Marketing Blabs – Podcast

Blab #13: Navigating Website UX

In this Marketing Blabs episode, the team chat with special guest Andy Golpys from MadeByShape. We look at the many faces of website user experience – What's important? What's Trending? And what's outright unnecessary?

Whether you're a website design specialist or a start-up novice, this episode is filled with helpful tips and guidance.

On this Blab: Tom Haslam (Host), Andy Golpys (MadeByShape), Matt Janaway and Josh Stapleton.

Blab Transcript

Welcome to Marketing Blabs. This podcast is brought to you by Marketing Labs, an expert digital marketing agency based in Nottinghamshire. If you're a business owner or marketing professional looking for straightforward, non-salesy tips and advice to help grow your business online, then this is the podcast for you. Strap in because we're about to reveal the things that other agencies would rather you didn't know.

Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Marketing Blabs. Today, we're diving into the world of programmatic advertising, particularly focusing on its implementation within Google Ads. If you've ever been curious about the automated real-time auction system behind those digital ads, then you're in for a treat. We're going to unravel the intricacies of this dynamic advertising landscape together. And by together, joining me on today's Blab, from the ML team, is Matt Janaway, Founder and CEO of Marketing Labs.

Hi, Tom. You all right?

How are you?

Yeah, I'm okay, thank you, yeah.

You got some new golf clubs yesterday.

I did.

And I'm jealous.

I know.

So I'm not going to talk to you nicely on this podcast.

That's fine.

But I did want to give Nick a special intro because he beat me at golf yesterday.

Yeah, he did.

Are you feeling proud of your achievement?

It's quite easy, isn't it, so no.

How many points by?

Two. Anyway, we're digressing, and we're here to talk about programmatic advertising. Do you guys want to give a definition of what that actually is? How does it differ from traditional models of advertising? And, obviously, by programmatic we mean automated. So can you put this into context?

I think you should for us, Tom.

I have no idea what it is. I'll be completely honest and tell our listeners that I have no clue.

Okay, well, I'll tell you then.

Thank you.

Yeah, so automation essentially means it's connecting the various different parts of the supply chain, from your ability to serve an ad, right the way through to placing it against a customer who matches your target audience on the screen that they're looking at for the website or environment that they're looking in. And, historically, there's quite a few sequences that need to occur in order to deliver that. There's lots of different ways of buying that historically, especially through display, that's not automated and is quite manual and takes a lot of time to achieve that, and it's less precise. But, essentially, programmatic means you have the capacity to serve that in an automated fashion for the target audience that you're looking to serve an ad for.

Right, okay.

And most people might not realise this, but if they're running ads, especially in Google Ads, there are quite a few elements of programmatic decision making that happen on everyone's account. So if you go back years and years, you would mostly control your bids manually. But then Google introduced enhanced CPC, which gave some automation to how much that cost per click would be, based on programmatic decisions. So, for example, if the bid you were almost there, you're giving Google a little bit of freedom to automate a little bit of extra spend on the bid.

But are you not losing quite a lot of control over it though?

Yeah, yeah. So we can come onto that a little bit later on in terms of we want to talk about the kind of concerns that-

Challenges.

Exactly, the kind of challenges it can bring. But there's a lot of automation in most Google Ads accounts. And also a lot of that automation is controlled by machine learning and AI, which comes onto another concern about whether you actually have access to data to make the decisions on that data, or whether it's data that isn't actually available and readily available for you to consume, if you like. But Facebook use it to a certain degree. There's a lot of automation inside there. And it's hidden in the platform, taking ownership of a little bit of decision making, which benefits them, doesn't it, of course. Because Google have control over every account type to a certain degree for every product range or every niche or every service. If there's five people competing, for example, on digital marketing services in our area in an ad, Google's got control over all five. So if you allow even an element of automation on all five accounts, they've got levers that they can increase and decrease, based on their automations. And, yes, you have ever so slightly less control in that. But on the opposite side, there's also some advantages.

Yeah, I was going to say, from what I gather of this system, I don't know about programmatic advertising. I have very little understanding of Google Ads as a whole. But the main benefit, I'm guessing, is that it will save the person advertising, save them time. But are there any other advantages of that?

Yeah, so it depends on what platform and what provider you're purchasing that through as well. So Matt was just mentioning there, Google and Facebook, who will have different systems, and within their own ecosystem. You can also extend it across the whole internet as well. So there'll be a variety of different partners that you could partner with in order to serve ads and display ads or video ads to your audience, depending on where they exist, and what they're looking at, and what websites they visit, and how frequently they visit them. So within Google's ecosystem, and within Facebook's ecosystem, you can target them that way. But, also, you can open up your network, or you can open up to the wider network via different platforms as well programmatically.

So, essentially, what it does, and the benefits of doing this, are that you can more precisely target your target audience. So you can define them quite well, in theory. We'll come onto some of the pros and cons about that later. But you can define your audience pretty well. And then you can have quite a tight view of how you target that audience across a variety of different platforms that they might exist. So, in theory, you might have the same audience on Facebook as you do on Google, as you do across online video, for example. And you can target them with either the same message in different formats or different messages in different formats, depending on how you want to deliver that and what your message execution is as well.

There are lots of benefits to targeting your customers in different ways across the sites that they visit. And you can either have a sequential targeting and messaging, so you could target them with a sequence of messaging. So it might be top of funnel, middle funnel, lower funnel, and obviously, hopefully, they convert. It might be a different range of products that you might offer or services that you might offer. Or it might just be the same message that you want to get in front of them with a higher frequency and a high reach against your target audience. So there's a variety of different ways of doing that. That'll largely come down to your strategy and how you approach that. But the execution can be quite varied, depending on what your strategy is.

Interesting. And is the automation applied to things like budget allocations as well?

To a degree, yeah. So if you're just taking Google as an example, you could just give Google a budget and say, "I want to reach this audience," however I'm defining it, "across these ad types and these asset types." And it will spend your budget, depending on how much you give them, it'll spend it in a way that it believes is most effective, in terms of reach and whatever goals you've set up for that campaign.

And you can edit these goals and it'll use different automations. So, for example, one campaign might have a goal for a certain target of return on advertising spend, so you might set that to 300%, for example. But you might have another campaign with a separate goal for maximised conversions, for example. So what you're doing is you're buying customers instead of trying to achieve a specific return on advertising spend. Another one might be about gaining traffic, maximising traffic instead of maximising customers. And all of those are automations really, because you're automatically, if you like, handling some of those decisions over to Google's machine learning, using Google as the example. But most platforms have similar things. Okay, maybe not as sophisticated as Google's. Google probably has more data than any other tech platform that has advertising, I would say. And they also, I think, lean on machine learning heavier than others. But, clearly, as well, it's a direction that Google are heading in. It is only going to get more... I guess manual control over these things is going to become a thing of the past, bit by bit, over the next few years.

Would you say that this type of advertising, programmatic advertising, is beneficial to startup businesses who need Google's, let's say, automations to take over and help them? Or is it more of a specialist subject?

In some ways, in some ways. There are pros and cons to this. So certainly one of the cons is you need data for things to figure... The machine learning, you've got to feed it, you've got to feed it with data. Now, if you've got low budgets, the chances of getting the data for it to make great decisions is slim. So that's certainly one of the cons. But at the same point, some of the advantages, so Google has so much data. We're using Google here quite heavily, but I think it's probably a good example. Google has a huge amount of user behaviour data, so it knows when somebody is at the bottom of the funnel, ready to convert, compared to somebody who's maybe in their research phase. So aligning keyword data, along with Google's user behaviour data from... They use machine learning to make decisions on. Can be a winning formula. It's just the data has to be readily available. It's difficult to get that with low budgets.

Yeah, makes sense.

