World Usability Day 2016 – Web Performance and User Experience

The topic for World Usability Day 2016(this will open in a new window) was ‘Sustainable User Experience’.

Being sustainable is being able to maintain, support and uphold products and services to create the best experience for individuals. Sustainability and UX are closely related as they both centre on developing ways to refine and redesign items to enhance people’s lives. This got us thinking about web performance and effective web design and how can this enhance efficient and enjoyable experiences for people online.

Did you know?

• Users expect a page to load in about 2 seconds? After 3 seconds, more than 40% of users abandon a site!
• 85% of mobile users expect sites to load at least as fast or faster than sites on their desktop.
• Page load time is factored into search engine results, bumping faster sites higher in the results list than slower sites.

(Source: Lara Hogan – Designing for Performance(this will open in a new window))

We decided to partner up with the NCC Group and host a workshop focusing on Web Performance and User Experience as part of World Usability Day 2016. Our activity focused on how a more efficient and speedily performing site can improve the user experience. Elliot Black from the NCC Group was on hand to demonstrate their performance analyser tool and participants were able to identify there and then what could be slowing down the rendering of their site. This encouraged discussion about the ways in which a poorly performing site impacts on the user.

The questions raised included:

• What reaction do users have to a slow loading site?
• How does this impact on their experience of the site?
• What causes delays in rendering and load time?
• What are the best ways to counteract this and provide the best user experience?

We learned that the user’s experience of a site will determine how much they trust the brand/organisation and how likely they will be to return to the site and share it with others. The feeling that a site is quick and responsive is a big part of the user experience and there are a number of ways a site can be structured to provide this assurance to the user.

Thank you to all of our participants and Elliot from NCC Group(this will open in a new window) for helping out on the day.