Digital technology

is user-friendliness a sure marketing bet?

Is user-friendliness sufficient to drive marketing success? Very often, I hear people say that you have to make your end-users’ lives easier to generate marketing success. However paved with good intentions this statement may be, I did ask myself the question of whether making users’ lives easier is a sustainable marketing argument for the development of a business. Here are my thoughts on this subject.

Is user-friendliness a sure marketing bet?

user-friendliness

  1. First and foremost, I wondered whether revenue could be linked to user-friendliness and ease of use of the service? Very often, it is said that what made Apple’s success was the user-friendliness of its products. This explanation, however, is very debatable. What could be simple for a certain user, mainly because he is used to a certain feature or a certain way of doing things, may seem complex to another. And this is even true of such well-designed products as the MacIntosh, or the iPod.For instance, it happened to me many times that I advised new Apple buyers who were complaining about the lack of a contextual click on their new Mac mouse. I had to show them that they had to press the button for approximately one second in order to display that contextual menu.

    This simple gesture may seem very user-friendly to most Mac users, whereas having a two-button mouse may seem very unusual and quirky to them. But to most Windows users (just a little reminder, this is 97% of the population) this way of working with a mouse is very quirky too.

    Can we easily conclude that these design particularities (which could be considered as great by some and quirky by others) are a good selling argument, which are sufficient to explain how successful the product was? I’m not really sure, due to the fact that there are a number of users who discover these design features after buying the products and not before.

  2. Secondly, I’m wondering whether user-friendliness is a constant with time? As a matter of fact, I think that user-friendliness can be pictured on a curve (similar to the hype cycle curve by partner), which explains the evolution of a user and the user-friendliness factor in the course of the usage of the machine or software.By the time a user gets used to the features of the new software or the new hardware, including those which are very exotic, the end-user will become more and more exacting. A feature which might be unusual, or even useless when you start using a product, for instance, may eventually prove very useful and even compulsory with time.

    For instance, when I started using my newly purchased HTC 7500 advantage, the 3-D communication capability seemed to be superfluous to me; but I started using it more and more, and then I started to dive into the complexity of the menus and options.

    Now, the 3-G capability of my PDA has really become irreplaceable. If I were to lose it, I would struggle goes straight away to shop and buy a flat fee subscription for 3G, because I really need this feature now. As a conclusion, what seemed complex and useless at the outset (menu configurations to connect, proxy parameters, etc) very shortly became an absolute necessity for me to connect my machine to the Internet and use it to the full.

    Thirdly, it may happen that a feature, which seemed user-friendly, and convenient in the beginning, becomes useless and irritating with time. For instance, we could describe the T9 (so-called ‘predictive text’) feature on mobile phones as very useful when we discover it for the first time.

    When you don’t have a keyboard on your mobile phone or your smartphone and you want to type a text (short message, note, calendar entrey, etc) this feature may seem really great and useful. You start typing the beginning of the words, and then the system will fetch into the dictionary and will complete the entry. However, with time, this feature appears quirky, and even generates unwanted effects.

As a result, the feature which was meant to simplify usage becomes cumbersome, superfluous, and it even gets on your nerves to a point where you actually de-activate it (as long as you are able to work your way through the menus to re-instate manual entry). Eventually, users and mostly youngsters prefer to use abbreviations, and even this weird phonetic SMS lingo to communicate. This is a good example of a feature which seemed useful in the beginning, and was meant to make users’ lives easier, but which at the end of the day is so complex that the users want to get rid of it.

Other pertinent examples can certainly come to your mind, but as a conclusion of these brief article, I can add that user-friendliness is probably what is the most difficult thing to achieve in this world, because it is both subjective and personal (what seems easy for one may seem difficult to others) and because it evolves with time, with the usage of the system in one way or another.

At the end of the day, design can be a hell paved with good intentions, where user-friendliness and simplicity are aimed at but where one generates a lot of irritation and frustration. Most importantly, because this criterion is very subjective, it would probably generate a halo effect if we were to try and measure its impact on sales and revenues, or even worse if we were to predict future revenues based on user-friendliness.

Conversely, we can certainly find a very good number of products or services, which went through huge commercial success despite the fact their usability was really bad or even downright awful (one will remember. Siemens’ Gigaset telephones, which were tremendously successful from a commercial point of view a few years ago whereas their menus were absolutely useless; for instance turning on your speakerphone required that you pressed the ‘INT’ key and then press eight for what it means!?). I hope that this article, however, is not going to entice manufacturers to make lives even more difficult for users, because I think this is hard enough as it is.

However, and however much we regret it, we think it would be wrong to believe that user-friendliness and the quality of a user manual is a recipe for success.