Other issue, I think, with people who are starting out is that they don't necessarily know, typically, who they're targeting or who they need to target. They might have a view of who their target audience is, but it's not necessarily who they need to target, in terms of performance or generating revenue.

Actually, getting those conversions and-

Tail wagging the dog again, isn't it, a little bit. When anybody starts a business, they should have an idea of who their customer is, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's correct. In fact, to be honest, more often than not, it's incorrect. And, over time, the more data that you can gather on that, if you learn from that data and you hone who your actual customer is, you can benefit from that. But you see a lot of this does it automatically. So it tries to target your ideal customer instead of you trying to define it.

Interesting. Talk to me about best practises then. Are there any tips for businesses and digital marketers out there who want to leverage this advertising effectively?

Yeah, so, again, it will depend on your strategy and your objectives, and also how and who you're looking to target and what format types you are. But, essentially, a lot of the success of this activity will come down to how well you define your target audience. And the volume and quality of data that you can access them via. As an example, Google and Facebook's ecosystem are relatively well resourced and huge scale, so buying audiences across their platforms is quite easy. And you have access to certain targeting methodologies and definitions, in terms of how you want to build your audience up and the profiles that they look like and the attributes that you can assign to them. So you can get a fairly detailed view of that audience. If you're looking to do online video, for example, or looking across the network of other websites that you might want to advertise across, you may need a partner in order to find your audiences more successfully.

So the biggest issue with audience definition, by the way, traditionally, it used to work across third-party cookies, which are almost non-existent now, especially across Apple devices and a lot of browsers. So Safari, Firefox, and pretty much all browsers apart from Chrome don't really allow third-party cookies anymore. And, historically, that's how the entire industry works. So there's been a big shift over time, and especially more recently to how they target customers and audiences. So you might need to partner with somebody like LiveRamp, as an example, who can have a better methodology and authentication process, in order to identify who is actually your person, based on first-party cookies and who's authenticated themselves on one of their partners. So it might be that they get data from Facebook, for example, or whoever, Amazon maybe. So they'll be able to match an actual email address, or first-party data, with a first-party cookie and, therefore, allow you to target them that way.

So that can be crucial in terms of the success of programmatic across the wider internet. Identifying your audience and making sure that you've got a good view of who they are and what they're interested in can be crucial. Whereas, actually, across Google's network and Facebook's network and maybe Amazon's network as well, they will typically have that data and they'll know who their audiences is because they'll be logged in, for example. So that's not so much of an issue across some of it. So all of that will feed into your strategy, how you achieve something based on your objectives, we'll need to factor that in.

And those objectives, again, that's really important. Because if you don't define those objectives, you can't feed the correct output, if you like, which, all of a sudden, means that actually the performance probably won't be there. So earlier on, we were talking about just a few examples of how Google would, I guess, determine how it would automate certain decisions, would be based on campaign objectives. So your campaign objectives, if you wanted to buy in more customers because you knew you had long and high valued lifetime value from a customer, you're actually less worried about the cost of that first order because you might get two, three, four, five more orders. Whereas, if your customers only order once and they mostly never come back, then your objectives are going to be slightly different. So you might actually, at that point, be wanting to target a particular minimum return on advertising spend. So, again, these objectives are really important, so that, for sure, is a best practise. You need to understand what you want out of this in order to make it achievable.

I think there's something else I'll throw in there as well is to monitor absolutely everything you can. So when machine learning makes a lot of decisions, generally, you don't get to see what those decisions are or a lot of the insights from that. But what that means is you should try really hard to monitor everything you can have access to. Because if you only have access to a limited amount of insights and data, you really need to know what they are. Otherwise, you're going to struggle to make decisions. So monitoring everything is really, really important.

Also, another thing is when... Again, I'm talking specifically here Google but, again, other platforms do do this to a certain degree. Google have a lot of networks that they can advertise on, so you've got YouTube, for example. You've got search. You've got their display networks, which is websites that allow advertising on behalf of Google partners. So you've got a lot of mediums where your adverts can show. By default, if what you're doing is... If your objective is to get more eyeballs on your advert, they'll generally use those networks. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's right for performance, if your objective, for example, is to try to find people at the bottom of the funnel who are ready to convert, because a display ad is not that. It's more about awareness. So, again, objectives, it comes back to what those objectives are. But good practise would be to monitor what those networks are, because if those networks don't match your objectives, you need to be making sure that you're not advertising on those networks.

Interesting. Some good insights there. What about the challenges and concerns then of the platform? I know we briefly touched on this earlier in the conversation, but just want to address some maybe common criticisms of the platform or the advertising for programmatic. Are there any concerns or challenges that you find?

Yeah, the big one's data, really, and we touched on it a second ago in how it used to work.

With the tracking of cookies and things like that.

Tracking of cookies, yeah. That's fundamentally changed since GDPR and Intelligent Tracking Prevention from Apple. So the vast majority of that data's no longer available for most people. And if it is available, you may mainly only have access to it for 24 hours. So how you target customers changes, like I mentioned for Google and Facebook, they have regular people that will log in pretty much on a daily basis, or remain logged in permanently or persistently. So it's not so much of an issue for them, but what they do on your website, assuming it's web-based, may or may not be allowed to be collected in terms of the data. So GDPR, obviously, if you don't have your cookie consent policy set up correctly, your tags may not fire, therefore, Google may not be able to collect data in the way it needs to. The same for Facebook.

So data really is fundamental to the system working, so do all that you can. And make sure you have everything set up legally, obviously to protect yourself and also your customers. But make sure that, obviously, when they do accept and they do consent, that allows you then to track them ethically and correctly. And they allow you to say and suggest what data you are taking from them and how that's being used and what systems that's being passed into. And that then allows all of these partners that you're choosing to advertise with the correct consent in order to use their data correctly. And that, ultimately, will benefit you because the quality of data will be much higher than if you don't have that. So, obviously, a lot of those systems now are fundamentally required to work based on acceptance because GDPR dictates that. And that's a big part of whether it's going to be successful or not, and will certainly be more so the case in the next year or two.

Interesting.

And just to touch on that, if somebody declines your cookie policy, if your pop-up says, "Please accept cookies," and someone hits, "No," that's it, you can't track their data. And machine learning can't use their data to make decisions. But, likewise, even if somebody doesn't click decline, you shouldn't be tracking them until they click accept. So, again, you don't have their data to learn from. So, actually, as Nick said there perfectly, the more data you can gather and input into a system, the better decisions it can make. So yeah, that's a real concern.

Something else that, more of a psychological concern here, but you've got to put a lot of trust into the hands of these tech giants that you're advertising with, not only your data, but also that they're making decisions that are beneficial for you. They are hit-and-miss sometimes these machine learning campaigns and these automated campaigns. Sometimes, they can work incredibly well, really, really well. And then other times, less so. And it is mostly because they don't have access to enough data, but also, sometimes, humans can make better decisions. We know this. It's just humans can't process the amount of data that a computer can. But, also, it doesn't have access to the data that a computer has access to. So I would still argue humans can make better decisions, but they can't make them in the same timeframe and they don't have access to the data to make those decisions. So you're handing your car keys over to Google, basically. But the problem is, if everybody else is handing their car keys to Google, Google's in charge of the race. So there's a trust element there for me.

Well, this is a big thing. I've just done a quick search, and obviously looked for some general average consent rates for cookie policies. And just quickly, just the top Google search comes in, the average consent rate is 31%. That in itself is quite low, isn't it?

Pretty low that, yeah.

So that makes it challenging in itself, doesn't it?

It does. Nick's been working on this recently, actually. And we were looking at some, I think we're seeing about 70%, 75%.

Yeah. To be honest, I've not seen it as low as 30%. But, obviously, that will take into a huge spectrum of different websites and whether they're trustworthy or not.

Yeah, I think it's quite broad. It was just a very quick search.

Yeah, yeah.

