Usability
June 14, 2009
Research compiled by Clyde Bentley
Much of America will be thinking of fathers this week, but it is the other half of the couple getting the media research chatter. Elsewhere in the research world, it's text that talks for teens while a usability guru talks about practical research...
Mommy's dearest -- Do you know what you get with nearly $2 trillion, a love for reading, a high sense of community and a passion for exploring the Web? It's not respect from the nation's marketers nor from American media's advertising , according to M2Moms. That said, researchers are peppering Madison Avenue with startling numbers that say the smart money for the foreseeable future is on Mom.
M2Moms (Marketing to Moms) holds an annual conference focusing on meeting the commercial needs of women. Between conference dates, its organizers aggregate and post statistics about the Mom market on its Web site. For instance:
-- Dad may help with the dishes, but doesn't decide how to spend the family income. Moms control 85% of household spending. Tha's at least $1.7 trillion annually. This helps explain why guy-centric sports sections have so few ads. With this economy and those numbers, the viability of currently configured sports sections could come into question.
-- The vast majority of mothers with kids 18 and under work outside the home. They are time crunched but information hungry -- the combination that the Web serves best. Note to editors: What they seem to want most from you is help organizing their lives, quickly navigating through information and finding ideas that help a modern family remain a family.
-- But Mom isn't happy. Just a scant 20% said advertisers do a good job connecting with them and, at that, 30% say they see ads that offend them. Ouch.
Blog on, Mom -- It's not just the ad side that fails Mom's litmus test. Increasingly, mothers are turning to other moms for their reading material. Welcome to the Mommy-Blogger business. Advertising Age posted a great video that discusses how women simply went around traditional publishers to create formidable content networks that are now marketing (and readership) powerhouses.
Ad Age said Mommy Bloggers may comprise the strongest force changing the Web scene today. It's also a force that is so far under the radar screen that no one has more than a guess of how many Mommy Bloggers are out there. Thousands upon thousands of women (including my daughter) are telling their stories across the world.
Marketers are scrambling to catch up and in the process shaking up the editorial world. Walmart promotes a host of Mommy Bloggers and gives them products that they hype online. Advertising and PR agencies are adding Mommy Blogging services to their menus. And companies that early-on offered to host blogs for their female customers are now trying to figure out what to do with the thousands of blogs on their Web servers.
More than a flower -- If you want the latest stats on how Mom lives in the cyberworld, you won't get away with a peck on the cheek and a daisy bouquet. eMarketer just released a huge report on the influence of mothers on the Web, but it will cost you $695. The executive summary looks tempting (how many, how much, on what technology, connecting to whom, etc.), but not on a professor's salary. Of course, you also can just take a good look at what's happening in the the new woman's world by visiting her -- BlogHer, that is.
Teen Text -- When our son moved out of the nest last year, my wife took a step into his world by becoming a flying-thumb text messager. And now they exchange SMS messages frequently. Of course, texting is as natural as breathing to my son and the rest of young America. The recently released Vlingo Consumer Mobile Messaging Habits Report shows that 94% of American teens with cell phones use them to text. My son and his 20-something friends are just behind at 87%.
But those of us who can remember rotary phones are also getting quicker on the little keyboard. Use of texting by folks in their 40s rose eight points to 64% this year while 46% of the 50+ crowd is texting, also up eight points. (Note to wife: Honestly, I didn't say which category you are in. Your thumbs are forever young.)
The maddening part of the Vlingo report for those of us who are trying to put journalism into the mobile world is the "not" side of report. Vlingo said 41% of cell phone users do not text and 70% do not browse the Web. Just as we found in our research here at Missouri, the cost of service was a big barrier to smartphone adoption.
The good part, however, is that the Vlingo report is free.
Don't guess, just ask -- I have been a big fan of Jakob Niesen for years. His Alertbox email newsletter is a motherload of research-based insight to online usability. Through the years, he has pounded in the lesson that simple logic makes good sense.
Now he offers the simplest solution to the consumer issues of Web design: Just ask a people. Nielsen is not talking about expensive surveys, in this case. Though valid scientific research is the most accurate route, in a fix as few as two users can steer you in the right direction. The trick is picking the right two -- the empirical two.
Nielsen described a test in which he posted a question online about font sizes on Web pages. He received 12 responses. Half were obviously just baseless opinions. Of the other six, four were honest guesses and two cited personal observations.
The guessers were of little help, but the observers got it right.
Nielsen's study on quick-and-dirty research showed that even a few answers based on empirical data -- "I noticed that when I..."; "We tried..." etc. -- provides far more useful information than many more opinions or guesses. In fact, 75% of the respondents who guessed were wrong. As he notes, you'd do better tossing a coin.
A little data goes a long way and can make the difference between readership and click-aways in Web design. Nielsen steps designers through the process in Alertbox, but it is also good to remember that the same simple technique can help for print design and content challenges.
The newspaper way is too often the cowboy way -- just shoot from the hip. But a few questions to even a handful of readers can make all the difference. Just remember that data always beats guesses. Don't ask what they think about the issue, ask them what, how and when they use your product.
Contact Me:
E-mail - bentleycl@missouri.edu Twitter: http://twitter.com/MizzouBentley