I’m not here to report how a particular ad campaign went. I want LinkedIn to view this as free user research – they need to improve the user experience and usability of LinkedIn Ads.

The ad campaign setup consists of what seems to be three simple steps. But as the user moves through the experience, what initially felt simple becomes rigid and constrictive when trying to make changes, update, or delete.

The top three key items LinkedIn Ads could fix to improve usability and the user experience:

1. No delete? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve heard this complaint within other areas of LinkedIn before, so I wasn’t surprised to find it in LinkedIn Ads. Once created, there is no way to delete an ad campaign or ad variation. You can hide them, but not delete them. Users should always be allowed to delete anything they create (just make them confirm it’s really what they want to do).
   
2. No “Save” option. If you leave the ad campaign setup process at any time, LinkedIn saves everything you started. This is great, except they don’t tell you they’re going to do that. So if you leave before finalizing a campaign, you would assume you’re losing what you started. Upon coming back to find it’s still there—you might be surprised, and also annoyed you didn’t know it would be saved in the first place. If the functionality is there, tell the users upfront so they can plan for it.
3. Cannot add new ad variations. I love that LinkedIn gives users 15 ad variations per campaign. But after you go through the initial three steps, there’s no way to come back and simply “Add a new variation.” You have to use a workaround where you duplicate an existing variation and just make changes to that. Users should never have to use a workaround for something that should be basic functionality. In fact, they should never have to use a workaround, period.
   

Despite my rant here, I love LinkedIn, and am very pleased to see it growing so much (100 million members as of March 2011!). As they grow, usability and the user experience is definitely something they’ll want to put more focus on. For now though, these few items would make a nice improvement.

Don’t forget to follow our usability and user experience design agency  on LinkedIn!

We are so honored to be mentioned in B2B magazine today! I just wanted to share as it really demonstrates our company’s passion for user centered design and usable web sites. Here’s a little excerpt for those that don’t have time to read the full article:

Another trend: Making the most of a user’s time on the site, rather than focusing on increasing the amount of time spent on the site, said Sandy Marsico, principal of Sandstorm Design, a web design and usability firm. “You want to help them find what they want quickly and get on with their day. Businesspeople don’t have any time to waste anymore.”

“You want clear areas of content,” Marsico said. “There should be more conversation and less selling.”

Now for those of you who just want to see the highlights, here are two web sites that we love that were featured:
http://edit.btobonline.com/article/20100913/FREE/100919974/10-great-websites-freightcenter-com

http://edit.btobonline.com/article/20100913/FREE/100919973/10-great-websites-ixda-org

The Client: National Association of REALTORS, Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council (REBAC)
The Goal: Create a user-friendly web site that addresses the needs of multiple user groups.
The Solution: After conducting usability testing, user research, and establishing personas, we identified what type of information the different user groups required, and what features and functionality they were looking for. We designed a clean web site design and navigation that organized information by user group, and tested the navigation to ensure key tasks could be completed with ease. Important information and tasks were called to attention in the form of graphic callouts to engage users and ensure that they found what they were looking for. Cool blues and greens were added to round out their color palette, and subtle textures were incorporated throughout the design to add dimension. A coordinating advertising campaign, brochure, and tradeshow were launched in conjunction with the new site to drive traffic to the site and brand REBAC consistently across all mediums.

It blows my mind how many web sites are designed and built without considering information architecture. We don’t let a project get to our creative team without an information architect (IA) building a few wireframes first.

Maybe it’s one part of our “secret sauce” (this is one of my favorite new sayings) but it should be a necessary part of every web design process. The IA is “the one” that ties together the strategy, business requirements, user requirements, and messaging. The IA considers a layout from the user’s perspective, ensures the site is easy to use, brings the most important features to the front, and aligns the marketing goals with the web site goals. An IA is highly strategic, is intuitive, and has a strong knack for common sense. My favorite book on the subject is Steve Krug’s book, “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”.

At Sandstorm, everyone in the creative department has to read it as part of their onboarding process. And we’ve added to the developers as well so we are all speaking the same language. Information architecture for us here at Sandstorm is just a part of who we are.

Ready to conduct some usability testing because you have no budget and something is better than nothing? Then read on my friend…

You only need 5-6 participants to catch 80% of your problems (Jakob Nielsen, March 19, 2000), so what are you waiting for? Assuming you don’t have access to your end user, grab a coworker or two (who isn’t on the project) and watch their expressions and their navigational habits complete a series of tasks that you have deemed most important. It’s basic, and rudimentary, but it’s a start. And you’ve just started the beginnings of a task analysis – which will be important when you start to implement your web analytics.

You’re ready to conduct a formal usability study and have some of your customers or potential prospects available to participate in this study (5-6 users is fine, but don’t forget the gratuity). These one-on-one sessions start out with a single user interacting with a web site or wire frame completing a set of tasks, and then a moderator asking them follow-up questions regarding the experience. These sessions usually involve a quiet room, a camera and tracking software to watch a user’s expressions and their navigational habits. After the study, the data is analyzed and a formal usability report with key findings and recommendations is written.

The goal of any usability test is to figure out what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and learn what your users want. So what are you waiting for?

When you are talking about informal usability testing, it doesn’t have to be complicated nor time intensive. Think simple, think as Homer Simpson would say “duh?”. When you take a look at the web site navigation and the initial web design concepts, think about the questions you have about what something means or what the section is about – and you can see if others run into the same questions. It’s simple, it’s quick and it’s a good start to get out the easy problems (mostly terminology). Then you can dive deeper into more formal usability testing to really get ahead of your competition.