But it does show you the issue. Even if you were to just be quite broad and say, "Okay, well, it's between 30% and 80%." Even 80%, at the highest level, you're missing out on fifth of all your data. Now, if you're relying on machine learning to automate making decisions based on that, well, they're missing out on important data. So that is a risk, that is a concern. And throwing all your trust in Google when they've not only got your car keys, but the car keys of your competitors, if they just drove five mile an hour faster, if everybody drove five mile an hour faster, you're not doing any better. But it's costing you more, in the race that is. So you're not winning the race. Everybody's driving 5% faster, five mile an hour faster, but you're still not winning the race. You've got to get to 6% or 7%, but then if they go to 6% or 7%, you've got to go to 8% or 9%.

The problem is if they're in control of all the cars, for me, that's problematic. So there's definitely a trust issue there. That's one, for me, I know it's a psychological one, but, for me, that's probably the biggest challenge. And things are going to become more and more automated as time goes by. And manual intervention will become more difficult.

So I think that leads on quite nicely to the next talking point really, which is the future of programmatic advertising. So with the evolution of AI and machine learning, where do we think that all this is going to head? Where's it headed with-

It's definitely going to continue. It'll keep going, and manual intervention will become less and less. That's for certain. I agree with what Nick was saying earlier in terms of user behaviour. So the more you can understand your users, the more you can control your own data, the more you can understand who your customers are and what your objectives are, that's going to have a big impact on performance. But, for me, it's absolutely heading in that direction at some point soon.

Google, not too long ago, they changed their keyword match types. They loosened phrase match. So what that means is phrase match, historically, Google would try to match the keywords that you're entering pretty closely with what people are searching for. So if somebody searches for something ever so slightly different, they might still see the ad. Well, phrase match is getting closer to broad match, which means, actually, if it's loosely connected, your ads can still show. So that adds another element of intervention that you need to make. But that's going to become more and more challenging. And the more Google users machine learning, the more they can implement things like that, which takes the control out of your hands to a certain degree.

I think the big thing for me, this is more specific to Google, but it will impact the industry, no doubt, I think what comes out of this antitrust case in America at the moment will be massive, in terms of how, not just programmatic, but marketing generally speaking, will work. And I guess similar to how Microsoft was broken up 20-odd years ago, if that happens to Google, what's the impact of that? How's it going to work? Are systems fundamentally going to change? Does that mean more automation? Does it mean less? How do the systems talk to each other? That could have a significant shake up of how the industry works. And what that means, I guess nobody knows at the moment. It would probably be broadly similar to how it works now, but just more segmented and siloed, and less controlled from one business, which is probably a good thing, ultimately.

But, obviously, we don't know the ramifications of that in terms of how data's transferred, and how you target, and how effective it's going to be. And there's a lot of considerations, I suppose, that will come out of that that we won't be aware of at the moment. But that could also happen, potentially, across other massive businesses, Facebook, Amazon, or Meta, I should say. And Amazon and others I'm sure might be concerned about that as well. So I think it's not necessarily a specific answer for you, but that could have a massive impact next year or the year after. It could be quite a different environment than we're-

It's going to reshape the whole landscape, really.

Yeah, for sure. And Google's an obvious one for that, in fairness. Facebook's slightly more difficult because there's basically two sides to Facebook, if you forget about the Oculus side because it's so tiny in comparison. But Facebook really has two parts, doesn't it? It has advertising and then the actual platform, if you like. Google has many moving parts. They've got product, they've got Android, they've got Chrome, they've got YouTube, they've got search. Then inside search, they've got ads. They've got Google Assistant, Google Home, all of these different things. So there's more obvious lines, if you like, between the services, and there's many more services. So depending on how that case goes, it could break up in certain ways. Who knows what that would be. Obviously, the vast majority of its revenue comes from search ads. And that also dictates how search results look. Because we see quite regularly now, no organic search results above the fold, for example. It's mostly ads. That wasn't a thing too long ago, but that's the pressure, I guess, from shareholders to ensure that they continually grow.

But when you've hit peak audience and peak usage, where's that growth going to come from? What they've got to do is just control more real estate on the search results. So yeah, I agree with Nick. I think if that breakup happens, who knows. What does that look like? Nobody really has any idea at the moment, do they? If it doesn't happen, I can only see that divide between organic and ads getting more controlled towards ads. Because that's the only obvious way Google can grow their ad revenue is by having more real estate, or by controlling the race and everybody's cost increases. But at certain points, some advertisers will possibly just say, "Well, this isn't working for me, so I'll pull out." So that's a very dangerous, long-term-

Risky game.

Yeah, very risky long-term game, even medium term game. Short-term, fine, you could probably increase your revenues. You do that for long enough, you'll lose advertisers. So yeah, tricky one. But I think, for certain, there's commercial pressures for that advertising revenue to increase. How they go about that, who knows. I imagine automation and taking control away from advertisers and pushing it towards machine learning will be a part of that. It's just an educated guess.

It's clear, isn't it, that's what Google wants. You look at PMax at the moment, and they're heavily pushing PMax, just because that gives them control over where to serve your assets and who to serve your assets to. So that can go across their entirety of their network if it thinks the audience matches a person that you should be targeting. And like I said, I think the only challenge to that will come if Google does face issues with this antitrust case.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. Some PMax campaigns can work so incredibly well because they have access to data that we don't and that nobody does. They understand, to a certain degree, at what part of the journey a purchaser is on. If they understand that and nobody else does, that click is worth more, let's say, than somebody at the research phase, because that's more about awareness of you or your product or your service. So there are lots of advantages as well. It's just the risks are also... They're pretty big risks.

I guess it's getting a good balance of everything, really, isn't it, in all of your campaigns, whether that's manual setups to the automated setups and PMax. As long as you're filtering through and getting your campaign set up that works for you, not solely relying on programmatic, for example, which would pose all its risks. And making sure that you've got all your data. So there's lots to consider, really, isn't it?

I think the key to all of this... And this always has been the key, by the way, nothing new here at all. The key to all of this is not to have all your eggs in one basket. You need multiple streams of revenue if you're any business type. If you're relying on one or two streams of revenue, that might go absolutely perfect forever. But at the same point, if something were to happen, you could be in bother. So it's about diversifying. And there's a reason the most sustainable businesses diversify their revenue streams.

So I think, ultimately, it comes back to good strategy. And Matt said there, you're just not having all your eggs in one basket. Making sure that you've got a good view of your strategic thinking and decision making, and what that means and the performance and the impact of that over time. And making sure that you optimise towards the best performing strands of that strategy. But also not being afraid to test new things, because it's equally important, especially as and when new platforms come along like TikTok. And two or three years ago, most people probably wouldn't have had a TikTok budget. And, now, lots of people do have a quite hefty TikTok advertising budget. So things change, and it's being open to that change, and understanding where your audience is, and how you're targeting them, and what you need to say to them. And that will remain the case, I think, in marketing for a long time.

We say this a lot, but test, test, test. You've got to test things. And you should see your test spend as part of an investment, as opposed to a budget or an overhead. Because every platform will have a different return on advertising spend, but they all form part of a jigsaw. It's a customer jigsaw, attaining new customers. And the thing is, you've got to match all of that perfectly. As Nick said, it's the strategy. If you're missing pieces of the puzzle, your performance is going to be lower. So even though certain platforms might have a lower return on investment or return on advertising spend, they're no less important sometimes. So you've got to diversify, and you've got to, in your head, have a contingency for spend to, at the very least, do your very best in areas where you're not currently capitalising on. Because the moment you can start doing that, the more sustainable you are as a business.

Awesome. Thank you both for coming on. Have you enjoyed talking about it?

Yeah, a little bit.

Would you rather be playing golf?

Based on yesterday's performance, no. Based on five or six weeks ago, yeah.

