Since the early days of Oomph, we’ve worked with clients to create a variety of online educational experiences. Platforms to practice Buddhism. Platforms for cardiologists to be better informed. For teachers to be better prepared for the classroom. For high-tech product users to become more proficient.

Here’s the process we’ve seen work:

  1. Define the purpose of the platform.
  2. Identify students’ needs and expectations.
  3. Choose the learning tools that best achieve your objectives.

…and here’s what we’ve seen too many folks do: skip the purpose and dive right into posting videos on something like Teachable. While that might work for some business models, it’s not effective for most others.

By understanding what is at stake for the learner, you can understand how to support their learning

As online learning continues to grow, we need a different way of thinking about how people learn via online systems. By considering what’s at stake in a given situation — in other words, how important is it that students learn the material — we can identify four primary categories of learning purpose. Once you know which category your platform falls into, you can design it with the tools and features that best achieve your learning objectives.

Let’s explore those four purpose categories and how they shape the online learning experience.

1. Entertainment (or “No Stakes”) Learning

Entertainment learning is driven purely by curiosity. Students might see this type of learning as truly fun, maybe even as an alternative to other forms of entertainment (like watching a movie).

In this case, there are no stakes — no real consequences for the student who gives up mid-way through a class. As for the educator, the only risks are related to losing viewers and market share. An example of this type of learning platform is Masterclass, which has mastered the art of marketing entertainment learning. Masterclass doesn’t really care if you learn the material, as long as you’re enjoying the experience.

Most entertainment learning is delivered through polished content designed to sell as many courses to as many people as possible. Neither the platform nor the student are truly invested in the learning.

What’s the purpose?

As an example, let’s say Sam the Student is intrigued by sailing. They may never actually do it, but they wants to know what it involves. In this case, Sam is simply consuming the content.

What’s needed:

Successful entertainment learning platforms focus more on user acquisition and user retention versus how well users absorb and apply the content. Such platforms benefit from:

  1. Good content production quality
  2. Celebrity and well-known “expert” instructors
  3. Effective marketing (like compelling trailers)

2. Student Stakes Learning

Like entertainment learning, student stakes learning is also student-driven. The difference is that there are real consequences, which means the student has a purpose beyond simply consuming the content. But the consequences apply to the student, not the educator. Think about studying for a driver’s license test — if you don’t pass, you don’t get your license. DMV isn’t responsible for helping you learn; they’ll just re-administer the test.

What’s the purpose?

To continue the boating example: by this time, Sam has become a frequent sailor and wants to learn how to forecast off-shore weather without needing a computer. In this case, retaining the content is essential, so they can put it to use.

What’s needed:

Student stakes learning needs to incorporate content retention techniques. It also helps to hold students accountable for their learning. Content should be shorter and focus on comprehension. Student stakes learning platforms benefit from:

3. Educator Stakes Learning

In this kind of learning, there are consequences for the student, but the stakes are higher for the educator. Think of higher education at colleges and universities, where a school’s reputation is at stake. This could also apply to a management training program, which can impact overall company performance, or to a business trying to educate users on a topic in the hopes they’ll buy a related product.

Comprehension and completion are key in educator stakes learning, which is why it often includes a certificate of completion or an accreditation of some kind, so the educator can verify that the student actually learned the material.

What’s the purpose?

Sam has now decided to become a commercial boat captain, and their potential employer wants them to pass a certification course. Here, Sam’s demonstrating knowledge of the material is highly important to the educator.

What’s needed:

Because educator stakes learning hinges on comprehension, it’s important to focus on helping students both retain course material and sufficiently demonstrate their knowledge of it. These kinds of platforms often include:

4. Broad Stakes Learning

Broad stakes learning impacts the student, the educator and often society in general, and knowledge of the material must be refreshed on a regular basis. Consider a warehouse that trains its staff on the proper use of heavy equipment. For an employee, their job is likely on the line; for the company, the safety of their workforce and their reputation is at stake; and for all the company’s employees, there are issues of personal safety and trust.

