So I use to be religious about reading Mark Hurst’s emailed newsletter about creating good user experiences, but through my last several email changes I lost the link to his site, and forgot what the name of his website was. (You’d think that goodexperience.com would not be a hard one to remember.)
But looking through some old things today, I found a print-out of a whitepaper he produced years and years ago entitled “White Paper One – Building A Great Customer Experience to Develop Brand, Increase Loyalty and Grow Revenues” under his Creative Good brand. (Creative Good is the industry’s first and oldest customer experience firm according to his website.) Creative Good just consulted with del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking service, to create a new customer experience strategy. (They have the case study online)
Creative Good’s business – a user experience firm focuses on results. Their consulting projects have raised key metrics (like revenue, conversion rate, and usage rate) between 40% and 150%. These projects have also improved branding, competitive positioning, and the customer focus of the organization. The difference between one user experience and another can effect the bottom line significantly.
So I’m back on the newsletter, and so I’ll keep you in touch on that end on what Mark has to say about usability. Another site he’s put together is thisisbroken.com, which is a riot. It shows “broken” user experiences in everyday life as well as the web. One of my favorites is the pencil in the shape of a cactus, such that the eraser becomes completely unusable.