Awesome. And there you have it, folks, an expansive look into programmatic advertising within the realm of Google Ads. From its automation wonders to the challenges it poses, it's evident that this programmatic advertising isn't just the future, it's the present. As advertisers and businesses, understanding its nuances can be the key to unlocking the treasure trove of digital marketing opportunities. Remember, in the rapidly changing digital landscape, staying updated is not just beneficial, it's going taside be essential for your business. Thank you for joining us today on Marketing Blabs. And until next time, keep experimenting, keep innovating, goodbye, and happy marketing.

Tom Haslam - (host):

Welcome to Marketing Blabs. This podcast is brought to you by Marketing Labs, an expert digital marketing agency based in Nottinghamshire. If you're a business owner or a marketing professional looking for straightforward non-sales or tips and advice to help grow your business online, then this podcast is for you. Strap in, because we're about to reveal the things that other agencies would rather you didn't know.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Marketing Blabs, our 13th episode. Today, we're going to delve into the realm of UX or user experience, as most of us know it. Whether you are a seasoned digital marketer, a budding web developer, or simply someone curious about creating a seamless online presence, then this episode is for you.

So, joining me on today's Blab from the ML team is Matt Janaway, our founder and CEO. How are you doing, Matt?

Morning, Tom. Yeah, very good, thank you.

All good?

Yeah, yeah. Pretty good today.

And alongside me, sat next to me is Josh Stapleton, our web development specialist. How are you doing, Josh?

Pretty good, thanks.

I'm surprised you unedited my script again.

I'm running out of ideas, 13 episodes in. Yeah, getting tricky.

Guru.

Master, what were the other ones at Code Aficionado, all that sort of stuff.

Stack Overflow Aficionado.

Yeah, yeah. You love all that stuff. And also with us today, we're fortunate to have Andy Golpys. I got it right, didn't I?

You got it wrong, but it's wrong.

I got it wrong. Gold Pies.

You'll need to record that again.

Yeah, I will.

No, I like that as an intro. It's wrong. It's just wrong. Yeah, Andy Golpys.

Golpys.

I'm sure we told you a minute ago as well.

And he did as well. Yeah. Andy Golpys. Andy is the co-founder and creative director of MadeByShape, a renowned web design agency based in Manchester. Andy is a diehard Manchester United supporter. He actually started his journey as a university lecturer straight out of uni, I believe, for seven years or so?

That's right. Yeah, while I built up Shape. Yeah.

Excellent. And obviously, followed the traditional path, college, university, working as a freelancer and then in agencies to where he is today with MadeByShape, so welcome.

Yeah, nice one. Thanks for having us.

No worries. Thanks for coming on. Excited for the pod.

Yeah. Yeah. I love doing stuff like this. It's good to get our knowledge out there and share experiences.

Yeah, have a chat about the industry. So, the best way, should make a start then, shall we? I guess I want to start off around what UX actually is because some people don't understand what it is. There's a big difference between UX and UI.

We were involved in a conversation this week about exactly that.

Yeah, exactly. I don't want SEO or UX in my website.

Yeah. Interesting.

It was an interesting conversation as well.

I mean, even if you have bad UX, it's still UX.

I agree with that.

A website can't not have UX, can it? So, yeah, interesting.

I just think some clients don't understand what UX is.

Yeah.

Yeah. You've got to try and keep it quite simple, haven't you? Like you said, you've got the messaging and everything around it.

Yeah, we don't actually put it in our proposals. We don't actually say UX or anything technical. We just keep all the language very plain, very simple.

Really?

Yeah, we're from Manchester. We're just very direct. I think maybe we give our opinion too much.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess it's a good thing in a way because I guess it's about being honest, isn't it, really as well? I think it's critical that everyone does take UX into account, especially in today's sort of digital landscape. It's quite important, isn't it? But we can talk about elements of UX as well. I mean, it's quite a broad topic, really, isn't it? You could split that into a number of different things, whether that's the interface design itself, the strategy behind the experiences. What do we think are the good building blocks of good UX? Does anyone want to start on that?

For me, I think some of the main ones that jump out, probably navigation, that's one of the first things you're going to see generally or one of the first things you're going to interact with anyway. And if the navigation's poor, if you can't find the pages you're looking for, that's not really going to help user experience.

Other stuff, maybe call to actions. This one's more SEO related, but also works with UX, in my opinion, when you have anchor text. So, having descriptive anchor text, obviously that's very beneficial to SEO, but also it lets a user know exactly where they're going to be going when they click on a link.

Journey as well. Journey is massive for UX. Obviously, if you are sending people in different directions, there's multiple clicks before they get to where they want to be. That's going to have a big impact on user experience.

Yeah, I think from my side, if I was explaining it to clients, it'd be more about structure and journey and making sure that that experience when somebody lands on your site is very easy to find where they want to end up or where they want to go. So, yeah, I mean, whether the design is good or bad, it should really be an easy journey for that person when they land on a site.

Zero effort interaction.

Yeah, it should be foolproof, really, shouldn't it? It should make them not fail at the end goal.

Simplicity.

Every end goal is different as well is whether you want them to make a purchase, or I don't know, sign up to a newsletter, whatever it might be. As long as you have that goal first, you know how to set up the UX.

Yeah, and the thing is as well, when it comes to things like user experience, ultimately people are very lazy when they browse the Internet, and you've only got somebody's attention for so long. The more work they have to put in to get to the end result, the less likely they are to do it. So, simplicity is quite important when it comes to things like this.

Yeah, I think a lot of people over complicate it, whether it's a designer or a developer or an agency, whoever it is. I look at a lot of sites, and they're still hard to use. And I think for me that's the first place you should start. It doesn't matter, scale of projects, the budget or anything. Every website should be easy to use, and that is essentially UX.

I agree. I think I've always followed the mantra, you know me, my creative side. I've always, if anything, less is more. But obviously, it's a balance, isn't it, as well?

Yeah.

I think between letting the user make the right decision based on the end goal, showing the right amount of information, call to actions, can you implement that? So, what do you think about as an example, call to actions within head of navigation? Working on one for Arton, weren't we? Little things like that?

So, yeah, more descriptive stuff in your head of, rather than just a simple link or something like that can be beneficial if it's not overused, I think. So, I think one of the biggest pitfalls with navigation is having it too cluttered. So, if you've got, I don't know, just a lot of links in your navigation, and if there's no structure or categorization between them, being able to navigate that is just a pain. So, yeah, keeping it really simple.

And you can use call to actions to highlight very key areas, and it's usually the stuff you want the user to interact with, hence making the UX better. But yeah, it does work.

Yeah, I think for me there's some specific things that we probably do on 90% of projects. So, if you're talking about navigation there, when you land on the site, the navigation looks a certain way. But then as you scroll, it either disappears or shrinks to be smaller, but it's fixed. But then as soon as you start scrolling up again, that navigation appears again, just so people can concentrate with the content on the page, but then as they start scrolling, you know they're trying to move somewhere else so the navigation appears.

And then the other thing is the sticky call to actions. So, whether it's a back to top button at the bottom of the page or sticky to the right, inquire now button, bottom right, we pretty much do that on most sites now because we've tested performance, and it just works.

Yeah. And it's about distractions as well, isn't it? So, you've just highlighted there actually two or three really useful ways you can give that direction without distracting from the purpose of the page as well. And I think that's quite important when it comes to user experience because it's very common that people will just want to keep throwing features at a website, "I'm paying for a website, so I want it to do everything."

And they'll throw all sorts of different bells and whistles, as they like to call them, at a website. And actually all they're doing is distracting people, which is actually bad for UX. So, there's a few really useful things there that have been highlighted on navigation, on scroll, things like that, because what's happening naturally there is you are making them focus on the right thing. And then when the time is right for them to re-navigate and look elsewhere, you've got the option then to look around again.