What’s the purpose?

Sam now aspires to become a ferry boat captain, which means they’ll be responsible for passengers, vehicles, and cargo. The local authority requires that they pass a certification each year to demonstrate current knowledge of the material, to ensure they’ll be a safe and competent captain.

What’s needed:

Ongoing retention of content is critical here, along with staying current on new information. So, broad stakes learning platforms generally use bite-sized material with frequent reviews, quizzes, and feedback. Students learn a topic, review the topic, review it again, and take a quiz; if they missed any questions, they’ll likely get additional help and get tested again. Later on, there may be additional communications and usually a refresher course or two.

Learning platforms that support broad stakes learning often use the tools from educator stakes learning, with some additions:

A Different Way of Thinking

As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all digital learning experience. That’s why a medical association administering doctor certifications needs a very different platform from, say, an HR department offering manager training. Different industries leverage different kinds of learning, which require different educational tools.

If you’re planning to embark on an online learning initiative, be sure to align your efforts around your core purpose. Without a clear roadmap, well, we’ve seen what happens. Remember how online learning was thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic? One thing became painfully clear: not every online learning platform actually worked.

That’s because many of those platforms were thrown together without regard for basic learning principles. Above all, online learning platforms must be built to serve the purpose behind the educational experience. Like we said earlier: define your purpose, identify your students’ needs, and choose the right tools for the job.

Looking to develop an online learning experience for your organization? We’d love to help you develop the best possible tools. Contact us today to learn more.

When companies merge, successfully combining digital assets like websites, intranets, apps, and other platforms takes more than just squishing things together. Poorly merged digital properties can diminish brand equity, squander years of SEO value, and even drive away customers or employees — ultimately tanking the value the merger was supposed to create.

The challenge is that you’re bringing together two end-user communities with different experiences and expectations. And it’s easy to assume the bigger or faster-growing company has the better digital platform, even when there’s a lot you could learn from the smaller company’s practices.

That’s why we recommend a collaborative, UX-centered approach to combining digital properties, to ensure you’re leveraging the best of both worlds. In this article, we’ll share a sample of UX analyses that can help set up a new combined platform for success.

First, let’s talk about leveraging the right mindset.

A Different Approach

Typically, when combining digital platforms, companies tend to take a top-down approach, meaning there’s a hierarchy of decision-making based on which platform is believed to be better. But the calculus can change a lot when those decisions are made from the end users’ point of view instead.

From a practical standpoint, these companies are usually trying to create efficiencies and add new competencies while carefully messaging the benefits of the merger for their customers. They focus on things like branding, SEO, and consolidating social media — all of which are important, and none of which truly shapes the platform user’s experience.

To be fair, before the merger, both companies were likely focused on trying to create the best possible user experience for their customers. Now that they’re joining forces, each brings a unique set of learnings and techniques to the table. Which begs the question: what if your new partner handles some aspects of UX better than you?

Working collaboratively through in-depth Acquisition Analysis gives you an opportunity to extract the best from all digital properties, as either company’s platforms may have features, functionality, or content that does a better job of meeting business goals. How do you know which elements will be more successful? By auditing both platforms with tools like the ones we’ll talk about next.

When merging, don’t assume the bigger company should swallow the smaller and all its digital assets. There might be many things that the smaller company is doing better.

Conducting UX Audits

To preserve SEO value and cull the best-performing content for the new platform, many companies conduct content and SEO audits, often using free or paid tools. These usually involve flagging duplicate content, comparing performance metrics, and using R.O.T. (redundant/outdated/trivial) analyses.

What many organizations miss, however, is the opportunity to conduct UX and customer audits while directly comparing digital platforms. These can provide invaluable insights about the mental models and behaviors of users.

