hearts and minds’ of executive board level people by explicitly presenting how eight main principles of UCD can apply to organisations. 

In this post I look at these eight principles and link them back to user experience with examples (good or bad) on the web.

Digital marketing and the music industry: six key trends for 2014

One of the interesting things about being a digital marketer that specialises in a certain niche is that you get to understand your niche from many different angles.

Over the past 12 months I’ve talked to hundreds of music companies; understanding what works, what doesn’t, and where they think their corner of the industry is going.

Here’s my summary of what I think will matter when it comes to digital marketing in the music industry in 2014.

Ecommerce in 2013: have online retailers finally figured out mobile?

It’s been another busy year for ecommerce, with one of the key themes being the widespread adoption of responsive design. 

But have retailers finally gotten to grips with mobile, or is there still much to be done? I lean towards the latter as, though some brands provide an excellent mobile experience, many are still woeful.

I’ve asked our ecommerce experts, agency and client-side, for their views… 

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Wikipedia and SEO: what every digital marketer needs to know

Wikipedia has been one of the success stories of the internet, growing rapidly to become the de facto reference site for many people.

There are more than 4.4m pages in the English language edition alone, and it is still growing at the rate of 771 new pages every day.

How can its impact benefit digital marketers?

Four ways to increase social engagement in the New Year

Driving quality engagement with your social audience increases loyalty and more effectively guides consumers down the path to purchase.

As such, marketers must place a premium on fostering social relationships that add tangible value and incentives to the customer experience.

But how can marketers identify the most effective ways to break through the flood of status updates, tweets, pins, and posts?

Read on for four strategies that marketers can integrate in 2014 to make sure social conversations with your audience hit the mark.

See 2013 through the eyes of Twitter

If I had to sum up my year in 140 characters it would read: during 2013 I’ve been having a lot of problems writing snappy, concise and appropriate sub-headlines in my articles for the Econsultancy blo… 

There are people out there who are much better at this sort of thing than I am, and to celebrate those experts, Twitter has released an interactive widget that lets you explore the past year’s key trends on Twitter, month-by-month and within various different topics such as news, sport and entertainment.

Click on the image below to see for yourself. 

Econsultancy’s top 25 blog posts of 2013

It’s been another busy year on the Econsultancy blog and, thanks to a highly intelligent and attractive readership, we managed to pass 1m monthly pageviews for the first time.

Not that it’s all about numbers, but it’s good to have someone out there reading your painstakingly crafted articles. 

The bad news is that, once again, I’ve missed out on the top spot, third was the best I could manage. 

So here’s a round-up of some of the most popular posts written by the Econsultancy team this year (see here for our top guest posts). Posts are ranked by number of page views. 

Amazon tops another customer satisfaction survey, with John Lewis coming second

Amazon has yet again come out on top in a customer satisfaction survey, proving that is remains the company to beat when it comes to ecommerce.

And as if to underline just how successful Amazon is at creating an excellent customer experience, it actually came joint first and second in the Foresee study thanks to its .com and .co.uk domains.

It’s not all good news for the ecommerce giant however, as Amazon.co.uk actually saw a two-point decline compared to last year, down from 86 to 84.

John Lewis came third in the study with 79, followed by Apple on 78 and M&S on 77. Unsurprisingly Ryanair came bottom of the pile with just 60 points.

How to benefit from the Facebook post lifecycle

Facebook and other social networks are re-organising how consumers experience the web, centring it on their personal connections and activities.

This is blurring the lines between branded content, paid advertising, and consumer conversations.

Marketers therefore need to integrate owned, paid and earned social media strategies.

10 UK Christmas adverts with the highest social engagement

Predictably John Lewis currently retains the highest social engagement for Christmas ads, but for how long?

As of 10 December 2013, the John Lewis ‘The Bear and The Hare’ ad has achieved 10.3m views, and just over 1m engagements (likes, shares or comments).

However, its engagement-per-thousand-views (EPM) has dropped to 101, from 393 in four weeks.

This seems logical. The more popular and ubiquitous a video is, the less likely that people will bother sharing it as they feel they’re just adding to the noise of what we’ve already seen. 

Interestingly though, this viral complacency may lead to a pre-Christmas upset. 

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