Location is Irrelevant for Usability Studies

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for April 30 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-test-locations.html
		
Summary:
You get the same insights regardless of where you conduct user testing, so
there's no reason to test in multiple cities. When a city is dominated by
your own industry, however, you should definitely test elsewhere.
		
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Usability Week 2007 conference

  > London, May 6-11
  > San Francisco, June 18-23

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

10 specialized full-day tutorials:
  > Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability
  > Application Usability (2 days)
  > Intranet Usability (2 days)
  > B2B Sites
  > Websites That Sell
  > Presenting Company Information on Corporate Websites
  > E-Mail Newsletter Usability
  > Writing for the Web

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

Save £140 on London registration: DEADLINE this Friday, May 3

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STUDENT VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

We need students to help staff our conference in San Francisco in June
(see above). Pretty light workload, and you get to meet hundreds of
usability professionals from many leading companies. Plus, of course, our
illustrious speakers, and free access to cutting-edge seminars with
practical information that they just don't teach at uni.

A great opportunity for graduate students (or even advanced undergrads) in
usability, human factors, HCI, and related fields.

To apply, send a short resume plus the name and email address of your main
professor to [email protected]

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UE AND THE BOTTOM LINE AT EBAY

eBay reported record profits for Q1. This despite the fact that the number
of auction LISTINGS only increased by 2%. However, merchandise SOLD
increased by 14%.

In presenting the record numbers, the CEO, Meg Whitman, said that "the
company had been benefiting from changes in the user experience that had
increased the number of auctions leading to sales" (as quoted in The New
York Times, April 19).

This is a great example of the benefits of usability for e-commerce:
income comes from multiplying the amount of use with the conversion rate.
The more you improve the user experience of finding products, researching
them, and buying them, the higher your conversion rate.

Yet most sites invest vastly more in bringing in new traffic (increasing
an almost-irrelevant "unique user" count) than they invest in making these
users convert.

The cost of doubling traffic is a hugely expensive advertising campaign.
Doubling conversion costs a modest usability project to identify your
users' main pain points followed by targeted redesigns of those elements.
Much cheaper – and a sustainable advantage, whereas traffic brought in by
ads will subside when your advertising budget runs out.

     More on usability ROI:
   > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/roi

In eBay's case, user experience is so important for profits that it's one
of the main things the CEO mentions to the financial press in presenting
the quarterly results. eBay has a particularly competent user experience
department, but smaller companies usually find that a smaller usability
effort can increase their financial performance materially. Your first
usability test will uncover a gold mine of low-hanging fruit, to mix
metaphors.

    New York Times article about eBay (paid access):	
  > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/technology/19ebay.html