At a minimum, we recommend comparing both platforms using Nielsen Norman Group’s 10 usability heuristics. Setting the standard for user interface design for almost three decades, these guidelines give you a great baseline for identifying which parts of each platform are the most user-friendly. You can also compare heatmaps and scrollmaps to assess which platform does a better job of engaging users in ways that matter to your business goals.

Here are some other examples of UX analyses we conduct for clients when merging digital platforms:

Five second test

With existing customers or representatives of your target audience, ask users to view a page for five seconds and then answer a few questions about it. You’re looking for gut feelings here, as first impressions can tell you a lot about a page’s effectiveness.

Questions might include:

This test should be done for multiple pages on a website, not just the homepage. It’s especially valuable for product or service pages, where you can assess whether specific features are easily visible and accessible.

Customer interview comparison

For this assessment, enlist 5 to 10 customers for each business. Have the customers of Company A use Company B’s platform and vice versa, asking them to explain the value each company offers. You can also ask users what’s missing when they use the other company’s website. What’s different and better (or worse) than before? The answers can help you determine which brand and functional elements are essential to the user experience for each platform.

This test can also provide insights about the impact of elements you may not have previously considered, like the quality of photography or the order in which information is presented. These elements can set expectations and affect how people use the platform, all of which contributes to building users’ trust.

For a more in-depth analysis of user engagement and preferences, try gathering a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.

Site map analysis

Given that the merging companies are likely in the same or similar industries, there will probably be overlap between the site maps for each company’s website. But there will also be elements that are unique to each site. To successfully blend the information architecture of both properties, you’ll need to determine which elements work best for your target audience.

In addition to comparing analytics for the different websites to see which elements are most effective, here are a few other research methods we recommend:

Cohort analysis

Looking at other websites in your industry, examine their site structures and the language they use (e.g. “Find a doctor” vs. “Find a provider”). This reflects visitors’ expectations of what information they’ll get and where they can find it. You can also identify areas where you should deviate from the norm, including language that’s more authentic and unique to your brand.

Card sort

Card sorting helps you understand how to structure content in a way that makes sense to your users, so they can find what they’re looking for. Participants group labeled notecards according to criteria they would naturally use. For example, if you have a car rental site, you could ask users to organize different vehicle models into groups that make sense to them. While your company might use terms like “family car” or “executive sedan,” your customers might have completely different perceptions.

Tree testing

Tree testing helps you evaluate a proposed site structure by asking users to find items based solely on the menu structure and terminology. Using an online interface (Treejack is a popular one) that displays only navigation links without layout or design, users are asked to complete a series of 10–15 tasks. This can show you how easy it is for site visitors to find and use information. This test is often used after card sorting sessions to confirm that the findings from the card sorting exercise are correct.

Use Information, Not Intuition

Like we said, just because a larger company acquires a smaller one doesn’t mean its digital properties have nothing to learn from the other’s. Better practices could exist in either place, and it would be a shame to lose any unique value the smaller company’s platform might offer.

With so many robust tools available for UX analysis, there’s no reason not to gather the crucial data that will help you decide which features of each platform will best achieve your business goals. When combining digital properties, the “1 + 1 = 3” trope only works if you truly glean the best of both worlds.

Need help laying the groundwork for merging separate digital platforms? Our strategic UX experts can craft a set of research exercises to help your team make the best possible decisions. Contact us today to learn more.

You’ve just rolled out an important new feature on your platform, and it’s time to answer the all-important question: is it getting the results you want? If you’ve set up an analytics tool, you can look at performance indicators like registrations, logins, downloads, or shares. But that kind of quantitative data will only get you so far.

Let’s say that new feature isn’t having the impact you’d hoped for — maybe registrations are lacking or engagement is low. You have a problem you need to solve, but you don’t have any information about why it’s happening. And you may have an entirely different underlying problem you need to address.

Where can you find actionable information? Enter qualitative research.

By answering the why behind what’s happening, qualitative data provides context for problems that surface through quantitative analysis. It helps you uncover the root of the problem you have and can also reveal problems you didn’t even know existed.