Yeah, I think if you talk about distraction there, we just worked on a project for an agency. And an agency website should be showcasing their portfolio as best as possible, show the case studies, and so if that website is over-designed, then that distracts from the actual content on the page.

And again, that can be called UX because the user is not really getting what they want. They're being distracted by the design of the site that's conflicting with every case study, which completely looks different, different colours per case study, a lot of images. So, yeah, I think that needs to be considered. And again, I think that just comes back to over-complicating things.

Designers are probably the worst because they want to make something creative and make it cool, and sometimes we need to strip that back because the user just needs to get that bit of information and inquire or buy.

Everyone looked at me then. I could feel Josh's eyes on me.

To be fair, though, you're a very minimalist designer.

Yeah.

And it's a nice balance.

I can go a bit wacky sometimes, though, can't I?

Occasionally, but I think there's quite a common, especially in our world, people think that you have to go loud, and you have to go brave, and actually you don't because it's so loud that again, you're distracted.

Distraction.

Yeah.

There's a difference between being loud and different. I think if you're in a certain industry and everything looks exactly the same, for example, accountants' websites, they'll all look exactly the same. They probably won't invest a lot of money into it. There'll be templated websites, whereas if you do that well, it doesn't mean it has to be extravagant. It just needs to be done well. Yeah.

Talk to me about, I'm interested to get your insights on popups, because I hate them. I think there's a small place for them, a very small place, and we have conversations all the time about them, don't we? But what's your take on them? [inaudible 00:10:58]

Well, if you asked me that five years ago, then popups would be you'd interpretate that differently to you do now because you land on any site now, and you've got cookies, privacies, all these regulated popups that you need to include. Or some people just ignore that, but you should really have them there. So, straight away, regardless of content or upselling or providing a service or a discount offer, whatever it is, you've already got two popups you've got to close down most of the time, which just adds frustration to every user.

So, that then impacts on the actual popup that you want to use. When it comes to e-commerce, I mean, they do work. They do work, sign up to newsletter, discount code. The facts are there. It just does work. When it comes to service driven sites, personally, I try not to use popups on sites, other than if they wanted to sign up to a newsletter or download information. Popups do work to get email addresses and data capture.

More like very granular use cases though for service-based.

Yeah, yeah. I think I try to minimise it on service driven sites, but e-commerce sites, they just do work.

Yeah.

Sometimes you see it where, you can tell from a mile away websites that have pop-ups for the sake of having one as well. There's no real thought behind it or strategy. They're just there because they feel like they should-

Think they need it.

Yeah, exactly. And like you say, when you've already got a cookie policy, you've got already got all of these pop-ups. Sometimes what you're doing is adding to that frustration. And we all know the magic number, really, at least our industry seems to know. The magic number really is two seconds.

For every second after two seconds, you're losing a lot of your visitors. And if you're distracting them for the first chunk of that two seconds, it's going to cause you some of your own issues around conversion rates and keeping people on your site and things.

But I'm similar to you. I'm torn, because the stats don't lie as well. They do work when they're done properly, especially for e-commerce. So, I think it's about when you present them, how you present them and the purpose of them.

Well, it always comes back to that conversation we have pretty much on every podcast is, as long as there's a strategy behind it. You're not just doing it for the sake, and you're all in it for one goal, and you're going to stick with it, then it's going to work, isn't it? If you're just sticking it there and changing it all the time...

Yeah, I think there's some very easy tools that you can use to monitor performance, and you can trial it for two weeks. You can look at the results, if it's not working, take it off or tweak it and trial it again.

I think a good point you made there is about the initial two seconds. If you've got the initial two seconds of landing on the site, and you're already clicking cookies and privacies off, from a development point of view, it's very easy to time that popup. It could be at a certain point of scroll, or it could be a certain time after it, or it could pop up on certain pages. It doesn't have to be as soon as you hit the site.

Because essentially, if you're talking about e-commerce, when people want to use a pop-up, it's normally to get a discount code or enter their email address or get more information. That's normally just before they're going to leave. So, the discount code is better to get them before they leave, before they close the window. Again, very easy from a coding point of view, ping a popup, "Are you sure you want to leave? Here's 10% discount," and it works.

Also saves you 10% if they were going to buy regardless, and you were giving it away in the first two seconds of them entering the site.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

It is common though, isn't it? There's a lot of Shopify websites that do this a lot, and the moment you land on there, you get that spinning wheel on the left-hand side, and you're literally just giving your margin away. Why don't you just wait to see how people behave first or what pages they're on? And then if you feel like they're at risk of not buying, then okay, give them the chance to spin the wheel and get a discount.

Unfortunately, I think that's because Shopify is so readily available to everyone, they just pick a template, fill the content, and just push it as it is with no custom tweaks, no performance insights.

It's all about testing, isn't it? And unfortunately that, Shopify as a platform, I think, probably the user-based test an awful lot less than other platforms would just because by default who it's aimed at. But testing is so important with these things. Because as you said, you might want to test how users are behaving, and if you can't put various rules in place and some logic to dictate what pages things like that should show on, at what point they're scrolling on the page or whatever it might be, or maybe their intent to leave the website, if you're not testing those things, how do you know how well they're working?

So, again, a lot of this comes down to testing. You might have a hypothesis at the start, and you've got to prove it. And by the time you've been through that process, you should be getting better performance out the other side.

I think while we're on Shopify there, I think one good thing about them from a UX point of view is their checkout is great.

Yeah.

They robustly check the process, and the one step checkout does work.

Yeah, it is very good. And the idea of the, I think a lot of people use the Shop app, don't they, for a bit of a universal order history. You are automatically basically logged in, aren't you, to a store just because you've used Shopify before, if you have an account. So, all of that is quite helpful.

They have some very good pros, to be honest. Also a few cons, but it's a good platform for the right businesses at the right time. And generally as well I think a lot of the themes, the paid ones at least, they tend to be pretty good from a user experience perspective, generally at least.

Yeah, so yeah, we've talked briefly about some issues and things with UX, but I want to jump onto common UX pitfalls, if that makes sense, and we'll not call it frequent mistakes, but common mistakes that people make. I'd start with one in saying cluttered content or layouts. I think when people try and cram as much information above the fold, for example, or even below the fold or on a layout itself, when they're trying to put too-

That fight with white space. That happens a lot, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We see it a lot where people say, "Too much white space, let's get cram more content in." No, that white space is really useful.

It's perfect.

Yeah, there's a difference between white space and dead space.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You've got to let the content, in my eyes, breathe, and let people take it in. And it's what that content is as well and how you break it up as long as it's been broken up effectively, because essentially you're getting across a bunch of messages. What those messages are, we don't know, but we've got to try and structure it in a way.

[inaudible 00:17:45] digestible.

Yeah, exactly. Don't just cram it all in just because you think, "Oh, I've got to get it all in." It's not for me.

We always ask our clients that. If you've got six services, write them in a list of hierarchy, because there is always a hierarchy. They just don't think of it that way. They want to show all six services. They're all important, but you just can't do that online, especially the landing page. I think the one that I would probably mention is colour. Legibility is huge. You see so many websites that don't consider colour from a legibility point of view.

Like contrast. [inaudible 00:18:20] accessibility [inaudible 00:18:20].

Yeah, accessibility-wise, illegible call to actions, text on backgrounds or text over an image that you can't read. It's so obvious that, it doesn't matter if you're a designer or a developer, if you're in the industry...

You know you can't read something.

You shouldn't be doing that. Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to go with cluttered layouts, but it's a bit more specific. My take on this is, so specifically on mobile, having touch elements too close together. Also, this is kind of similar. Elements that shift or move when you're going to click on them or hovering on them and stuff like that, they can be a massive pain, especially if things don't behave as you expect them to on certain device sizes. So, for example, something appears, moves something else you were about to click on, and then you end up missing or mis-clicking, even worse, go to where you don't want to be.

