The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

The list includes my all time favorite example of "We built it because we could" combined with "You don't understand. It will ship and it will be a success", "IT" aka the Segway.

(Early on, NextStage built a specific language engine to help us (me, at the time) understand what business people were really communicating. This became our RWB Language engine. This specific language engine has the ability to translate the business statement "You don't understand, it will ship and it will be a success" into it's non-euphemic, "We knows it's a bomb and it'll fail and we hope nobody will notice.")

This list also includes the Apple Newton, a device simply ahead of its time (in my opinion). What tickled me the most was that the failures were often due to usability issues, and here I define Usability as its used here at NextStage.

NextStage considers eight elements in usability; Imagination, Usage, Workability, Experience, Using, Need, Pleasure and Pain. How are these eight elements aspects of Usability defined?

Imagination:

Can the visitor imagine a use for the product or service?

Usage:

Does the visitor believe that regular use of the product or service will benefit them?

Workability:

Does the visitor believe they can easily integrate the product or service into their current work methodology?

Experience:

Does the visitor have prior experience with a similar product or service?

Using:

Is the visitor currently using a similar product or service?

Need:

Does the visitor recognize a need for this product or service?

Pleasure:

Has the visitor had pleasurable experiences with similar products or services?

Pain:

Has the visitor had painful experiences with similar products or services?

These eight elements have little to do with website usability and a great deal to do with whether or not the individual navigating the website believes what's on the website will serve their needs; ie, is the product or service described on the website usable as they intend to use it? People will put up with rotten website usability if they believe there's a reward in it. This was demonstrated in NextStage's preliminary research into UnGoaled Persistence (fodder for another column, me thinks).

More importantly, how strongly do each of these elements influence the visitor right now while they're on your website making a purchase decision? This is shown in the above figure and is a report all NextStage clients have access to (once we've trained them, of course). The above image contains three pieces of information:

1. Yellow bar - How well does the page convey this usability element?
2. Blue bar - How much history is the visitor bringing to this element?
3. Red bar - How important is this element in the visitor's decision process?

1. the most important item to the visitor is their belief that the product or service will benefit them (second red bar from left).
2. while the visitor has had experience with similar products or services, is currently using them and acknowledges the need (4th, 5th and 6th blue bars from left) these are not as important elements to them.
3. the visitor has had neither pleasurable nor painful experiences with similar products or services (last two missing blue bars on the right) and the possibility of pleasurable or painful experiences are very important to them (last two red bars on the right)

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• Conversations with the Past, Part 10
• From The Crofter's Loft: DeBranding
• NextStage's Language Engine Technology in Brief
• Sweetness Findings: Apple's IGoof

• IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
• XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
• DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
• Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.