In this article, we’ll cover how to use both types of research to inform your platform design.

First, the Numbers: Quantitative Research

When you’re evaluating the performance of a digital platform, a good place to start is the cold, hard numbers. Quantitative research provides numerical data that can indicate, at a glance, whether your platform is meeting your business objectives. It can also show the scale of any problems and help prioritize which ones to address.

One major benefit of quantitative data is benchmarking. Tracking your data over time reveals whether UI changes are producing the results you want — and can help you measure the ROI of your efforts. You can also compare your data to an industry benchmark or a competitor’s stats as a barometer for your own performance.

Here are some examples of quantitative research methods:

Web analytics

This data describes what people are doing with your platform: where they go, what they click on, what features they use. It’s good for finding problems and monitoring the performance of content or features.

A/B testing

Here, you’re using experiments to compare different UI designs. By creating two live versions of the same element, like a call-to-action button, you can see which one performs best. Learn more in our article on A/B testing.

Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys let you gather information about your users’ preferences, attitudes, and behaviors, and they can produce a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. For easy-to-capture numerical data, use techniques like ratings and multiple-choice questions.

Usability testing

By measuring user experience with hard data, you can test how easy (or not) a platform feature is to use. Let’s say you just released a reminder function, and you want to know if users can create a reminder in two minutes or less. You can run a test where you ask participants to set a reminder, and measure what percentage are able to complete the task within two minutes.

Now that you’ve got a sense of what users are doing on your platform, let’s look at ways to learn why and how they’re doing it.

Now for the Words: Qualitative Research

Qualitative research can help you investigate why something is happening, identify ways to fix problems, and even determine whether you should phase out a feature or redesign it. Using detailed, contextual descriptions of users’ experiences, you can dive deeper into exactly which elements are working well and which are problematic.

Quantitative and qualitative research both provide useful data, but they’re more powerful when used together.

Unlike with quantitative research, you don’t need a ton of data points to get usable info. For example, if you see five customers in a row walk into the corner of a display in a retail store’s entrance, you can safely assume that most visitors will do the same thing.

You may be avoiding qualitative data because it seems expensive. And some techniques, like focus groups, require a greater investment than others. But, because you don’t need an enormous amount of data, qualitative research can be very cost-effective. It might even save you money by helping you identify and fix problems faster.

Here are some examples of qualitative research methods:

User Interviews

There are a number of different ways to handle user interviews, depending on the type and specificity of info you’re looking for. Here are a few:

Focus Groups

These are similar to user interviews, but they’re done in a group setting. The advantage of a group is that it can often generate more feedback, as people tend to open up when they hear the experiences of others. Just be sure you have a moderator who gives everyone a chance to speak.

Field Studies

What people say they do… is often not what they actually do. Watching platform users in their natural environment can reveal gaps in your understanding of the user experience. You can use direct observation, interviews, contextual inquiry, and usability tests to learn how people do things and why they do them in particular ways.

Diary Study

This method asks users to document their experiences over time, making it useful for understanding longer-term behaviors. You can learn things like what motivates people to use certain features, what they’re trying to accomplish, how they feel, and what their overall journey looks like.

User Surveys

As opposed to quantitative surveys, qualitative surveys use open-ended questions to learn what users think and feel in their own words. One common pitfall: avoid leading questions. Instead of asking, say, “How easy was it to find the info you needed?”, ask “Describe your experience looking for that information.”

Like Peanut Butter & Jelly

Quantitative and qualitative research both provide useful data, but they’re more powerful when used together. Remember that quantitative data can tell you when there’s a problem with your platform design, but you’ll need qualitative data to know how to fix it.

Chances are, you’ll use them at different times. Qualitative research can be done during the initial design phase, once you have a working product, or during a redesign. It’s especially valuable at the beginning of a design process because it can help you focus on what your users need and why. Quantitative research is generally done only when you have a working product (either at the beginning or end of a design cycle), so you can measure the results of a design or change.