In Google's eyes, that, from an SEO side, a cumulative layout shift. And the interesting thing about this, Google obviously has a big thing at the moment for cumulative layout shift, and I was browsing YouTube last night. And one of the popups to say, "You might like this video," I went to click it.

And it moved.

And then it moved.

I've noticed a few times, I'm not sure it was on Google, on some Google websites, I have noticed CLS, and it's, "Come on guys, [inaudible 00:19:36] after this."

Yeah, yeah, it's quite ironic. I think my biggest pet hate, although this is really small, and I don't know why it annoys me so much. It's probably not a big deal in reality is those horrible social share widgets. They just really wind me up.

Because you don't use them, or...

I just think we're beyond that now. The Internet has evolved. People realise if you want to share something, you can just grab the URL. You don't need to see all of these 64 different social networks that no one's ever heard of, just to click it and share through when you can just grab a URL. I just think they're distracting.

See, I disagree a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah, I-

But again, what's the purpose of the page? If the purpose of the page is to get someone to share it, fine. If the purpose of the page is you've got a service you're offering or there's an e-commerce product, the purpose of the page is to get someone to buy or to get someone to commit to getting in touch, or the purpose of the page isn't to get someone to share it with people who don't really give a shit about your product.

I think it's placement. If you're talking about why do you use it, the placement is key. Don't put it at the top of the page. You can just share it and then go and scroll Twitter or X for a while. It should be bottom of the page, basically. Or as soon as you start going past halfway, then maybe something appears on the left.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, is there a place for it on blogs or content anymore? Articles, things like that? [inaudible 00:21:02]

I think if done tastefully and they're not distracting, and that's the goal of the page, then fine. I've got no issue with that. It's more this uniform, "Let's just plunk it everywhere, and I just want people to share it." You've got Glen who runs a business who sells ladders, and he wants someone to share.

Oh, Glen.

Yeah, exactly. And he wants someone to share that he's got a new seven-step ladder on Facebook. Why would anyone on whoever's sharing that Facebook care about that? It doesn't make sense to the purpose of the page.

No, it's nuts to put it across the full site. The old iPhone, he's just specifically talking about articles, so that tells you what I think of it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that makes a lot of sense because actually there's a purpose there, isn't there?

You want to drive traffic to that page, yeah.

Yeah. And that's useful in that case, but again, provided it's done correctly, you don't want to see all 64 social networks again that nobody uses. But if done tastefully, I think that's okay.

I think when you look at social media platforms, they actually handle that quite well. So, sharing, I don't know a Real or Instagram post, you just get the one share button, but it expands to show you all your possible options on your phone. Works a lot better in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, [inaudible 00:22:12].

Yeah, that's a good point. I think when you're talking about purpose a page there, we don't really get these requests anymore, but back in the day when I was starting out, a lot of people wanted to put social icons in the nav, which always baffled me. It's baffled me from day one.

[inaudible 00:22:25] occasionally, like having your social links in the very [inaudible 00:22:27].

I just say no. I'm like, "If you want that, you ain't working with us," because that's basic. Why would you just land on someone's site and then take them to your socials?

Send them our way, we'll do it for them.

Yeah, you're actually almost-

Just joking. We won't. We won't.

You're almost sending them backwards because if you were on their socials, then they would want you to go to the website because that's where they're going to convert, and if you hit the website and it's going to take you straight into the socials, it's very counterintuitive.

You're bringing them away from something you can control through to something you can't control.

Where they're going to be off on a real rabbit hole.

Yeah, exactly.

On Instagram.

Yeah, exactly. They just get bored, and they start floating around. We all see it, and even people who pretend they don't use TikTok, they still do this. You end up in a rabbit hole.

You're talking about you.

I do it all the time.

Matt's rabbit holes is terrible.

Yeah, I do it all the time.

You can tell when you're in one because you get about eight messages.

Yeah. Yeah, you do. Yeah, yeah.

So, as more and more users go mobile then, obviously shifts the impact, a UX decision slightly. Google obviously crawl in from a mobile first perspective as well. So, I guess with the shape of mobile UX, is there anything that anyone wants to say about how that is shaped or developed?

Are you saying shaped because I'm here?

Yeah.

That's a nice plug.

It's a key plug.

Perfect plug.

For me, I think the size of elements specifically on mobile, so when you look at a desktop site for example, very easy to click on stuff with your small mouse, easy to navigate. On mobile, a little bit trickier. Some people have very large thumbs, some people have very small thumbs, and can definitely impact how you interact with the site. If you've got a tiny, tiny little X to get rid of a pop-up like we were talking about earlier, that could be a bit of a pain. Also, just your buttons in general, if they're hard to touch, hard to interact with.

Smaller real estate as well on a mobile, isn't it? So, you've got less. You've got less real estate to touch, so things generally have to fold in certain ways. So, I think CLS, again, just for those listening, that's cumulative layout shift, so it means whether layouts shift as you are navigating. I think that's certainly more important on mobile. I'd agree there for sure.

I think for me, when it comes to agencies or whoever's building the website, rather than thinking about mobile first, isn't it their job to make it look good on all devices? This baffles me. When you look at [inaudible 00:24:46], and they still do pinch points, which is basically they've got desktop, and then it looks ugly on smaller screen sizes until it gets to iPad, and then it shifts to a different size, and then it looks ugly again to different size. And then mobile, it looks okay. Why only do them three sizes? Shouldn't it just be fully responsive?

It's interesting. We were talking about this actually last week, was it? And this concept of, generally you'll create mock-ups on desktop first, won't you?

Yeah.

And I know that, like you say, arguably that goes against the grain to a certain degree, but you're absolutely right. It's about perfecting each viewpoint and making sure it looks great across all devices.

When I think about it, I think it makes more sense. Maybe this is just because it's a developer perspective, but being able to understand how something will fold from desktop into mobile kind of impacts how you design.

Some people don't understand that process, though, do they?

Yeah.

So, if we're talking to someone who's starting their own business, and they think, "Oh, I want my website to look like this," they'll be saying that for the desktop. And they won't know how it folds or how it is responsive on all platforms [inaudible 00:25:54].

Generally it is easier. It is generally quite easy to fold down instead of up though.

Yeah, we do exactly the same. We still design desktop first, get the sign-off from the client, and then depending on who the client is, what the budget is, some people literally just trust us to make it work on all devices. And because we're-

For sure, because they trust you.

Yeah. Because we've been in the industry for 18 years, we know what we should be doing. Sometimes we don't actually design for mobile if it's not needed, but in other cases, if it's a lot of information, a lot of content, that sometimes you do have to reduce or change or design for mobile, but we will actually always do it second. Even if the percentage is 95%, we still make it look good on all devices. It still baffles me when agencies do that. I think it's just lazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, it's just following the herd, really, isn't it? I think it all started when Google had that massive shift towards mobile first indexing, mobile first crawling, and everybody sort of just not quite panicked, but they all just blindly followed like it was the right thing to do. But as powerful as Google are and as big as Google, it doesn't mean everything they say is correct. People can have different opinions.

I mean, while we're on mobile, what's your opinion on videos?

From a...

Speed, size? Usability?

Speed, if you're not hosting them locally. Not hosting them on the site, shouldn't be too impactful if it's YouTube embeds or something like that. Yeah, if it is local-

We've tried local a couple, haven't we? A couple of external embed platforms, the Muse one. That was all right, it comes down, well, another one I was going to touch on in terms of pitfalls is obviously page load speeds. Obviously, video will impact that quite a lot.

So, the interesting one about Muse, so we use Muse at the moment on our website to embed, don't we? And what's interesting there is the video obviously won't even load until somebody clicks play, so it's not really affecting page speeds in that sense, but there's a byproduct of having it there is that the JavaScript Muse file is actually quite heavy. I think it was the heaviest file.

