I’m making this post because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a few national self-storage sites. We’re planning to de-clutter our flat in preparation for our new baby and our search for more space has led us to a few self-storage warehouses. Trying to accurately predict the amount of space you need is quite a difficult task to do online. You want enough space for your things (which you probably have yet to pack!) but you don’t want too much space that you’re paying for dead space. I’ve been impressed by the way Big Yellow do it.  I’ve always admired their branding. Like Orange for mobile phones, Big Yellow is instantly recognisable by its strong alignment to such a strong, fresh colour. You can see it from miles away. It’s normally the big yellow thing on the horizon.

The website is also designed well, giving the main audiences obvious routes into the various areas while also giving a good photographic representation of the interiors as nice, clean, shiny and almost-contemporary. Great for self-storage virgins who might imagine it as an old, falling-apart warehouse inside. It makes the price seem even better value …

When you search for the nearby stores, the returned store listings are presented very visually, with images and useful information such as distance away from you and whether it’s in the congestion zone – good to know if you need to pop in there alot. It also presents local offers well, differentiating them from the basic store details.

But the great thing about this site, from the brief time I’ve been on it, is how it deals with the online quote. The mechanism is really useful. Not only can you see photos of the different sizes, they place an object inside so you can really get an idea of the size. Plus you can change the object too! You can switch between a photo or a 3D image, and switch between metric or imperial units. They also employ a good ’smaller’ / ‘larger’ forward / back mechanism to move up through the room sizes. A brilliant, and really useful, experience indeed. Important support information is also provided to reassure newcomers – a phone number, and a message not to panic if you get the sizing wrong.

But, the main thing I, and most people, are looking for on these sites will be an online quote. I’m in shopping-around mode. I want to know this straight away and not wait for an email (as I don’t know when it will arrive) and I don’t really want someone to call me as that’ll just delay the whole process. For this quick quote I’m willing to give over some personal details if I think it’ll be worth it – i.e. it looks like it’s in my price range and I can see the price straight away.

Most of the time, when thinking of users and driving traffic to your site, the focus is on new, engaging, and frequently treated content. However the role of old content in driving traffic is now growing in importance. As sites like Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and TinyURL give users the power to bookmark (forever) and share links it is becoming harder to ‘lose’ URLs. Cool YouTube videos, blog posts, articles, microsites, campaign landing pages are now leaving permanent marks across the web. Shared bookmarks can live on in your Twitter archive, unearthed via searches. The links users create to this web property may outlive the campaign itself for which it was created. What does this mean? This means when giving a web property a URL companies should be prepared to make it a permanent one, especially if it’s the type of thing people will pass around or talk about. Even if it’s not possible to keep the page live, then at least a ‘washup’ page should live there in its place. The page should tell users what used to live there, and point them towards some useful or related destinations instead of a usual error page which normally acts as a dead end. With more and more viral properties being created this relatively cheap tactic could help deliver more visitors to your site as well as create a smoother user and brand experience – remember, this old link may be the first time a user touches your brand.

Apparently there was an incredible meteor shower a few weeks ago. I heard about it on the Twitter grapevine but then forgot about it. Nevertheless, this landed in my inbox (captured brilliantly by Jeff Sullivan) and I probably wouldn’t have had as good a view as this anyway! Just serves to remind us that this world we live in, crafted beautifully by an awesome God, is really inspiring.

Many sites now offer some sort of user registration as a means to provide additional (hopefully cool & useful) functionality to identified users, as well as a means to capture data about the user to sell them lots and lots of ’stuff’. Fair dos. We live in a commercial world and this is to be expected to some extent but users also now expect some sort of payback for becoming a member that doesn’t consist of buying more ’stuff’. It’s kinda like a give-and-take relationship.

So the user is happily browsing your site, experiencing all the content you’ve laid out for them, when they suddenly hit a barrier … ’sign up to [insert enticing functionality here]‘. This is the point where users do a quick, subconscious analysis of the site and company behind it to decide whether they want to make this ‘long-term committment’. I say long-term committment because to the users, this may be how it seems. They’ll expect that once they sign up, there’ll be the bliss of accessing great stuff but there’ll also be a range of direct / indirect annoyances along the way. These could be anything from being on the receiving end of email (or offline) marketing bombardments, having your details ’sold off’ to partners (despite what you say!), having your online activity tracked, having to come up with (and remembering!) yet another set of login details, etc. And to round it all off, users – from experience – may think of this signing up as an unreversible action in that you may be able delete your account but once marketers have your details, you’ll never get them to let them go! Certainly, unsuccessful experiences of ‘unsubscribing from mailshots has helped plant this thought in my head.