Want to learn more about how data-driven design can improve your platform performance? We’d love to help. Contact us today to schedule a call.

You may have heard the old adage, “A website is never done.” Even the best digital platforms go through multiple rounds of changes, updates, and a complete overhaul now and then. Because even if your platform is already good, there’s always something you can do to improve the user experience and better support your business goals.

The key is figuring out which changes truly result in improvements, and which are a waste of your money and time.

Why You Need A/B Testing

Here are a few use cases where A/B testing can deliver crucial info:

Whatever the business case, you must understand how users interact with your platform and how its features impact their experience, in order to make informed decisions about platform design and content.

Too often, companies evaluate changes with internal stakeholders instead of real users. In the end, you may go through a lot of development work without knowing if the changes you’re making will result in something impactful. Instead, with less time and fewer resources, __you can use A/B testing with your actual audience to find out definitively what’s effective and what’s not. __

How A/B Testing Helps Your Platform

In addition to helping maximize the effectiveness and minimize the resources invested in platform redesign, A/B testing provides invaluable short- and long-term benefits:

Increase Conversions

Probably the number-one goal for most redesign efforts, increasing conversion rate is one of the most robust uses of A/B testing. Rather than guessing at what makes users complete a registration form or take a desired action, you get hard data to confirm whether a change truly produces a lift in conversions.

Improve User Engagement & Retention

Bounce rate is often a key indicator of user experience and can have a significant impact on your conversion goals. Testing multiple elements of a particular page can help you find visitor pain points and improve their overall experience, ultimately getting them to spend more time on your site.

Learn About Your Audience

By progressively testing which elements your users gravitate to (or from), you can learn a little more about your audience at each step, and then use that data to inform future design and content.

Road-Test New Features

Before you introduce a new feature, launching it as an A/B test can show how your audience is likely to react. You’ll get hard and fast data in a real-world environment with less risk.

Personalize User Experiences

You can use A/B testing as a way to identify steps toward platform personalization, to understand which forms of personalization could potentially increase user engagement.

What Should You Test?

A/B testing can be used for everything from full page designs to single content elements. Even small and simple changes can significantly impact the user experience and, consequently, your engagement and conversion rates.

When Humana A/B tested a website banner, the version with pared-down copy and a different photo increased click-throughs by 433 percent! In a second test, changing the call-to-action (CTA) copy increased click-throughs by a further 192 percent, showing that even subtle word changes can boost engagement.

How do you figure out what to test? Examining quantitative or qualitative data will help you identify potential pain points and give you a basis for experimentation. Maybe your homepage has an unusually high bounce rate, or users are providing negative feedback on your sign up process. Once you’ve identified an issue, form a hypothesis to test: define a problem, propose a solution, and identify metrics for success or failure.

Whatever you include in your testing plan, focus on things that are most likely to impact the metric you’re trying to improve. For instance, if you want to increase conversion rate, you might test the design or placement of a CTA.

Here are some commonly tested elements:

One caution: if you’re testing multiple elements simultaneously, make sure they’re distinct enough that they don’t affect each other and impact the results of each test. Your results should be related only to the options you’re presenting, so there’s a clear understanding of what exactly is influencing your audience.

One Last Word of Advice

In the end, one form of testing alone is never a panacea for improving your platform. While A/B testing provides valuable data, it has limitations, too. Most importantly, unlike qualitative analysis, it doesn’t explain the why behind your measured results. Also, the data produced is only relevant to the specific area you’re testing, versus open-ended user testing that could surface other challenges hindering your platform’s performance.

That’s why qualitative feedback is still vitally important for your site — it surfaces things you can’t learn from numbers alone (like a user not finding you trustworthy or credible). A/B testing can give you relatively quick and easy ways to improve your user experience, but it doesn’t give you every answer you need.

Your business never stands still, and your audience is always evolving and changing. We’re here to help you keep looking forward. Contact us today to talk about optimizing your platform experience.