Yann Gourvennec
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Yann Gourvennec

Yann Gourvennec created visionarymarketing.com in 1996. He is a speaker and author of 6 books. In 2014 he went from intrapreneur to entrepreneur, when he created his digital marketing agency. ———————————————————— Yann Gourvennec a créé visionarymarketing.com en 1996. Il est conférencier et auteur de 6 livres. En 2014, il est passé d'intrapreneur à entrepreneur en créant son agence de marketing numérique. More »

One Comment

  1. Usability is not a recipe for immediate success. However, I would argue that it is a recipe for continued success. For example, SAP R/3 is by far the leader in ERP software, but if they don’t make UX improvements to their software, do you think they will stay on top? The answer, of course, is a resounding “no”. They are in danger of a design group taking the functionality of SAP R/3 and creating a product with an improved experience.
    The iPod was not first-to-market. Apple looked at the early MP3 devices, and re-invented the portable digital music player. When people refer to the iPod as a good design, they are not referring to Apple in general. Apple has many successes and failures (e.g. the Newton, Macintosh TV [1993]). The mouse is a poor example, and one of the first things most savvy Apple owners buy is a Logitech or Microsoft mouse. If you read up on it, Apple has an internal philosophy that a one-button mouse adds value by simplifying things. In my opinion, users are fine with two buttons now, but it’s sad that we haven’t found anything better than the keyboard-mouse input device model.
    There are many variables to ensuring a good user-experience over time (e.g. expertise/learning, culture, accessibility). If a usability professional doesn’t account for these, then they aren’t doing their job.
    Finally, and most importantly, I should mention that there is a host of usability metrics. For a good introduction to those, have a look at Tom Tullis and Bill Albert’s (Fidelity Investments) new book: http://rurl.org/v53

  2. I believe that referring to “User Friendliness” over simplifies a complex phenomenon.
    One aspect of “user-friendliness”, user efficiency, has huge marketing potential when promoting business software. Our company recently found that a 1% increase in the efficiency of interaction with our user-interface would result in roughly 11 million dollars of costs savings for our clients.
    http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000300.php
    Still think that “user-friendliness” isn’t a sure bet for marketing? 🙂

  3. I believe that referring to “User Friendliness” over simplifies a complex phenomenon.
    One aspect of “user-friendliness”, user efficiency, has huge marketing potential when promoting business software. Our company recently found that a 1% increase in the efficiency of interaction with our user-interface would result in roughly 11 million dollars of costs savings for our clients.
    http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000300.php
    Still think that “user-friendliness” isn’t a sure bet for marketing? 🙂

  4. I see in your post a reminder that there is no absolute or universal when it comes to user-friendliness or convenience – that yesterday’s user-friendliness may well become tomorrow’s annoyance. And also that one person’s convenience may well be another’s irritant.
    This sums up the Sisyphean challenge (or endless march of progress, if you will) that design undertakes.
    For me, this points to the importance of seeking and serving our inner/spiritual states which are far more absolute and attainable – although whether ‘design’ possesses the wherewithal to understand and deliver to those ends is questionable.

  5. Ah, Ben. You’d have to ‘capitalize’ on that potential to achieve it. Say you make something ‘faster’ — but humans can’t, won’t, or don’t really give a flip about going any faster than they already are. Fail.
    And what the heck does any of this have to do with marketing? There’s a big difference between ‘market-ING’ and ‘markets’. Markets are conversations (ala. Cluetrain Manifesto and the whole Social Computing phenomenon). The perspective of the individual cares nothing about ‘market-ing’.
    This is way too deep of a focus on something that is a minor contribution to a far larger model of personal economics (behavioral economics) and choice.
    People ‘do’ things and leverage capabilities and tools to do them. The last thing they have in mind is to be, or to be treated as a subject to a ‘thing’ — which is what a ‘user’ relegates them to being.
    It’s time to change perspectives to be more successful at the goals you’re trying to achieve.
    There is nothing ‘friendly’ about being a ‘user’ at the very core — regardless of the ensuing experience. It’s time to adopt some better language patterns (which I realize would ‘threaten’ a lot of practitioners who have tied up their entire ‘existence’ into specific terms — but it’s a shell game that needs to end).

  6. Ah, Ben. You’d have to ‘capitalize’ on that potential to achieve it. Say you make something ‘faster’ — but humans can’t, won’t, or don’t really give a flip about going any faster than they already are. Fail.
    And what the heck does any of this have to do with marketing? There’s a big difference between ‘market-ING’ and ‘markets’. Markets are conversations (ala. Cluetrain Manifesto and the whole Social Computing phenomenon). The perspective of the individual cares nothing about ‘market-ing’.
    This is way too deep of a focus on something that is a minor contribution to a far larger model of personal economics (behavioral economics) and choice.
    People ‘do’ things and leverage capabilities and tools to do them. The last thing they have in mind is to be, or to be treated as a subject to a ‘thing’ — which is what a ‘user’ relegates them to being.
    It’s time to change perspectives to be more successful at the goals you’re trying to achieve.
    There is nothing ‘friendly’ about being a ‘user’ at the very core — regardless of the ensuing experience. It’s time to adopt some better language patterns (which I realize would ‘threaten’ a lot of practitioners who have tied up their entire ‘existence’ into specific terms — but it’s a shell game that needs to end).

  7. Paula,
    I’m certainly an advocate of a human centered design approach.
    Given the context my article was written in (enterprise level business software), a user in this case is not the decision maker who decides to buy the software. Marketing to this user would be a pointless endeavor. Targeting this person’s boss (the person who decides to buy the software), is a different matter.
    To your point “but humans can’t, won’t, or don’t really give a flip about going any faster than they already are. Fail.” – the mechanics of a shortest path for a human-computer interaction can be accounted for with standard modeling technique such as GOMS, but you can never be certain what path real users will choose. You’d have to go on-site and perform ethnography after it is released to get a definitive answer…

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