So. Back to the will-he / won’t-he user. When faced with having to register, users may consider a number of things about the site and company:

• Do I trust this company? Will they use my details in an unprofessional manner? This impression of trust, integrity and professionalism is gleaned from all interactions users have with your company – from Word of Mouth to TV advertisements, all the way through to their experience on your site. Do you ask for waaayyyy too much data? Do you make me sit there and fill out huge boring forms? Trust and credibility can be enhanced through the creative on the site as well as the content you give your users. Do you give them somewhere they can leave feedback? Is your real address on the site? Is there positive information about the type of company / people you are? Do you re-invest your money into environmental or community projects? Is your site updated – is there actually anyone there? Trust can be assumed though. For sites like Facebook, where all your friends may be using it, users may be less analytical about it due to an over-riding desire to ‘join in’ or not get ‘left behind’.
• How much do I want the content or functionality? This is a key question. Registration may be free (i.e. no monetary value) but users have to pay with their details. If you content is enticing enough, they will sign up. It’s important to emphasise what users will get by registering, before they register. Let users know how much convenience and value they will get in return for being a member.
• How long am I going to be here? Don’t make the form dauntingly long. There’s nothing worse than users deciding they want to join and then are crapping their pants over the amount of information they have to provide. It’s a website, don’t make it look like a tax form or an exam. Sometimes there really is a certain amount of data you need, so collect it in a nicer way. Visually enrich the form so it’s more engaging and attractive. Add cool functionality to make it more interactive. Add reassuring text where required and add on-demand supplementary information when requested. I also think it’s best to use standard login detail formats so users can re-use their usual login details. This might not be possible, so have a good password retrieval process.

That’s all I can think of right now. I need lunch.

I must commend the team at Gumtree for creating a very enjoyable ad-posting process. For the purposes of selling our flat I’ve given Gumtree a go, believing that it will hopefully save me thousands of pounds of estate agent fees! I must admit I found the whole ad-submission process quicker-than-expected, engaging, and intuitive. The last two factors probably contributing to factor 1.

They’ve broken the process down into logical steps of selecting your category / your ad’s location (above), creating your ad, preview, and then submission.

They also executed helpful and usable, reveal-in-context, additional info boxes when certain fields became active (see below).

Additionally, they didn’t reveal all information to users, but only when it was required. For example, below shows the phone number input field only appearing when the relevant checkbox was checked. It makes the form shorter, appear less daunting, but also provides a sense of interactivity – adding engagement to the whole process.

The form is also designed in a way that was very uncluttered, where information elements were visually grouped and an obvious information hierarchy was present. All reducing the amount of work the user has to do to decipher all these messages for themselves.

The error message is clearly differentiated from the normal form, with different levels of message / instruction on display and a helpful, not-punishing tone of voice.

The feedback from site interactions is also quick, with no slow and clunky back-end operations adding an age to each interaction. The preview page is also uncluttered and clear, with clear CTAs in the form of bright, but not gharish, buttons.

All-in-all a great journey for the ad-poster user. Plus it’s free … lots of bonus points here. There’s lots of reassuring messages for the user about how their private contact details would (or would not) be used and, pricing information is clearly and succinctly presented. A quick confirmation email rounds off the whole process well.

Of course serving forms to users who have come to your site with a pre-determined goal in mind, and fully expecting to have to contribute certain information via a form in order to accomplish their task is one thing. Serving forms to browsing users who want to accomplish a goal with no expectation of contributing information (or at least not as much as your site is asking for) is another problem all together. In a world where everyone’s inbox is overflowing with spam, any bit of information being requested that ‘appears’ unconnected to the task-at-hand will be an additional alarm bell in users’ minds, and encourage users to bail out from completing the task. In essence, every few fields the users have to fill out, they’ll ask themselves … ‘how much do I want this?’. You can put users’ minds at ease by telling them what the information is for, and generally having a site (and brand!) that exudes credibility and integrity.

Enough about forms … let’s hope the flat now sells!