In the age of hyper-personalization by the likes of Amazon and Netflix, customized user experiences are now table stakes for digital platforms. Businesses that invest in personalization are rewarded with loyalty and revenue. Those that don’t, get left behind.

But making that investment isn’t a straightforward affair. Many services that pitch themselves as personalization tools don’t even come close to creating a truly customized experience. And today’s savvy web users aren’t fooled:

Where we’ve seen businesses stumble is in substituting personification for true personalization. While personalization involves tailoring content based on direct personal information, personification is based on categories of consumers, not individual people.

Here’s what you need to know about the difference.

Perils of Personification

Gartner defines personification as “the delivery of relevant digital experiences to individuals based on their inferred membership in a defined customer segment, rather than their personal identity.” It’s the digital equivalent of calling someone “buddy” or “champ” because you can’t remember their name. I know that I know you, but I don’t know who you are.

Personification tools can track user behavior and use AI to place users into, say, one of several marketing personas you’ve developed. But in terms of driving meaningful, personalized interactions with users, personification falls down.

Here are a few critical issues with commonly used personification tools:

User Session Data

Information about a user’s interactions with an application is stored temporarily on the application’s server, not the browser.

EXAMPLE: During this session, I see that you’ve visited a piece of content that falls in a specific category. For the rest of your session, I can serve up other content tagged with the same category (often in Featured, Related, or You May Also Like sections).

PROBLEM 1: As soon as the browser session is closed, the user data is lost.

PROBLEM 2: The moment you switch from one device (e.g. mobile) to another (e.g. tablet) you lose all session data.

Contextual Data

Marketing automation or location intelligence software can use AI to gather environmental data about a user to deliver customized content or services.

EXAMPLE: I see that you’re in Los Angeles, California. Knowing your local weather, time zone, and other regional attributes, I can tailor the content you see to be more specific to your area.

PROBLEM: I have to ask you first if I can track your location, and you might say no.

First Party Cookie Data

By storing information about a user’s behavior directly on a domain, site owners can collect analytics data and remember language settings, among other functions.

EXAMPLE: Last time you visited my website, you commented on a certain piece of content. I may even have asked, “Do you want to see more of this type of content?” Now that you’re back, I can serve up newly published content of the same type. I can even feature it right on the homepage.

PROBLEM 1: I need to ask you if I can use cookies with you, and you can say no.

PROBLEM 2: If you clear the cookies in your browser, I’ll lose that valuable data.

PROBLEM 3: Another family member is using the same application on the same device, and now I’m getting mixed signals. This is completely messing with my AI.

Bottom line: personification is not really personalization. Even worse, you may lose your data and have to start from square one. To deliver true personalization, you need first-party data from authenticated users. Instead of guessing who your customer is, get to know who they really are.

Next-Level Personalization

True personalization is difficult to achieve outside of a digital platform, where people register as users (versus just casually visiting a website). Once someone becomes an authenticated user, it’s easier to learn a number of things about them.

83% of consumers are willing to share their data to enable personalized experiences. Platform users in particular are more open to providing personal information, because they’re specifically looking for a customized experience. With that first-party data, you can track preferences and interactions to improve the user experience. And you’re not going to lose the historical data when a user closes a session or clears their cookies.

Here are some key benefits:

Looking for Middle Ground?

In the end, you’ll deliver the best personalization (and earn the most engagement) by building an interactive platform and leveraging first-party data. But what if you have a decent website, and you’re not ready to shift to a platform?

You could approach it as a testing ground for personalization instead. By creating a series of micro-interactions using personification tools, you can test whether your users actually want a personalized experience, and if so, what they want to personalize.

Let’s say you’re a news outlet. You could just let people come and read your content online. At the next level, you can try to guess who they are through personification (via cookie requests, location prompts, etc.). If users are interacting with your prompts, it’s likely they’re interested in having a personalized experience.

