Animated banners for Norwich Union

Andrew Henning, M.D. and founder of Redweb comments:

We know how important it is for us to understand online consumer behaviour and motivations within the wider market rather than isolated behaviour on individual sites.  Certainly, as competition increases, no digital agency can afford to take such an isolated view.

The worse thing you can do is make assumptions.  We find that clients can assume that their online markets are the same as their offline markets, when in fact they don’t know.  Or that online is only for the "youngsters", when research tells us that the over 55s are the biggest growing user group.  The key is never to assume anything. While you can call on all the usual sources for insight and analytics, these tools don't help us understand how the user behaves, their motivation or the emotion states experienced while using a site which contribute to the responses from the user.

Usability for a digital agency and the client is setting up testing that looks at behaviour, seeks to understand motivations and registers emotions felt that might impact responses at any given point.  This can only be achieved by interspacing the testing with observation and carefully constructed questioning about motivation and the emotions felt by the individual.  This drives truly valuable insight that will positively impact how a site is used.