Yeah, it is one of the heaviest things on our site now. We've done some heavy optimization recently,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.So, it's interesting because even though the video itself and the video file isn't directly impacting load times, which obviously impacts user experience, the JavaScript files that are a prerequisite to using a Muse are heavy. So, yeah, I don't know. For me, I guess it depends how much value the video adds, and again, the purpose of it.

We see from, obviously, if you're thinking about the marketing funnel and brand awareness, we always try and plug video because it has the highest click-through rates and so on, but does that mean that it's necessarily needed on the website? It comes back to that same old conversation. Is the purpose right for it? Is it needed? I think in most cases we would always recommend video, whether it's video testimonials, video testimonials [inaudible 00:28:56].

In the right places, video can be powerful, can't it?

Video testimonials are different because video testimonials are definitely powerful, that decision-making moment, because it's building so much trust, you don't have to try and convince someone to go. They basically watch the video, and if they're saying amazing things about you, they'll know whether they're lying, they're acting or not. If it's genuine, it'll be a decision-maker. I think more on landing of sites, if it's an auto-play video that, built into the site-

Like in the hero section or something like that.

... Yeah, speed is always going to be an issue. It doesn't matter how small that file size is. Like you said, JavaScripts, whatever the code is going to impact, and then we can start talking about performance and load speeds and code and minimise code. But yeah, I was just interested because on mobile, obviously not every browser does auto-play either, so then you've got to have a fallback. So, then if most people go into the fallback anyway...

What's the point of it?

Yeah, so...

You're just increasing the size of the page for no particular reason. One of the ones I find interesting, which I don't like, I'm happy to say I don't like this, is when in the hero section there's a video that auto-plays in the background. I get the concept. I think they catch the eye. I understand it, but again, for me, I think they're distracting.

Maybe it's because they tend to go on websites that don't particularly think of, again, the purpose of the website too much. You tend to see them on websites where they'll explain what they do in a way that no one understands what they do. They'll say we create solutions for this and that and this, and no one has a clue what they do. They're the websites that tend to have the video backgrounds for me.

So, I think it's more of a correlation thing, but I don't particularly like them, to be honest. Again, I think it's a distraction.

The other thing that I always say. Obviously visuals speak 1,000 words, obviously, that sort of thing. From a creative mind perspective, I always think that... I think it's how people perceive that messaging. Obviously, the content is key, but how it's put together, what is the purpose of the video? If it's just a bunch of wishy-washy nonsense, then there's no point having it [inaudible 00:31:10].

London skyline.

It's stock. Yeah, stock. Like you said, that London Skyline stock, everyone knows it's stock. It's not really given anything. I think for me, there's one key point I would probably argue is showreel, if you land on the site and it's our showreel, and you land on another agency's site and they've got showreel, they'll still be completely different. Quality of work, type of clients we work with. That's an instant, "Wow, I want to work with them." But if it's... You know what I mean?

If it's done in the right way, absolutely. Yeah. And the right kind of business. Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. I think it's more... I think my beef is more with those London skylines.

Stock footage.

Yeah.

Yeah, for me, I'm instantly thinking of brands like GoPro for example, or DGI or something like that. With those it makes sense having the impactful video.

Yeah. No, that's a good point actually, Josh. That is a good point. And maybe a video production service, again-

Makes sense there.

It makes sense in those kind of cases.

Application and purpose.

Again, yeah.

We've actually just changed it on a firework website. So, there was a video to show fireworks and create impact on London all year, but now we're coming to bonfire night. We basically just want to change it to performance only, so that's just gone to a flat image.

Interesting.

So, there is different keys and timings as well. It doesn't have to stay the same all year. You can still change content. But yeah, I mean, for us, showreel is massive [inaudible 00:32:36].

It is a big thing.

We don't have to explain anything. You could watch our showreel, you know exactly who we are and what we do. Without audio, by the way.

Yeah.

Interesting, okay. Yeah, yeah.

I did watch your showreel. Noticed you worked with Gary Neville.

Yes.

What was that like?

Yeah, it was great project, to be honest. It was very smooth. It was a great project. I thought it was going to be a nightmare, but it just wasn't. Yeah, we created his brand website. Yeah, really nice projects. And off the back of that we've just done Sasha Wells as well. And yeah, two nice projects. Portfolio, basically sized, rebrand, really cool, and obviously the well-known people. So, for us it's easy to shout about, and people know who they are.

And as a Man U fan as well?

Yeah, I'm a United fan, yeah. He did actually say to us, "Right, what David's done." He kept talking that night about David, and obviously David Beckham. And my response to that was, "Yeah, but Gary, you're not David Beckham, are you?"

Did you say that to him?

Yeah, yeah.

You did?

Yeah, of course we did. Yeah.

How did he react to that?

He started laughing. He's not David Beckham, is he? No, I knew his purpose, what David's done in terms of content and brand and stuff.

How he [inaudible 00:33:44] and stuff, yeah.

But Gary Neville's a right back, and he doesn't look like David, does he? Come on. But yeah, it's a nice site, fit for purpose. Not over complicated.

But that's a perfect point, isn't it? Because-

It's a different voice.

Exactly, yeah.

Purpose again, yeah.

The UX of the site is going to be completely different. The messaging is going to be different. So, yeah, it comes back to the same thing all the time when you're specifically speaking about UX and things. So, it's quite interesting. I enjoyed watching your showreel, to be honest.

Cool.

So, just finally then, and I think we've talked about some important stuff there. It's quite interesting to get different perspectives on things. What do we think the future of UX is going to look like? Obviously, we've got [inaudible 00:34:26] AI coming into the mix, things like that. What do we think is going to be redefined from there?

I think AI is going to actually make a big, big difference in UX.

Do you think?

Yeah, I can kind of envision having a AI chatbot, probably a bit more advanced than what we've currently got, although what we have currently got is very advanced. Something that you can talk to as you land on the site and just say, "I want to know more about X." And it will either redirect you to the page that you want to go to, or it will just show you links to the page or anything like that.

Understanding context, I guess. The machine learning could be based on the business, the website, the content. I agree. I think that could be quite big. And then also leaning onto that voice, so potentially this, I don't know if this is a bit of a wild guess, but assuming that that became big, and we did lean on AI the way Josh is saying there, which I think is likely, interacting with websites via voice could become a thing. Having conversations with AI about what the page is about, what the service is about, what people have to say about it, about what problems it solves, those kinds of things, could also potentially become a thing.

I can see the two interacting, actually. So, when I'm thinking of a more advanced AI, I'm thinking personal AI rather than a general thing that the website hosts. Maybe it's something that you take around different websites with you, so it's linked to you. It's like your accounts that you're using.

Yeah, that's interesting. If we go in more simple than that, then tools like VideoAsk. So, when you land on their site, it's got a video, and you're talking directly to that end user and asking them questions that they click through, and then you can give them more information based on that. I think that could go a bit step further through to navigation.

And obviously, we know about chat experience now is far more advanced than it used to be, where that can give you responses and information based on stuff that you type in, which doesn't need human, which was always a big issue. Who's going to sit there 24 hours a day replying to messages online?

Because ultimately people using that outside of hours because they're inquiring in the evenings or whatever, staff isn't there. So, what's the point in having an auto responder saying, "I'll reply tomorrow?" So, the AI on that front, I think is already good, but I think that's obviously going to go further.

When we talk about AI we're testing all the time with content, and obviously if you're talking about UX today, the content that AI is creating now, if you've got a process, is very good. And UX obviously is still important when it comes to content and qualitative content. So, the future for me, AI is ultimately a talking point.

Yeah.