Finally, you could build a platform for registered users and offer true personalization. You’ll not only deliver a better user experience, you’ll increase engagement and return visits — not to mention sales and other revenue.

At whatever level you can, go the extra mile and give your users what they want. We’re happy to help! Contact us today to learn more.

Second chances are expensive. Why? Because it takes five positive experiences to counterbalance the effects of a negative one. If someone’s first experience with your platform is disappointing, you have a long way to go to win back their confidence — if they even complete your sign-up form.

More than 67% of site visitors will completely abandon a sign-up process if they encounter any complications. If you’re lucky, maybe 20% of them will follow up with your company in some way. Whether you’re trying to get people to sign up for your mobile app, e-commerce platform, or company intranet, you must make the process as seamless as possible.

Here are six tips to reduce sign-up friction for your platform.

1. Use a Single Sign On Service

This is crucial for larger platforms that are part of a vast ecosystem with multiple logins, like a complex hospital platform providing access to multiple systems. On the other hand, for a basic paywall, you may want to manage user info yourself. The key is to think strategically about what your systems may look like down the road and how unwieldy your sign-up process may become.

Here are a few things to consider:

Pros

Cons

In the end, the advantages of SSO significantly outweigh the downsides. But you’ll likely need expert guidance when planning and implementing SSO to ensure you reap the benefits while minimizing the risks.

2. Keep It Short

More than a quarter of users who abandon online forms do so because they’re too long. To maximize the number of sign-ups, minimize the steps involved.

How do you decide which fields to keep? Try asking, “If I didn’t have this piece of information, would I still be able to provide a good customer experience?” If it’s something you don’t really need to know, then don’t ask.

Here are two more ways to shorten form length:

3. Use a Single Column Layout

In general, your form should adhere to this core UX principle:

Make the user experience smoother, faster, and better; not messier, slower, and worse.

The simpler the flow of your form, the faster and easier it feels to fill out. Here are a few tips:

4. Play Nice with Autofill

Nothing makes our sanguine CEO spout expletives faster than a platform that doesn’t allow browser-suggested passwords. While many of those suggested passwords are long strings of characters saved securely to the browser, the letter/number/special character combination may not meet your platform’s arbitrary standards.

In addition, some accessibility checkers will flag fields where autofill is turned off, indicating a possible issue for people with disabilities.

Here are a few more ways to make the experience smoother:

And, don’t forget to test the autofill function on both a desktop and phone — the experience can be very different between the two.

5. Allow Guest Checkout for eCommerce

To put it bluntly, don’t get in the way of someone spending money on your site. Instead, make it easy to open an account just by creating a password. Or, create a new user account automatically with the info you have, then send users an email with instructions on how to finalize the sign-up process.

What we’ve seen work well: after a successful shopping experience, follow up with an email to the customer that sells the benefits of having an account and asks if they would like to activate theirs.

6. Don’t Use a CAPTCHA

That’s right, we said it. It’s time to get rid of CAPTCHA on your sign-up form. Here are three good reasons why:

Instead, confirm any new account the tried-and-true way: with an email to the registered address. And consider if there are ways to clean up your security features on the back end, instead of presenting barriers to customers upon sign-up.

Don’t put the onus on the people who are trying to give you money. Put it on your systems instead.

You Only Get a First Impression Once

As the gateway to onboarding users, the sign-up process is the most crucial piece of your user experience to get right. Whether your goal is to acquire and retain customers, or to engage and inform employees, your success depends on getting your target audience past the initial sign-up hurdle. If their first task is difficult, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the experience.

Don’t let your sales and marketing be better than your user onboarding. Once someone has decided your platform offers what they need, you’re more than halfway to converting them into a user. Just make sure your sign-up process lives up to your marketing promises.

Not long ago, company intranets were little more than a repository for shared files, general announcements, and the all-important list of holiday office closures. Today, the humble intranet has evolved as a way to enhance internal communication and employee engagement and to help workers do their jobs.

