February 20 Minutes & a Beer Recap

Hey, thanks again to all you who made it out to Tap & Mallet last night. It’s cool that we’re seeing new faces at every event. Prez Joe just emailed me and asked me to do a quick recap, so here goes:

My talk was about creating websites with great user experience. While “user experience” doesn’t sound sexy (many people don’t even know what it means), it’s a critical part of any website development. At its most basic level, it’s about having good organization and solid content. More specifically, I focus on three things:

1. Great content
2. Easy Navigation
3. A Little Mind Reading

What it all boils down to is asking yourself what your user’s main needs might be and going over the top to deliver on that. Whether it’s letting them embed your videos on their Facebook page, linking them to research that supports buying your product or making your navigation foolproof. The mind reading comes in when you anticipate something they haven’t even thought of yet that delivers even better customer service.

We had some great questions about the value of usability studies (I am an advocate) and about how to talk clients out of their bad navigation ideas :). A good time was had by all. Hope to see you next time.

Andrea Zuegel