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Marketers Shifting Budget to Online User Experience »
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Marketers Shifting Budget to Online User Experience
Website user experience is becoming a key area of focus for online marketers in an increasingly competitive digital environment, according to research from E-consultancy and behavioral research consultancy Bunnyfoot.
The Usability and User Experience Report 2007 found that organizations, on average, are spending 13% of their website design budgets on usability; moreover, it found they are spending 9% of their ongoing website maintenance budget on usability.
Some 72% of UK organizations are planning to increase their usability budget over the next 12 months - a greater percentage* than for any other area of digital marketing, E-consultancy said.
The more than 700 internet marketers who took part in the research rated Amazon, the BBC and Google as the best websites for user experience.
According to the report, the biggest benefits of usability investment are…
- Improved perceptions of brand
- Increased conversion rates
- Greater customer loyalty and retention
These were the top six benefits of usability, based on the number of company respondents who said they had been a “major benefit”:
- Improved perceptions of brand (54%)
- Increased conversion rates (53%)
- Greater customer loyalty and retention (46%)
- Increased customer advocacy (38%)
- Increased traffic (36%)
- Improved search rankings (33%)
The research also found that time pressure to get things done was the biggest barrier in the way of providing the best possible user experience: Some 56% of online marketers said this was one of the three biggest problems.
The next-biggest barriers cited by internet marketers were lack of internal resource (45%), lack of budget (37%) and company culture / politics (35%).
Other key findings from the report:
- A quarter of respondents say their organizations are “extremely committed” to providing the best possible online user experience - and 56% say they are “quite committed.”
- Within organizations, where the responsibility lies for the user experience varies:
- Just over a third of organizations say the online user experience lies within an in-house website team.
- Another third of companies have an individual or team dedicated to the online user experience.
- A fifth deem this to be the responsibility of an in-house marketing department.
- More than a fifth of companies (22%) say that the online experience “isn’t integrated at all” into the overall customer experience.
About the study: Some 756 respondents completed an online survey over a three-week period in May 2007. The survey covers the areas of both usability and user experience. The majority of respondents are based in the UK although there are also significant numbers of respondents from the United States, the rest of Europe and beyond.
* According to E-consultancy research, these are the percentages of UK organizations planning to raise their budgets in other areas of digital marketing: SEO (62%); paid search (60%); email (52%); affiliate marketing (40%); online display advertising (34%); mobile (20%) (Source: E-consultancy / Neutralize UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2007)