While organizations tend to have more content- and feature-rich intranets these days, many are missing one crucial element: a mobile-optimized version. As a result, they can exclude a large proportion of workers—including the 80% of people who make up today’s Deskless Workforce.

Top “deskless” industries include education, healthcare, retail, hospitality, and transportation, employing many of the frontline workers we all depend on.

One of our own clients, a large hospital system, told us that 70% of their workforce doesn’t sit at a desk, nor do they use a computer every day. And if 70% of their employees can’t easily access the company intranet, they’re not provided equitable access to the same resources as everyone else.

Why Mobile Matters Today

In addition to the challenges of communicating with deskless workers, the rise of remote work and the growing number of Millennials in the workforce are helping to drive an increased demand for mobile-optimized or employee-app versions of intranets.

Consider this: the average American spends more than 5 hours a day on their phone (and it’s almost always within reach). In addition, nearly half of smartphone users access the internet primarily on their phones versus a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet. Those numbers are even higher for Millennials, who currently make up 35% of the US workforce.

Mobile communication plays an essential role in our personal lives. To serve employees, company intranets must offer the same ease-of-use, convenience, and capability to our work lives. The intranet must go beyond the desktop box to where workers are.

The Benefits of an Inclusive Intranet

In addition to facilitating access, mobile technology offers a number of unique benefits that can significantly improve employee engagement and productivity and help reduce frustration.

Here are some of the key benefits of a mobile-optimized intranet:

Real-Time Push Notifications

Imagine there’s an emergency situation in your facility, or an important update that staff need to receive immediately. You can push the information straight to their phone, enabling real-time communication across your workforce. Unlike emails, most push notifications get read within the first 3 minutes after they’re received.

Broader Access for BYOD

As more and more organizations support remote work and flexible schedules—while fewer and fewer provide company smartphones—the “Bring Your Own Device” trend has become more prevalent. Many of today’s employees are using personal devices to access work-related resources and systems. And, as we noted earlier, most of the time that means they’re using a smartphone.

Freedom from Workstations

In some organizations, employees are still sharing desktop workstations that we might charitably describe as “clunky.” It’s inefficient and inconvenient, especially when multiple people have to go out of their way to get to a workspace. A mobile-optimized intranet gives everyone fast and easy access to the same resources, wherever they are.

Two-Way Communication

Intranets have traditionally been top-down communication platforms, focusing primarily on the needs of employers, not employees. Today, companies looking to increase engagement have shifted to a new mindset: communication tools are no longer for talking to employees, but talking with them.

Mobile-optimized platforms and mobile apps help facilitate two-way conversations, especially with features like built-in chatting or social forums where employees can like and comment on posts. This allows companies to have more personalized conversations with employees in addition to collecting valuable, on-the-spot feedback from the front lines.

Remote Doesn’t Feel So Remote

Without regular in-person interaction, remote workers often feel isolated and less engaged. By offering more of an app-like experience with ongoing communication, an intranet can help recreate an environment that fosters idea sharing and boosts morale. It also means that employees who work at home, or don’t have access to a computer, won’t feel uninformed and isolated from the rest of the team.

Better User Experience

If you’re looking to use your intranet as a tool for engagement, you’ll get the best results from an employee app. An app lets you take advantage of mobile-native tools, like location detection and offline access, which let you both customize content and make it more readily available. The improved user experience, speed, and features are the reasons why most people prefer apps to websites.

An Intranet for Everyone

Like many organizations, the purpose of your intranet might be to create a more engaged workforce or improve employee productivity. But if most of your workers either can’t or don’t access the content, you’re not going to achieve your goals.

As cultures, companies, and industries move towards creating more inclusiveness and equity, organizations across the world are looking for ways to meet the needs of their employees. One way to address your team’s needs and expectations is to start by ensuring your internal resources are truly benefiting everyone who relies on them.

In 2023, Oomph’s design for the Lifespan Intranet was selected by the Nielsen Norman Group as one of the Ten Best Intranets globally.