Do you think augmented reality and virtual reality will become more of a thing when it comes to UX? I'm thinking specifically here. I think a lot of people disagree with me, and I'm okay with that because I'm not entirely sold on it myself, but I think it's exciting, this concept of... So, Apple for example, with their Vision Pro, that'll be coming out, I assume at some point later this year or early next year. People can interact inside an office through virtual reality, augmented reality. How will that impact websites?

Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it?

But elements, just for people listening, you can potentially have two, three different things going on in your own virtual world, but inside the room you're in, and they can interact together. So, for example, you might have a video widget screen, whatever your window, whatever you want to call it. And you can literally pick things up from various windows into others and things like that. That in itself poses questions for websites.

Yeah, it's like applications such as, I don't know, a kitchen studio and things like that. You've obviously got the walkthroughs that you can capture now, but will that be taken a step further where you can actually step into it and visualise it yourself, move things around? I don't know. [inaudible 00:38:28]

And you've got Ikea's website here, and you can pull in a sofa, but then over here you've got-

See it in your room.

Exactly, yeah. And I know they try to do that to a certain degree now, but it's a different level, isn't it?

Yeah, I think that's probably a good point, actually. A lot of that stuff you've mentioned is already achievable, but it's not very fine-tuned. I think having something like the Vision Pro or any other thing, like Oculus maybe or other VR, AR systems. Having a system in place, which I guess unites those kind of things together-

It's a universal, yeah.

Yeah.

Imagine if all websites used the same universal process for this, and you could pull in something from IKEA into your room, but then also a kitchen from Howden's or I don't know, and different elements from different places, and it was all universally. I mean, this is maybe wishful thinking, but I don't know. It's a potential. I don't think that's imminent, by the way.

No.

I think this is probably maybe a decade away from at least being common. But yeah, it's potentially a future of UX right there.

I think for me, if you're bringing it back to websites and experience, restaurants, definitely if you go into a website and looking at the menu, I think we could push that further, not just looking at a photograph of what you're going to order. I mean, it already exists, really, that you can actually see the video content of each dish when you're inside the restaurant. So, I think taking the website before you even get to the decision point of which restaurant you're going to go to, AI, AR, just general content, the future of that is... I think could be pushed.

Yeah, thinking about AR, actually, assuming we get to a point where we have Google Glass type AR, small, something that you'd actually wear.

24-7 wearable.

UX kind of doesn't become a website thing then. It becomes a live thing, because everyone's going to be advertising you, I don't know, leaflets or menus, as you said. You could have a QR code or something on the top of your menu and scan it with your AR glasses, and then at that point, you're developing UX for AR advice rather than websites.

For that advice, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could imagine quite easily at that point, you're looking at a menu, and you're looking at a specific item, and then you can see video, you can see picture, you can maybe see reviews, people doing. You could even imagine actually being taken into the restaurant, and you're hearing the noises and things like that, watching the food being made and things like that.

You're talking Black Mirror stuff now.

Potentially, but I mean, it is inevitable, isn't it? At some point?

Yeah, yeah. No, yeah.

It's just when, I think, and how the web interacts and integrates those kind of experiences into websites and how websites evolve. But yeah, you're right. We're probably way off that.

Yeah, it's very future, but also it's all doable currently.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just we've not got a cohesive thing to do it with.

That's right. Yeah.

If you're talking about future as well, we're all in this industry. We all get paid in this industry. If you're talking about, okay, well, is our job still going to be here in two years? A lot of people are worried about that. Personally, I think with AI, it still needs human element. It still needs human [inaudible 00:41:37].

Makes sense.

So, if you work with that, and you embrace it, then it's only going to aid your business. I don't think it's going to replace us.

[inaudible 00:41:44] as a tool at the end of the day, and it doesn't just do things on its own. It needs some intervention from humans.

But also the less humans do interact and teach it, allow it to learn, the worse it will become, because it'll be learning from itself. So, you have to have that human element just for it to continually improve anyway. But yeah, there is a lot of worry about that. I don't really subscribe to it, to be honest. I think it can be a very powerful tool to lean on, but as a replacement for what we do, I think at the moment at least, it's not even really close. You were playing around with Illustrator yesterday, their new, so yesterday they released a beta, didn't they? For-

Yeah, that was funny.

It's actually quite cool. I'm actually impressed by it.

I mean, I-

It worked really well once.

I liked it. I really did like it. I liked the concept of it, but it's not going to give you the end result of what I could create, for example. I'm not blowing smoke up my ass, but I'm just saying when I tried to create a scene, for example, it wasn't clean. It was all right. I really liked the concept of it. And you can create shapes, icons, little things like that, so it could be quite good. I tried giving an example of, I don't know, a letter T. Come up with a T, and it was just like a little T in a circle, but it was like you'd used, I don't know... A standard-

[inaudible 00:43:08]?

Yeah. It was [inaudible 00:43:08].

Very hit-or-miss. The first one was superb, to be honest. But then the second, third, fourth, fifth, it was just like someone had opened paint and dragged some clip art in. It was dreadful.

Yeah. I think for me, specific examples of AI replacing us, we've got a content team, and you have to go through back and forth process to get that process correct, and even when you go through that, the end result isn't still perfect. It still needs to be amended and checked. For example, there's a lot of AI stuff that we've been through, very heavy research, and it makes facts up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just notes. It just makes facts up. You have to fact check, and you still have to do the human touch. And then when it comes to design, there are loads of tools out there where you can go and say to AI, "Just make me a website," and they're just garbage. We're just not there yet. But in two years time, it might be people should be not concerned, but be aware of it.

Certainly awareness. Absolutely, yeah.

It's great for ideation, creating ideas, getting ideas. [inaudible 00:44:11]

Provided the input is also great.

Yeah. Again, the input's good. [inaudible 00:44:13]

And this is why I'm less concerned because the input relies on somebody who is experienced, who understands it, who knows what they want out of it. If your input isn't good enough, the output is terrible, almost always.

It's almost dangerous in the wrong hands, if you imagine that.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, because clients who just want a simple website, they'll just be, "I'll just do it myself," but they won't get what they need because it'll be flawed [inaudible 00:44:38].

Yep, yep.

And the UX of design, everything. It might look all right on paper, but then it just doesn't work.

[inaudible 00:44:43]

I suspect there'll be, yeah, I think there'll be a period of maybe two years where lots of people do go down that road.

And try it, yeah.

Because, yeah, they'll want to save money, they'll do, but all that it'll do is they'll fail. The ones who do it properly will succeed, and people think, "Actually, that's probably not a great idea." I'm less concerned, to be honest. I do think there'll be a slow buildup to a day of reckoning where actually it does impact people's jobs. I think we're quite a long way from that, personally.

Are they the clients that we want anyway, that just want to save money and do it themselves? You could say that about anything. If I want to build my own house.

Helping your dad decorate.

Yeah. Won't have a clue where to start.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Right. Well, thank you, everybody, for the chat. I've enjoyed it. Have you enjoyed it, Andy?

Yeah. Cheers for asking me along. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, good. No, we'll get you on again at some point. Matt, you enjoyed it?

Yeah, yeah.

[inaudible 00:45:38]

Yeah, great talk. Yeah.

And Josh?

Yeah, always. Been a pleasure.

And that brings us to the close of another Marketing Blabs episode. Today we navigated the intricate pathways of website UX with the expert guidance of Andy from MadeByShape. We learned about the pivotal role UX plays in ensuring user satisfaction, the various components that come together to shape the user's experience, and the importance of adapting and evolving our strategies based on data and feedback.

If there's one key takeaway here it's that good UX is not just about aesthetic appeal. It's about truly understanding and addressing the needs of your audience. A huge thanks to Andy for sharing his ideas and insights on the pod. And to all our listeners, until next time, keep experimenting with UX and optimising your digital spaces. See you.

This Blab

Date of Blab

26 January 2024

Blab Host

Categories

Listen Time

00:46:59

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